Olivia Maier
We know that your customer experience is important to you. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be interested in learning how you can take your communication strategies to the next level to help improve overall satisfaction.
Well, we have good news for you. Today we are here to dive into everything you need to know about customer satisfaction, and how your team can begin to see dramatic improvements. And the best part? We’ll even get into how you can keep track of these improvements through important customer satisfaction and phone metrics.
In today’s article, we’re going to start with the basics of the customer experience. We then will be diving into how you can measure customer satisfaction, and how you can make these metrics a priority for your team. Next we’re going to give you implementable tools so you can build an effective customer satisfaction strategy. This will include measures that you can implement with nothing other than your business phone system. Improving customer satisfaction doesn’t have to revolve around expensive software or fancy training sessions. Instead, we want to give you tools you can start to use as soon as TODAY. That’s right, it can be that simple.
If that sounds good to you, then we can’t wait to get started with our customer satisfaction mini-guide.
If you are feeling lost, or just need a refresher on customer satisfaction, we have you covered. We want to make sure that everyone is on the same page, and understands exactly what we mean when we say “customer satisfaction.”
Customer satisfaction can be defined as a measurement that is able to determine how well you are able to meet your customer expectations. Customer satisfaction can relate to your product or service, or to the overall experience that your customers have with your business. The goal is to leave your customers feeling so satisfied that they are inclined to become a loyal customer to your business.
When you are successful in your customer satisfaction goals, your team may be able to see major benefits. You are able to keep long-term clients, and stand out from your competitors. Your loyal fans will be more inclined to organically refer their friends and network back to your business. You’re also able to avoid fatal consequences such as seeing a high amount of churning customers or negative reviews.
It may be easy to push customer satisfaction practices and investments to the backburner, as you may be hoping to spend your budget on increased inventory, marketing activities, or other investments. However, According to Gartner, 81% of marketing industry experts view customer satisfaction as the main competition area in their respective industries.
This is a huge opportunity to gain a competitive advantage over your competitors. You also may be undervaluing the detrimental impact that not prioritizing customer satisfaction can have on your business. You may lose customers after a single bad experience, and are likely to lose a majority of customers after repeated bad experiences. Don’t just take our word for it.
That’s right, just one single bad experience could be enough to drive your customers away.
There are a lot of important metrics that we want to highlight that can help you keep track of customer satisfaction.
This is one of the simplest ways to measure customer satisfaction, by simply asking “how would you rate your overall satisfaction with our product?”
Your customers can answer on a scale of 1-5, 1-10, or other measures.
Your customer satisfaction score can give you a quick snapshot of your customers’ feelings, but it won’t tell you much more. That is why you need to supplement this with other metrics.
This metric is able to measure how likely your customers are to refer your business to their network. To measure your net promoter score, you simply ask “how likely are you to recommend our company to a friend or colleague?”
Your customers can answer this on a scale of 1-5, 1-10, or other measures.
Your net promoter score doesn’t measure how often this is actually happening, but it can still give you insights into if your customer satisfaction measures are likely to convert into actual referrals. Your actual “promoters” are most likely to be the customers who score you on the highest numbers of your scale. So on a scale of 1-10, look for the 9s and 10s!
To contrast, the customers that are rating you a 6 or lower, on a scale 1-10, are those who aren’t particularly interested in promoting your business. This group can be referred to as your “detractors” To find your actual NPS, subtract the percentage of detractors from your promoters. This will give you an accurate estimate that can be compared month by month!
This score will help you keep track of any potential negatives your business may be facing. Customer churn is simply the percentage of customers who have stopped using your product or service.
Churn isn’t measured through any customer survey, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find out information from a survey. Consider implementing an “exit survey” or other process if your service requires a formal cancellation. That way you could find out information such as the reason for canceling, if they would consider returning, and more.
Now that we are all on the same page in terms of the importance of customer satisfaction, we want to make sure that you get some real and practical advice on how your team can actually implement customer satisfaction improvements.
As we said earlier, we want to give you tips that will incorporate tools that are already at your disposal. That is why we aren’t going to recommend anything that isn’t feasible for businesses of any size, so whether you are just starting up, are running a solo business, or have a large team at your disposal, these tips should work for you!
Provide convenient ways to solicit feedback
Take advantage of tools that are already at your disposal, and that will be easy for your customers to engage with. This could include a verbal survey over the phone, sending a text message to your customers, or an email. You don’t have to enlist the help of a fancy data collection tool, and instead could just provide a few easy to answer questions in the channel of communication that you are already familiar with. Make sure that the survey doesn’t take up more than a few minutes, so that your customers won’t be inconvenienced by the survey and your team won’t be overwhelmed with information.
Create a customer focused culture
You may have learned a few surprising statistics about the importance of customer satisfaction today, or you may be encouraged to do more research into the topic. Make sure that your entire team is on the same page, and really understands that customer service is more than simple pleasantries. From there, utilize your team as you come up with other implementable strategies. Getting feedback from the team members who will be responsible for your customer experience will help you ensure that these are actually feasible and valuable activities.
Provide ways for customers to help themselves
Sometimes your customers need help at odd hours, or simply want the convenience of being able to figure out a solution for themselves. However, if they are left out in the dark without your team being available, you are setting everyone up to fail. Make sure that you have convenient tools that will help your customers help themselves at all hours of the day. This could be simple blog posts, FAQs, webinars, or even just a self guided help page on your website. While these activities may take a little bit of time to set up, you will rarely have to update or modify them. That way you can invest the resources into these activities up front, and continue to reap the benefits.
Personalize the customer experience
When you customize the customer experience along the way, your customers will leave interactions feeling especially attended to. This will help you convert customers into promoters, which as we talked about earlier are customers who are more likely to organically refer you to their network. You can do this through small activities such as connecting your CRM tool with your business phone system, so you can have a running list of customer interactions at your fingertips. That way when a caller rings your business, you can greet them by name and already know where they left off the last interaction.
Take advantage of the tools you are already using
We mentioned above the ability to connect your CRM to your business phone, and there may be other integrations and processes that can be combined to lead to a higher level of customer satisfaction. Take Yodel as an example, with us as your business phone solution, you can connect your phone to your CRM, your customer support ticketing system, email, and more. When you use the tools you already have, in a more effective manner, you are likely to unlock new features and capabilities that can help support your customers.
Implement proactive support and speedy customer support
Proactive support is easier said than done, as you have to be on top of any problems that may be occurring. If this isn’t feasible, then include small processes that can help reduce the overall time it takes to resolve customer issues. That can include smart features such as a voice based IVR system, which will quickly route your callers to the right agent. This way your agents will be prepared to handle calls, as they will already know the reason the customer is calling. Your caller will also benefit as they will see reduced time frames, and easier ways to get solutions.
Which of these tips was your favorite? We hope that these give you a great place to get started, and have started to turn the wheels as you discover and create processes that work best for you and your team. As we said before, take advantage of your team members knowledge of your customer base, and include them in the brainstorming process. That way you can have effective strategies that address problems your customers are facing.
We hope that you have learned everything that you need to know about the importance of customer satisfaction for your business. Whether you are an existing business trying to expand, or a new business getting started, you can benefit from improved customer satisfaction strategies. Even if you don’t have a lot of extra resources at your disposal, you can start to take advantage of new tactics using equipment and resources that already exist.
One of the simplest ways to see massive improvements in your customer satisfaction and customer support capabilities is through your phone communication. When you take advantage of an effective business phone solution, you will be able to better serve your customers and callers. Through advanced features, more effective processes, and personalization along the way, everyone can benefit from an improved business phone system.
That is why we wanted to mention Yodel’s free 14 day trial. Yodel is an intelligent business phone that can help you improve your customer experience. Take your phone communication to the next level by giving your team the right tools to get the job done.
Signing up comes with no commitment, and you can see the benefits of testing out a virtual phone system before locking yourself into one provider. Our team is always available to help out, with helpful demo calls, webinars, and resources for you to take a look at.
