Featured

Customer satisfaction is the extent to which consumer expectations are met or exceeded by a business’s products and services. Customers often compare the value of a product or service with the price they are paying for it. It is essential for companies to achieve high degrees of customer satisfaction as happy and loyal clients are likely to repeat business with them and recommend it to other people. Keeping this in mind, it is important to measure the degree to which customers are satisfied because it sets a standard against which your company’s products and services can be enhanced. Taking all this into account, here are some tips for gauging different levels of customer satisfaction.

Figure Out How Your Customers View Your Business

The greatest challenge is knowing how exactly customer satisfaction should be measured and how this process can be carried out properly. Several tools can be used for this purpose and the data gathered can be analyzed. The simplest way to go about it is to ask questions. Ask your clients if your product or service is up to their standards and request them for their views about your service staff. Consider their opinions and ask them if they would like any changes to be made. You can ask them to rate their overall experience with your brand. Their possible answers can range from ‘great’, ‘average’ and ‘not so good’. You can also ask specific questions related to product or service. For example, restaurant businesses could ask questions about, taste, presentation, quantity, ambiance etc. These responses convey their perceptions about your performance. A simple and honest conversation with them will allow you to get a better idea of the positives and negatives of your business and the specific areas that need improvement.

Excellent Average Bad

Take Up Social Networking

Social media has changed the way business is done. In a technology-driven world, it is important to make the best use of social media networking as a vast majority of your business’s current and potential customers are on the internet. Engage in social media listening to get information about how different groups view your brand, company, products and services. These people and groups may include your current customers, potential clients, leads and competitors. Get your company on board with blogging platforms and discussion forums. You can create a social media page for your company which enable users to engage with you and offer you suggestions. You can also create a blog or discussion forum. Users often interact with each other and offer insights about their experiences with specific brands, products or services. Look out for posts which may indicate their degrees of satisfaction with your business. Be open-minded and attentive if you come across negative comments and use them to rectify your mistakes.

Keep Track of Complaints Everywhere

Failing to identify and eliminating complaints can generate dissatisfied customers who will not hesitate to spread negative remarks about your business to as many people as possible. Keeping track of complaints in both the offline and online world is crucial for every business. For example, a client is not satisfied with a company because it is not responding to a query about a damaged product which he/she bought from the company. This makes his/her satisfaction level drop from dissatisfied to extremely dissatisfied and he/she shares this with other customers on social media and online forums. In cases like this, some businesses may not even know that the incident has taken place and taking measures to fix the problem becomes difficult, considering it has spread to so many people. Hence, keep an eye on their complaints everywhere and monitor the frequency with which your company is receiving them. Successfully handling complaints of dissatisfied customers can turn them into satisfied clients because complaints offer opportunities for improvement.

Analyze Customer Referrals and Testimonials

One of the best things your current customers can do for your business is to recommend it to other people. These people can be new clients who visit your company and share their stories about how they got to know about your company. Referrals and testimonials come from satisfied customers who have truly enjoyed the value they got from your customer service. Look for keywords which can give you an idea of the extent to which these customers are satisfied. For example, ‘I would recommend your business’ is a very different statement from ‘I would do everything I can to recommend your business’. These little differences can tell you a lot about the level of satisfaction.

Prepare a Survey with the Right Questions

Surveys can enable you to measure customer loyalty and repurchase intentions. It is vital to ask the right question to effectively gauge customer satisfaction. For example, questions like ‘Would you recommend our brand to a friend?’ and ‘Do you intend to repurchase a product from our brand when your membership card expires’ can give good information about customer satisfaction levels. You can also ask questions like ‘how important is excellent customer service in your decision to buy from our company? You can conduct the survey in person, through telephone interviews or with proactive live chat. Ask them specific queries which only measure customer satisfaction and form a benchmark which tells you the ideal customer satisfaction level that has to be maintained in your business.