Learn why measuring customer satisfaction metrics is an essential activity for any business. Here are all the most important metrics you should be using.
Learn why measuring customer satisfaction metrics is an essential activity for any business. Here are all the most important metrics you should be using.
The way we interact with and treat our customers matters tremendously. Whether it’s the way we greet them at the door, how we treat them during their shopping experience, or how we send them off after the purchase - these experiences form tangible associations in the minds of our consumers. Our customer service influences our consumers’ affect towards our business, how likely they are to recommend us to their associates; and if we’re failing to pay enough consideration to them, it can even spur them to stop doing business with us.
In order to understand how our business performs in the area of customer satisfaction, we need to have some quantifiable way of measuring it. Lucky for us, there are a variety of tools we have at our disposal that can be used to turn our consumers’ sentiments into tangible data; data that we can then actualize into real, meaningful business solutions.
In this article we will delve into the importance of customer satisfaction, the metrics we use for measuring the different elements of customer satisfaction, and what we can do to raise the level of customer service we provide to our audiences.
“If you don't appreciate your customers, someone else will.” ― Jason Langella
Our customers are the key to the success of our business. Let’s face it - without a market, we have no business. In the global marketplace, we have to compete with dozens, potentially hundreds of other services and products; our consumers could decide to take their business elsewhere at any time.
Unless your business operates as a monopoly - and your customers have no other choice but to use your services - then keeping your customers content is crucial. Businesses who believe they can shirk the needs and wants of their customers simply because they “believe in the strength of their product” will never do as well as the firms who treat their customers with respect and consideration.
By maintaining levels of high customer satisfaction, we can:
A customer service metric is a way of measuring how our consumers feel about the quality of our products, our services, our business, and our brand. There are many different metrics that we can use as tools to improve the way we do business for the better; we will be discussing the capabilities of these tools and how they can be used further on.
In order to gather the consumer data we need to keep informed, we have to do more than just send our customers unstructured questionnaires. No business is omniscient, and so we need to be asking our customers the questions that matter - and we need to be asking them often.
Low customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores can damage our brand image and negatively impact our sales. We can avoid taking the PR hit from poor reviews and negative consumer sentiment by regularly gathering feedback from our customers. Using this feedback to improve the overall customer experience is the best way to keep your customers happy, energized, and loyal.
Customer experience (CX) describes how our consumers view our brand and the interactions they have with us. The perceptions and emotions of our customers matter tremendously. Keeping in the good graces of our customers will influence their likelihood of promoting our business.
Word of mouth marketing from friends, family, and trusted influencers along with online reviews are some of the key ways consumers evaluate the quality of a business/product. If we fail to pay appropriate attention to this aspect of our business, we risk tainting our reputation - thereby losing out on valuable business.
Maintaining the trust of our consumers is not an impossible feat - but it requires us to remain constantly vigilant, and to have an understanding of how we can identify key takeaways from our various customer service metrics. Incorporating the feedback we receive from these metrics into our CX will ensure we are meeting our customers’ needs.
There are several different tools we use to measure the success of our business’ customer satisfaction efforts. Learning how to use these techniques in your customer surveys is the best way to ensure you’re gathering accurate, reliable data from your audiences.
It’s exactly how it sounds. Our CSAT measures how satisfied customers are with our products and services.
One way we can measure how satisfied customers are with our business is through customer surveys. Surveying is a common method businesses use to gather important feedback from customers about their sentiments and habits. If we can gather data points about things like consumer buying habits and what product or service elements our customers value over others, we can then analyze it to determine how we can improve for the future.
Our Net Promoter Score tells us how likely our customers are to recommend our business. This tool is a great way to evaluate the quality of our CX; it also allows us to determine who our most loyal and enthusiastic customers are.
On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our business to a friend or family member?
From there, we split our customers into three distinct groups based on their answer to the question.
Detractors (0-6) are unlikely to promote or recommend our business. In the worst cases, they may even seek to drive customers away from our business by sharing negative reviews about us. It can be hard to win these people back over to our side, but not impossible. However, our efforts are often best spent concentrating on the latter two groups.
Passives (7-8) are people who often feel neutral or mildly positive about our product or service. They might claim they will recommend our product, but they are likely lacking in the enthusiasm necessary to do so.
Promoters (9-10) are customers who share overwhelmingly positive sentiment towards our brand. They are our most loyal consumers, and are active in promoting our brand online and through word-of-mouth marketing.
The higher our average NPS score, the better.
We calculate our NPS score by taking the percentage of customers in the Promoter category, and subtract them by the percentage of customers in the Detractor category.
NPS = % Promoters - % Detractors
As business owners, we should be aiming for anywhere between a 80 - 90 NPS score. That being said, this is a lofty goal - something to strive for. Scores ranging from 60 - 70 are respectable, and normal. We can always be working to improve the efficiency of our systems and our ability to meet the needs of our customers.
When looking to turn detractors into promoters, we want to ask survey questions that give us insight into how we can do better in the future.
For detractors and passives, we can ask:
“What can we do to improve?”
We can also offer them coupons or discounts to incentivize them to give us another chance to redeem ourselves in the meantime.
Our customer effort score lets us know how easily our customers utilize our products or services.
Depending on what we’re asking of our customers to do throughout the buying process, we may be introducing unnecessary barriers that turn customers off from wanting to interact with our business.
How easy was it to (x)?
Have you had any issues with our product?
Have you ever had to return one of our products?
Using Likert scale survey questions, with 5, 7, or even 10 point values, we can evaluate the ease with which consumers interact with our products. Our answer values will range in terms of affect, from answers like “extremely easy” to “extremely difficult”; the lower the number, the better off we are.
Much in the same way we calculate our NPS score, we calculate CES by subtracting the percentage of “difficult” responses from the “easy” responses.
CES = % Difficult Responses - % Easy Responses
Similar to how we value our NPS scores, we want to aim for the highest score we can here. Identifying the barriers that keep our customers from being able to engage effectively with our brand and then removing those barriers will help to elevate our CES score.
Our customer health score indicates how likely our customers are to stay with our business, or leave. This metric is sometimes referred to as the Customer Churn Rate (CCR), because it measures the likelihood of our customers to end their relationship with our business.
Measuring CHS/CCR is a little more complex than the methods used for measuring CES and NPS. The reason for this is that customers each possess unique relationships with our brand; they bring with them different values, belief systems, and purchasing behaviors. Due to the complex nature of human psychology and buyer behavior, there are a variety of different reasons a customer may want to cut ties with our business.
In order to process this information, we can ask our customers questions like:
Asking these types of questions allows us to keep abreast of the health of our business and the relationships we maintain with our customers. We can quantify these metrics by placing customers in one of three categories: poor, wavering, or healthy.
To keep our numbers from dipping too far into the poor and unwavering categories, we want to be engaging with our customers regularly and incorporating their feedback into our business solutions.
Online reviews are one of the most common ways consumers gather information on a product before forming a purchasing decision. Potential customers are far more likely to trust other customers on the quality of our product than they are our product descriptions.
Visual indicators of quality like stars, likes, or other types of rating scales also have a visceral impact on the way consumers view our product. We want to be keeping our customer reviews glowing and positive, and there are a few ways we can do it:
If we lack the capability to host reviews on our own website, platforms like Yelp and the review section of Google Maps are a solid alternative for showcasing consumer feedback.
With all of the recent advances in digital marketing technology and the expansion of the global marketplace, keeping our customers loyal and engaged is vital to the success of our business. Surveying our audiences and utilizing the various consumer satisfaction metrics we’ve discussed in this article will allow us to not only survive in these intensely competitive global markets - we will thrive.
The best path to ensuring our customer satisfaction metrics rate highly and stay high, we need to be constantly seeking relevant, constructive feedback from our consumers. The only way we can be sure our customers’ needs are being met? Ask them!
Digital surveying allows us to quickly and affordably engage with our customer audiences on a regular basis. The metrics we gather from analyzing consumer research survey data can be used to design new, effective ways for us to tackle the CX problems we face. Not only will implementing our new business solutions allow us to better capture our market - our customers will be thanking us for doing it.
Helpfull is the premiere surveying software for anyone looking to get the most out of their marketing efforts. With a vast variety of different question types to choose from, Helpfull surveys can be generated and delivered to thousands of panelists in minutes.
These are just some of the features that make Helpfull a must-have tool for those looking for quality consumer feedback:
With Helpfull’s open-ended survey design, users can design visually-striking, multi-question surveys for any occasion!
A simple survey could be all that stands between your company and the renewed success of it’s online marketing efforts.
An intuitive user-interface, coupled with the ability to gather hundreds of consumer responses in just minutes, are just a few of the features that make Helpfull the ultimate tool for any artist, designer, marketer, or inquisitive spirit.
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