I haven’t talked much about how to measure customer satisfaction in a grander level beyond support enters and the like very much. And, shame on me, because it’s actually something that’s ripe for discussion, given how most companies struggle in customer service in one way or another. This is normal, and does not mean something is wrong with a company, as the human animal is a very fickle thing, and as the old saying goes, you can’t please all the people all the time. In fact, you can’t please all the people even some of the time.
All you can do is keep your paradigms in constant flux, and hope you’re doing the best you can to please most people most of the time. But, in order to do this, you need to properly know how to measure customer satisfaction, and this means to measure its presence concretely, and its absence concretely as well. These are two metrics that exist diametrically apart, but the ratio of which must be a binary comparison in order to make decisions and react quickly to ensure that your target is being hit.
So, the first metric, as I’ve pointed out in more specific terms, is your first call resolution, or first contact resolution in customer support and technical support. A sixty percent rate is actually considered pretty good, but it never hurts to, within logical parameters, aim as high as one can.
But, if there is less than sixty percent, each unit between the resolution percentage and that sixty, itself, becomes a metric count of multi-contact resolutions.
The next metric to take is amount of positive feedback posted online. Your company should use social networks, and lurk, and watch for positive things said, and these tweets, posts and blogs should become a metric of positive referrals, the more, the better.
Negatives, measured from the same source, should also be tabulated. A second ratio, here, is the positive over negative feedback, which should always be fifteen percent or more in the favor of positive. If you have to incentivize customers to talk, do so, but bear in mind the gravitas of the incentive.
Finally, depending on your business, the number of returned products, refunds or cancellations needs to be tabulated as a solid metric. The higher these are, the more likely something is wrong. Some levels of this are going to happen, as I said at the beginning, but this shouldn’t be higher than five percent.
At last, you have a core set of metrics and ratios, sixty percent first contact resolution, minimal significant multi-contact resolutions, and a strong positive over negative referral with minimal refunds cancellations or returns. It seems like common sense, when you look at it in retrospect, but these ratios have seemed to remain a mystery for many.
If you follow these measurements, you should have a good fix on whether or not your customers are largely satisfied, and should bb able to react, if the case is a bad result, to this input and along the way, have deduced what needs changed.
If you follow this, you’ve mastered how to measure customer satisfaction, at least inasmuch as this is a possible thing to do.
