6 Important Ways To Measure Customer Satisfaction

Customers are the fundamental asset of every business. Customer satisfaction is the primary catalyst that pushes a company forward, ensuring repeat business. However, contact centers of companies cannot plan their service strategies based on vague data or few interactions. One can only trust quantitative data. Nonetheless, thorough survey work and a few measuring parameters have to be employed to understand the standards of customer service. These metrics help in improving customer value while reducing the churn rate. 

Customer-centric companies make it a healthy practice to determine the customer's satisfaction levels, very often. Contact center teams improve their strategies using this particular data. Such practices keep them far from service deficiency and place them ahead in the competition.  

There are several universal methods for measuring customer satisfaction. However, only a few of them fetch near-accurate data.

 

Important 6 Techniques of Measuring Customer Satisfaction:

Surveys are an essential method of measuring the quality of customer service. It is better to for your contact centers to ask customers directly what they think of your service, rather than just self-calculations. Initiate different types of surveys on various channels, mostly after the service is provided. Surveys can be hosted in 3 different ways: 

a)  In-App Surveys:

Customers often tend to ignore such surveys unless they are caught in the action. The best way to get honest feedback is while they are availing of your services on your app. Initiate a post-purchase or post-service survey. The response rate is definitely higher and the feedback is most likely to be honest. 
However, these surveys should not hinder the customer experience when availing the service. The survey should be short and precise and smoothly integrated with the application.

b)  Post-Call Surveys:

The best feedback is received as soon as the interaction gets over. CSAT surveys can be initiated as soon as the call gets over. The caller can provide feedback by just pressing a key, which is automatically rolled up to the supervisor in the CSAT report.

c)  Email Surveys:
These surveys are for long-time customers who have made repeat purchases. Email them a form-based study with insightful questions. Keep those questions relevant to the customer’s goal, for better engagement. The answers are often lengthy; hence the response rate might be low. But let’s not get demotivated! Send out those surveys Whatever feedback you get is bound to be valuable.

d)  Voluntary Feedback: 
Sometimes customers tend to provide feedback without any nudge from your end. This can be for various reasons. Either they had a bad experience or an extremely good experience and they want to let you know. However, an automated response often repels them from further engagement. 

Thus, ensure a personalized response or arrange a phone call to understand the customer’s expectations. Furthermore, positive feedback can be recorded as success stories to encourage other customers.

 

The customer satisfaction score or the CSAT score is a universal metric used to rate a customer's recent interaction with the customer service team. The parameter ranges from 1-5, where the lowest number denotes highly unsatisfied, and the highest number indicates highly satisfied. The more positive feedback results in a higher CSAT score. 

The CSAT is an elementary method for contact centers to understand the quality of your service as it does not indicate any essential factors from the interaction that took place. More than often, customers vaguely choose either of the options cause the service was indifferent. However, CSAT should not be eliminated as it is still an essential indicator. Furthermore, other methods must be employed for a detailed understanding of the customer's expectations.

 

According to a study in 2020, 64% of customers are more likely to recommend a brand to their friends or families if it offers simpler experiences and communications. The net promoter score or the NPS revolves around this point. 

NPS was introduced to fill in the gaps which CSAT couldn’t. NPS determines how likely a customer will recommend a particular product/service to their friends. The scale ranges from 1-10 where 1 denotes ‘not at all likely’ and 10 denotes ‘extremely likely.

NPS is determined upon the basis of an emotionally motivated question. Thus, the response rate is higher and often unsatisfied customers never miss an opportunity to answer these surveys. Perhaps, contact centers should utilize this opportunity to retain certain customers and make an impact on them with unquestionable customer service.

 

The customer effort score, or CES, is a customer-centric approach for understanding the quality of customer service. Here the customer is asked about the amount of effort he or she had to put to avail the customer service for getting an issue resolved. Alternatively, it is asked if the organization had made it easier for the customer to interact with the customer support team. The scale ranges from 1 to 5, where 1 denotes fewer hardships, and 5 denotes excessive hassle.

The CES is an appropriate parameter to segment customers in the future such that your contact center can shift their efforts more towards unhappy customers. Most organizations also add a text box after the customer effort survey so that the customers can elaborate on the issue, aiding the organization to improve specifically on those fronts. 

However, it must be remembered that all of these surveys, alone do not provide any stagnant idea. All the surveys together can converge into a bigger picture which is much clearer than any standalone factor. 

 

Analytics is a data-driven metric that works without any direct involvement of the customer. Web-analytics crawls your website traffic actively, reads the sales funnel, understands the customer behaviour, and predicts future conversions. In-built attribution models give better insights of touchpoints, most frequently visited FAQs, and more. These insights, if compiled and utilized smartly, can result in a successful customer service strategy that can be a crucial differentiator for your business in this economy.

 

Customers are more vocal on the social media, today. They flaunt their purchases online while dissing the brands who dissatisfy them. Social media is a two-way sword. Keeping that in mind, it can be used to understand what the customers are saying about your product. Most social media platforms come with a business account facility that provide an analytics dashboard. Observe your audience and focus on their comments, on their recommendations. Customer support teams can gather these data and formulate strategies to improve the satisfaction/engagement levels for better social media presence. 

Customer service metrics are the fodder for every business. It is an imperative factor that enables the process of improvement. Methods for measuring customer satisfaction might vary across industries; however, the above-stated pointers are the most successful parameters that are used to guide a support team. You cannot improve what you don't know. Thus, measuring customer satisfaction must be a prevalent practice at businesses of all sizes, irrespective of industry.

C-Zentrix is a company that understands the importance of this practice and pushes a symbiotic support system for businesses across the world.