Businesses that are serious about tracking customer satisfaction know they have to worry
about KPIs or Key Performance Indicators. Many indicators are linked to sales, HR, and customer satisfaction. All indicators are not important if you want to focus on customer satisfaction, and the following will show you what you should focus on.
Measuring the CSAT
The CSAT or the Customer Satisfaction Score is one of the most important KPIs out there and one of the most abstract. It is abstract because it is attempting to quantify your customer’s emotions.
You know how complex human emotions can be, so attempting to extract emotions and convert them into numbers you can use to inform future decisions isn’t easy. The good thing is you can measure CSAT pretty easily; all you need to do is create simple surveys that ask customers how they feel about your business, service, or a particular product. Ask these questions as often as possible to get numbers you can use.
Following the NPS
The NPS or Net Promoter Score is another score you need to keep an eye on. This score helps you to understand how many of your customers would be willing to recommend your company to others and so attempts to measure customer satisfaction.
Okay, so getting your NPS score from customers uses a cleverly formulated question to try and make it easy for your customers to express their feelings about your company. By tracking this metric, you’ll learn how your business is improving and why customers would recommend your company or why they wouldn’t. Someone who does recommend your company is a loyal customer that’s a champion for you, which is the goal.
Looking at First Response Time
The next KPI to look at is your first response time. Your ability to respond to a customer is of the utmost importance. You may be surprised to find that your customers prefer that you respond to an inquiry quickly rather than later even if you were slow because you were trying to be thorough.
It’s better to answer quickly at all times. Customers take delays personally, almost as if you decided to ignore them willfully, and that’s not a good thing. You’ll want to keep a close eye on how quickly your team gets back to a customer even if it is as simple as saying, “We’ve got someone looking into this issue for you.” The goal is to get faster every time.
Checking Customer Retention Rate
The reality is small business owners spend more money gaining new customers than keeping them. This fact should make it easy to see why checking on your customer retention rate is so important.
You want to make radical changes if that rate is low and continue improving if it’s high. Customer loyalty is not exactly easy, but that doesn’t mean it is impossible. There’s always something you can do to connect with your customers, such as offering personalized gifts every so often to make your patrons feel appreciated.
Paying Attention to SERVQUAL
SERVQUAL already seems overwhelming, but the reality is it is measuring service and quality. The word itself is simply a blend between those two things. Measuring service and quality usually mean you’ll be asking customers if they believe your service matches their expectations.
The questions may be phrased differently every so often, but the goal is always the same. The reason you need questions that include an expectation is that customers have an easier time answering something abstract when they are comparing their expectations to their actual experience.
Assessing Employee Engagement
You need to make sure you pay attention to your employee engagement for the sake of your customers. Yes, paying attention to this number helps you see how effective your employee retention efforts have been, but they also tell you how happy your employees are. You can measure employee engagement using a metric called eNPS (a slight variation of Net Promoter Score).
The reason you need to know how satisfied or happy your employees are is that it affects the way they interact with your customers. If you can keep your employees happy, they’ll be willing to make your company look good even if it doesn’t. Your employees are brand ambassadors, and you need to make sure you treat them as such. Invest in them by offering feedback, training, flexible working, competitive pay, and measure your employee happiness.
Extracting Brand Perceptions
A KPI is sometimes overlooked, but its importance deals with your brand attributes. Your customers need to be on the same page regarding your brand and what it means. You might be surprised that your business is not promoting the beliefs you’d hoped for.
Ask questions regarding your brand, how it makes customers feel, and other important attribute-related questions. If you do see a problem, then work on it because your marketing efforts depend on being able to communicate what your brand stands for. Failing to do so could end up costing you money, and it won’t help create brand loyalty.
These are some things you should keep in mind as you try to gather data about your customers. All of this information should help improve your company’s relationship with your company; just be patient and value the data.
