How to Increase Customer Satisfaction: The Ultimate Guide

In this millennial era, understanding how happy your consumers are with your services, products, and their complete experience with your organization has become crucial.  Numerous aspects are contributing to the success of a company and consumer satisfaction is one of them.

It is imperative to trace this aspect and function on refining it to make your consumers more loyal and ultimately turn them into your brand ambassadors.  Measuring customer satisfaction can depict where your company is meeting the goals and where you are struggling to meet customers’ expectations.  In this blog post, let’s examine how we can increase customer satisfaction.



What is Customer Satisfaction?

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) is a word that is often utilized in the marketing field.  It is the degree to how a product or service provided by an organization meets or exceeds customer expectations. 

CSAT is usually defined as “the percentage of total consumers or the number of consumers, whose stated experience with a company, its services, or its products (the ratings) surpasses the specified satisfaction objectives.”

Consumers play a vital role and are crucial in keeping a product or service relevant so it is in the best concern of the company to make sure customer satisfaction and develop customer reliability.  Moreover, keeping your present clienteles happy is a decent business in the long term.  General business wisdom states that obtaining consumers is 5-25 times more costly than keeping the current ones.

Importance of Customer Satisfaction

Businesses with a customer experience mindset gain revenue 4-8% greater than the rest of their market. Also, 84% of corporations that function to improve customer satisfaction report an upsurge in their income. It is observed that consumer-focused organizations are 60% more money-making than the companies that do not focus on their consumers.

You will be thrilled to know that 73% of customers believe a worthy experience is key in promoting their product loyalties.  Also, establishments that outshine at consumer experience have 1.5 times more involved staffs than less consumer-centric companies

Customer satisfaction is perceived as the prime performance metre within the business and is a part of the Balanced Scorecard.  In an economical market where companies contest for customers, customer satisfaction is comprehended as the main differentiator and progressively has developed a key component of the business scheme.

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The Benefits of Customer Satisfaction

Companies that analyze customer satisfaction can estimate the probable risk of unhappy customers easily.  Revenue and growth are the prime elements of any effective business.  By observing numerous benefits of customer satisfaction, you can have significant conversations about capitalizing in your squad.  Obligate the whole team to understand the importance of customer satisfaction.  Then measure the growth and enjoy the following benefits:

Benefits of Customer Satisfaction
  1. Shine Out Amongst The Competition

    Customer satisfaction can work as your unique selling proposition (USP), assisting you to be prominent in such a competitive trade.  This is because individuals do not rate companies based on product or price.  In its place, they assess the consumer experience provided by that specific business.  Therefore, when you deliver an outstanding customer experience, you make a situation where the satisfaction levels are much higher.  And this functions as the main differentiator between you and your competitors.

  2. Make Cost-effective Marketing Choices

    Consumer satisfaction can take unknown factors out of your marketing expenditure.  For instance, customer satisfaction studies can aid you to observe which goods are favourite among your customers.  Moreover, you can utilize such surveys to detect which communication networks customers truly choose.  These insights can sort out your vision, allowing you to make cost-effective marketing judgements.

  3. Shields Online Image

    When you trace your consumer satisfaction on social nets, you avail an outline of both positive and negative feedback and can take significant measures to shield your brand.  For instance, you can reach to your unhappy consumers and elucidate your side of the picture.  Expressing regret is also a part of turning around an undesirable experience.

    In addition to this, you can propose to make things correct and offer a timeline for when your customers can anticipate their matter to be resolved.  Furthermore, consider doing this openly.  As in, do not take discussions to your private inbox.  Rather reply to customers’ comments in an open thread so that hundreds of others view that you truly care about your client satisfaction.

  4. Stimulates Word-Of-Mouth

    If customer satisfaction has attained a high-level, individuals are much likely to recommend your company.  55% of customers exhibit customer loyalty by endorsing the businesses they prefer to family and friends, according to Accenture.  Small-scale businesses assess that 85% of fresh business comes from word-of-mouth.  Contented customers will discuss business references in the workplace, support their favorite ones, and even share them on social media.

  5. It prevents your customers from churning

    A churn occurs when a consumer chooses to stop utilizing your service or product.  A study by thinkJar found that 67% of individuals view negative experiences as a motive for churn.  Since bad experiences result in low contentment rates, gauging consumer satisfaction can aid you to recognize whether customers are churning at a high level or not.

    If your user satisfaction is low, then you can take action to enhance the complete quality of your consumer experience.  Small and sincere actions like providing support through their channel of choice or offering customers a free replacement can work well for increasing your consumer satisfaction level.

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How To Measure Customer Satisfaction?

With the help of digital analytics, we can define if the users are exploring a goal, how they are interrelating with a trait, or even their struggle finishing a particular task.  But we cannot ascertain their emotional reaction and that is the secret.  Measuring customer satisfaction renders you a peek at your consumers’ emotional reactions.

Now that you have understood what customer satisfaction is, let’s view how it is measured.  Following are the steps to determining consumer satisfaction.

  1. Define A Goal

    It may seem to be apparent, but the chief step to gauging consumer satisfaction is to set a goal.  You may ask yourself what the aim of this action is.  What would you do with the statistics?  If you are putting an effort, make sure that you have a purpose.  For example, you can determine an objective of enhancing the quality of consumer service.

    The consequences you will achieve from the consumer satisfaction survey will state how the support team is presently functioning.  If the users are already pleased to a certain extent with your group, all you have to do is implement a few alterations, for instance, do a follow-up after a problem has been fixed, to achieve your main goal.

  2. Select A Customer Satisfaction Tactic

    Once you have defined a goal, select from one of the subsequent customer satisfaction metrics to assess consumers’ views:

    • Customer Effort Score (CES)

      Measure Customer Satisfaction: CES

      Customer Effort Score follows a dissimilar way than the rest of the customer satisfaction metrics available. CES inquiries customers how much effort you have to make to get a service provided or a question answered or a matter resolved?

      The measure of CES customer satisfaction survey generally goes from 1-7, 1 suggesting that it was very easy and 7 stating that it was very difficult.  Once these responses are collected, you can compute the average CES by deducting the percentage of easy replies from the percentage of difficult replies.  The lower this CES is, the simpler it was for the consumers to finish a particular task.

      CES = Percentage Of Easy Replies – Percentage Of Difficult Replies.
    • Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

      Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

      Consumer satisfaction is generally evaluated through CSAT, which is similar to the 1-5 survey scale.  The benefit of utilizing such a metric is that it is easy to employ and to avail results.  Individuals can offer responses to the customer satisfaction examination with a few simple clicks.

      To compute customer satisfaction score, request customers to rate the queries utilizing a 1-5 scale survey – how content are you with, for example, the knowledge of our team and the speed of customer service.

      As you receive the responses, divide the total number of satisfied replies by the total number of survey replies and multiply the rate by 100.

      CSAT (%) = (Total Number Of Satisfied Replies / Total Number Of Survey Replies) * 100

      Thus, CSAT aids in determining the average totals that are expressed in percentages of satisfied replies.  The outcomes, thus produced by this technique do not need a huge quantity of scrutiny, and you have the choice of following-up with the consumers to request what could increase their consumer satisfaction scores.

    • Net Promoter Score (NPS)

      In simple language, Net Promoter Score is the outcome you achieve when you survey customers with the customer satisfaction questionnaire – ‘would you endorse’.  With the NPS, consumers can rank a business from 1-10, where 10 states the highest customer satisfaction and 1 states the lowest customer satisfactionWhat is unique about NPS is that it classifies the customers into three clusters based on their totals – Neutrals, Promoters, and Detractors.

      People who give your company a 0-6 score are categorized as ‘Detractors’.  These individuals are unhappy customers and are likely to halt providing you with their business. Customers who rate you a 7 or 8 fall into the ‘Neutrals’ category.  They either can become your supporters or can switch to your contenders.  Finally, those customers who pick 9 or 10 are characterized as ‘Promoters’.  Such people are considered loyal customers who are likely to circulate positive word-of-mouth about your business.

      To compute the Net Promoter Score, subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters.

      NPS = % (Percentage) of Promoters – Percentage of Detractors
      Net Promoter Score (NPS)

      For instance, if there are 1000 respondents and you get 100, 300, and 600 replies in the array of 0-6, the Detractors, 7-8, the Neutrals, and 9-10, the Promoters respectively, then NPS would be:

      Net Promoter Score = (600/1000 * 100) – (100/1000 * 100) = 50

      The best rate you can avail is +100 and the worst rate you can avail is -100

      The greater the NPS is, the more likely consumers will endorse your company to others.

  3. Make A Survey

    Surveys seem to be a convenient tool for collecting the data relating to the metrics deliberated.  You can employ SurveyMonkey or Google Forms to generate a decent survey in a couple of minutes.  Such tools permit you to pick and drop different components and form manifold choice responses as required.

    Furthermore, there are a diversity of ready-made templates to opt from.  And some of them are based on consumer satisfaction metrics.  For instance, SurveyMonkey delivers a template for NPS.  

  4. Make The Scheduling Correct

    The scheduling of the consumer satisfaction study is the key to achieve the ultimate aim.  Preferably, it must be conducted within 24 hours or straightaway after a communication with the support team, so that the discussion stays fresh in your consumers’ memory.  Or else, they may be unable to summon up how they felt.

    Conversely, studies connected to a service or product must be conducted sometime after procurement is made.  This is so because it takes some time for the customers to acquaint themselves with the service or item served.  While the scheduling differs from a company to another company, a decent rule of thumb is to examine at least 3 days post-purchase.

  5. Examine Stats and Form Solutions

    The statistics you gather would not be helpful unless you can utilize them to excerpt the pertinent insights.  Consequently, once you get a decent number of replies, look at the arrangements in the stats, and derive the conclusions.  For instance, replies to a CSAT examination may aid you to reveal the bottlenecks at a definite phase of the consumer journey.

    If the customers display a low level of contentment just after purchasing a product, this may specify that their track to conversion requires to be revised.  Similarly, the replies to a CES analysis may point out the problems in your consumer service.  If your consumer effort score is too low, you must take actions like working on decreasing the reply time, applying suitable support channels like live chat, and imparting the needed training to your customer service reps.


How to Increase Customer Satisfaction?

So far, we have examined the benefits of customer satisfaction and some approaches for measuring the satisfaction level, the apparent query is, ‘How do you improve customer satisfaction?’  There is no single answer to this query.  Nevertheless, there are some evidence-based tactics and guiding principles that can avail you of rapid victories.  Contemplate taking the steps below to improve consumer satisfaction:

  1. Implement The Customer-first Approach

    Under any circumstances, never let an issue or problem surpass your consumers and their requirements for its significance.  For instance, if a service got mismanaged or a product broke down, do not blame the client or say that they did not abide by the guidelines in the manual.  In its place, attempt to meet their wants and remember that it is the consumer who is always correct.

    CloudTutorial, a top knowledge management system, makes people love your company as we help you to go the extra mile in delivering customer service.  Such satisfied customers will be of supreme advantage, in various ways, and would never leave you as you would treat them well unceasingly.

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  2. Make An Omni Channel

    Implementing an omnichannel method is crucial to boosting your consumers’ happiness in an extremely multi-network setting.  One of the finest approaches to do this is to utilize the information you possess on your consumers like their phone number and email, to deliver them a smooth experience across several points.  For instance, a discussion that starts on Twitter can be continued through SMS or email with all the pertinent context conserved across varied platforms.

    CloudTutorial aids in applying Omni channels and sharing data about consumers’ purchase history and behavior with your sales rep and marketing squads efficiently.  This will assist them to supply personalized references, like special deals based on what consumers have purchased in the past.

  3. Deliver Self-help Materials

    Some companies usually tend to oversee the low-cost support channels like self-help resources in the form of tutorials, knowledge bases through knowledge management systems, and FAQs, when it comes to creating a customer service policy.

    As per the research conducted, 89% of customers anticipate companies to possess an online self-service portal for consumer support.  Hence, it can be a decent notion to make resources that authorize customers to become more familiar and better customers of a service or product.

    For example, Nike provides a FAQ page to inform customers about the dissimilarities between the several alternatives of Apple Watch Nike:

    Nike Customer Satisfaction

    CloudTutorial helps you consider constructing self-help materials that make it simple for customers to discover responses to their inquiries.  This could comprise YouTube tutorials and structured FAQs.

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FAQs
To improve customer satisfaction, you must treat every customer well, every time they use your products or services. You must reply rapidly and be ready to make things correct for the consumer. Also, be clear about what are your business goals and what you aim to achieve in the future.
Listen cautiously to your consumers, make your consumers feel significant, comprehend the expense of losing a customer, know your services and products well, keep your promises to your consumers, and ask your consumers what they require are some of the ways that aid in keeping your customers satisfied.

Customer satisfaction is important to retaining your present consumers and acquiring new ones. A dissatisfied customer is a retention risk, and losing her or him can cause damage to your brand.


Conclusion

As we have seen that customer satisfaction presents a key indicator of customer purchase purposes and brand loyalty.  CloudTutorial applies these measurement policies and enhances the health of your business.

If your users are unhappy, they will leave.  And no business can persist and contend in the long term with a severe churn problem.  Delivering impeccable customer service will gratify both you and your aims.  If they get the right service, you gain good revenue eventually. 

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