Customer satisfaction - how to conduct customer satisfaction surveys and improve customer service?

Customer satisfaction - the indicator on which the success of your business depends. Thanks to the satisfaction received during shopping, customers happily return to the verified seller. To ensure that consumers do not go to the competition but remain loyal customers of your store, read the article below and remember the secret formula that will help you take care of customer satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction - the role in running a company

Customer satisfaction is their emotional state after making a purchase. The level of satisfaction and loyalty of the customer can always fluctuate in two directions: negative, indicating that the customer's experience will be ruined by terrible customer service; or positive - the buyer will be over the moon after using your product or service.

A high level of customer satisfaction increases their loyalty to your company. Research conducted by Lasha (1990) and TARP (1986) shows that 92% of satisfied customers plan to make repeat purchases from the same company. Remember that responding to customer complaints is an important action for every store! Among customers who filed a complaint but did not receive a response from the company for some reason, the likelihood of not making a repeat purchase drops to 46%. If you monitor customer service quality and regularly respond to negative consumer comments, the probability that an unsatisfied customer will come back for your product increases to 91%, which is almost the same as among satisfied individuals.

Customer satisfaction survey and company revenue growth

If you want to increase the satisfaction of your customers, you should first identify the reasons for both negative and positive emotional states after purchasing your brand's products. To meet the criteria and expectations of customers, it is worth using a special tool - customer satisfaction survey. It is a set of methodologies aimed at accurately understanding customer needs, increasing customer loyalty, and determining their satisfaction level. A customer satisfaction survey helps entrepreneurs answer important questions: 

• Does your product meet customer expectations?
• If not, what do customers expect from your product or service?
• In which direction should you plan your strategic actions?
• What elements of customer service in your company are worth improving?

A customer satisfaction survey is conducted in 4 stages:

1. Identifying customer needs.
2. Designing the questionnaire.
3. Conducting the survey.
4. Data analysis and drawing conclusions.

The survey data usually explain several indicators, such as: Net Promoter Score, Customer Effort Score, Satisfaction Index.

Net Promoter Score

The NPS (Net Promoter Score) is a tool used to measure customer loyalty. It helps identify problems that consumers encounter during the purchasing process. An example question that helps calculate NPS:

"Would you recommend our company to others?"

Usually, such a question is presented in the form of a scale from 0 to 10, where a score of 0 means "no trust in the company" and 10 means "I am satisfied with the services of this store". The NPS indicator helps explain the roles of consumers according to Reichheld, and based on the results obtained, implement changes in customer service: 9-10 - promoters, 7-8 - neutral, 0-6 - critics. The Net Promoter Score formula = % promoters - % critics.

Customer Effort Score

Another method of research is CES (Customer Effort Score). It measures the customer's experience and effort made during the entire purchasing process. This method allows you to check, for example, how the complaint process goes in the store, etc. The CES question is usually a 5-point scale, where 1 means "very little" and 5 means "a lot". The CES formula = % of people who answered 4-5 - % of people who answered 1-2.

"How much effort did you have to put into fulfilling your order?" 

Remember! 74% of people change brands if they find the purchasing process too difficult. 

Source: https://www.grohawk.com/customer-effort-score/

Client Satisfaction Index

The last and most popular is the CSAT index, which is the Client Satisfaction Index, measuring the overall satisfaction level of the customer with the product or service.  There is no specific set of questions here, so it can be customized to your needs. The most commonly used is again a 5-point Likert scale, but open-ended questions or standard closed-ended questions can also be used. Here are examples of questions used in questionnaires:

"What is your overall satisfaction rating with our product?"

"How would you rate your satisfaction level after your last contact with our company?"

"On a scale of 1 to 5 (1 - poor, 5 - excellent), how would you rate………………….? (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)"

The disadvantage of this survey is that when answering a similar question, each consumer interprets their satisfaction in a different way. But at the same time, CSAT helps to generally assess the company's performance, whether it is developing in the right direction, and whether it meets customer needs.

Summary

Do not be afraid of new challenges and try to conduct a satisfaction survey of your customers. But remember, to increase sales in your store and attract more customers, it is worth taking care of customer service and implementing interesting ideas aimed at improving it. Customer service online means monitoring opinions, responding to every customer comment, professionally solving problems of dissatisfied consumers, etc. If you are already planning to search for information and applications that can help you with this, we invite you to familiarize yourself with the tool that automates the customer service process - Rating Captain. Read how Rating Captain influenced the development of the Stempleks company here.