Customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is a metric that indicates how happy a customer is with a company, product, or service. It helps a brand determine what a client thinks and how they feel after interacting with this particular company.

In this article, we’ll unveil the importance of customer satisfaction and review its benefits. We’ll also unpack some tips to improve and assess this metric.

Why is customer satisfaction important?

The process of acquiring new customers is time-consuming and expensive. Businesses track the degree to which consumers are satisfied with their brands and products to identify their unhappy customers and try to retain them by providing them with special offers. Since regular clients spend 67% more money than people who purchase from a brand for the first time, marketers develop tactics and strategies to persuade loyal customers to stay with their companies. They also strive to provide excellent customer service to get repeat sales and new clients.

Businesses check whether customers are satisfied with their products because loyal clients are word-of-mouth brand promoters. Loyal customers have a shorter sales cycle since they don’t spend time comparing, researching, and doubting. As a result, businesses obtain higher revenues. Satisfied customers are more likely to recommend a brand on social media or to their family and friends. Moreover, satisfied consumers aren’t likely to switch a brand and buy from its competitor. 

Let’s now talk about the advantages of customer satisfaction in more detail.

Benefits of Customer Satisfaction

Knowing the level of customer satisfaction helps you gather and direct all your efforts to the right place to ensure a better customer experience. Let’s now take a look at some essential benefits of this metric:

• competitive advantage;
• positive word-of-mouth promotion;
• shares, comments, and referrals;
• reduced customer churn;
• audience growth;
• customer loyalty;
• brand recognition;
• good ROI;
• high level of trust;
• increased brand popularity;
• high customer retention rate;
• best customer experience;
• positive feedback;
• reduced price sensitivity;
• strong relationships with customers;
• great possibility to achieve success during new product launches;
• stable income.

Now that you know the benefits, let’s proceed to the next section to discuss several techniques to improve your customers’ satisfaction with your brand.

Many businesses search for ways to provide the best customer service and obtain higher customer satisfaction as a result. However, you shouldn’t stop here as there are still many areas that require improvement. Since all companies have different target audiences with their unique needs and expectations, there’s no one-stop solution. However, there are still many ways to make your clients feel satisfied with your brand.

Ask for feedback

To understand what goes wrong and improve customer experience, ask your consumers for reviews or feedback. If you want your business to operate smoothly, you should be aware of customers’ needs and wants. Listen to them, their wishes, advice, and complaints. You can obtain this information from surveys. You’ll gain some insights into your customers’ satisfaction with your brand and the improvements your business requires. As an option, let your clients leave their reviews under product cards or send them special forms after a purchase.

For example, Booking.com lets customers leave their comments under product cards.

Provide support on different channels

Companies that provide 24/7 support are easier to contact, so their customers’ satisfaction is higher. They can instantly provide answers to clients’ questions and solve problems that arise. Customers usually use different channels and devices to contact support. Therefore, make sure to cover the most popular communication channels: phone, email, live chat, and social media. As a result, you’ll see noticeable changes in your company’s credibility and customer satisfaction.

For example, ClickUp, a project management platform, offers customers to see video demos and support docs or start a live chat to provide answers to customers’ questions.

LIKE.TG helps create chatbots for WhatsApp, Telegram, and Facebook Messenger to support customers 24/7.

Track mentions on social media

Customers often prefer just to skip surveys, so only people who are satisfied with a brand will fill in questionnaires and leave some positive comments about a product. However, you can’t find out the drawbacks of your company’s products or services that way. To do this, you need to receive negative feedback as well.

Monitor your brand’s mentions and tags on your customers’ social media profiles. Digital platforms allow consumers to leave both positive and negative reviews. For example, clients can discuss the problems of low-quality products, poor customer support, hidden costs, etc. You need to do your best to analyze customer feedback and solve possible issues.

You can see a customer mentioning Rare Beauty and writing about her feelings when interacting with a brand and using its products in the post below.

Simplify your service

If you want to provide customers with an excellent user experience, you need to make your service simple and intuitive. Companies often think about product features and forget about usability. The easiest-to-use products attract visitors since they don’t have to spend time learning how to use a certain platform.

Amazon does its best to make things as easy as possible and enable users to make one-click purchases.

Delight your customers

Ensure excellent customer support. Be timely, solve problems quickly, and help customers succeed. For example, many companies implement customer loyalty programs to encourage clients to purchase. Prepare some rewards for your regular clients to surprise them with gifts during their birthdays or thank them for staying with your brand.

Take a look at Sephora Beauty Insider’s reward program and the benefits it offers to customers.

It’s time to find out how to measure customer satisfaction.

How to Measure Customer Satisfaction

The best way to collect data from your customers is by conducting surveys. Customer satisfaction surveys are necessary if you want to measure this metric. With surveys, companies can find answers to their specific questions. The best time to send them is right after the situations you want to ask about.

Send out your survey as soon as possible to obtain the true reflection of a customer’s experience with your company. For example, ask a customer to rate your customer support after they contact it or conduct a survey after they purchase something to find out about their overall experience.

Many free online survey tools can help you during this process. Leveraging such platforms allows you to design surveys based on your needs. Use Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, Typeform, or Zoho Survey to create in-depth surveys and obtain the data you need. This information will enable you to improve your brand and retain more customers.

Congrats, now you know the importance and benefits of customer satisfaction. With our tips, you can improve this metric and retain loyal clients. Remember to track the degree to which customers are happy with your company to stay updated.