The primary objective of any business is to create a long roster of happy and satisfied clients. For this, gathering and acting upon customer satisfaction data is fundamental in order to provide users with the products they need.
Customer satisfaction data is an important piece of information that guides the business owner’s decisions, helping them lay a successful product roadmap. It is vital for measuring the contentment levels among your existing customers.
However, at the same time, collecting and tracking this data is not as easy and straightforward as it may seem, which is why it sometimes gets hard to set up clear goals.
In this article, we will have a look at some of the essential methods and metrics designed for pursuing customer satisfaction data. Let’s go through some helpful techniques that you can apply in your business today.
1) Customer Satisfaction Surveys
This is the standard approach for gathering crucial data on customer satisfaction. Through these surveys, you can ask several potential questions from your customers that can help in gauging their happiness levels. There are three useful variations of these surveys:
- In-App Surveys
- Post-Service Surveys
- Long Email Surveys
All three surveys are helpful in acquiring important customer data. But remember, if you wish to create a survey that works- as in, one that customers really complete, make sure your survey follows the below guidelines:
- Ask only those questions that fulfill your end goal
- Ask one question at a time
- Create smart and open-ended questions
- Avoid leading questions
- Make rating scales consistent
2) Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
This is another commonly used satisfaction method that prompts your customers to rate their satisfaction with your business, service or product. The CSAT score is then ascertained by taking out the average rating of all customer responses.
There are a lot of customers who find it quick and easy to rate their satisfaction in this way. For instance, Stanislav Puchkovsky aka Sean Archer is a world-famous fashion photographer used CSAT at the beginning of his career. He believes that this is an effective way of evaluating customer fulfillment.
Generally, the customers are asked to rate on a linear scale that ranges between 1-3, 1-5 or 1-10. There is no universal agreement as to which is the best one. A larger scale is seldom recommended due to cultural differences in how people rate their satisfaction.
The best part about this metric is its directness. However, at the same time, it comes with a potential downside, which is that satisfaction is sometimes hard to estimate. Because it is directed at a sentiment, it can also be momentary or mood-based.
3) Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Through NPS, you can measure the likeliness of a customer referring your business or brand to someone else. This is by far the best way of evaluating customer loyalty. They are asked how likely they are to recommend you on a scale of 1 to 10.
Using this metric, you can know if your customers think of your product as worthy enough of referring. Besides, it directs your customer’s attention towards referring- an option they might not have thought about before.
Determining your NPS score is quite simple. You just need to identify the percentage of customers who fall within the promoter category (9-10) and subtract it from the percentage of detractor category (0-6).
4) Customer Effort Score (CES)
In Customer Effort Score, instead of asking your customers about their satisfaction, you ask them to rate their ease of experience. For instance, if they have to make less effort to perform a task, the better will be their experience.
The CES score generally ranges between 1 (very less effort) and 7 (very high effort). So the aim here is to lower the average score.
5) Social Media Monitoring
Social media has created a huge impact on the relationship between a customer and a business. With social media, customers can not only share their service experience with their friends and family but millions of other people as well.
Therefore, it is one of the best platforms to gauge your customer satisfaction and know what they really think about your business. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Yelp, etc. can be highly beneficial.
The below-mentioned tools can be leveraged for the same:
- Google Alerts: This notifies you when your brand appears in a noticeable position.
- Mention: This is a powerful tool that informs you whenever your brand is mentioned on the web. It is suitable for social media tracking.
- Socialmention: This tool helps in discovering social media mentions of your business or brand. It also helps in assessing the likeliness of your brand, its range of influence, a ratio of positive to negative mentions, etc.
All these afore-mentioned metrics are hugely helpful in measuring your customer satisfaction data. This data can help you optimize your customer fulfillment, and thus create happy and gratified clients.
