How to improve customer satisfaction

How to improve customer satisfaction in 5 simple key points

Have you ever heard: Once you get a bad recognition, it is very difficult to regain the good position?

Gone are the days when customers were happy just by receiving “please” and “thank you”. Even though part of a proper etiquette, they are not sufficient. Excellent customer service is one of the keys to success in any business but is exceptionally important in the hospitality industry. The guests are hoping that the help from staff members will make their stay as peaceful and comfortable as possible.

Hoteliers must be constantly learning how to innovate and meet the high expectations of their guests. So, here are 5 pieces of advice on how you can improve your customer’s satisfaction:

1. Give more, get more

You only have one chance to make a positive impression, so get it right! If you make a terrific first impression, they will surely come back. Therefore, present more than what they are expecting, for instance, deliver extra toiletries, clean the rooms daily, give extra pillows and blankets and provide a good Wi-Fi service.

Moreover, you need to make sure to have quality foods, such as good coffee and tea — they are a plus on your guest’s satisfaction! The main point is to anticipate their needs and wishes.Obviously, you cannot please everyone, so the priority should be knowing your ideal customers and aim to attract them.

2. Customer loyalty is priceless

As said by Jeffrey Gitomer, customer satisfaction is worthless, customer loyalty is priceless. Your main goal and focus should be on creating loyal customers who are not easily influenced by your competitors. Simple things can be done to build customer loyalty and consequently, increasing customer satisfaction. For instance, remembering special occasions such as birthdays or giving personalized promotions and discounts. Personalized treatment is the best way to build-up your customer’s loyalty.

3. Use negative reviews to your advantage

Furthermore, rather than trying to find a way to delete your bad review, you should use it for your own benefit. Be sure to answer the negative feedback in a well-timed manner and try to offer a solution to fix the client’s problem. Also, guarantee you apologize to the guest and, whenever they are not happy with your response, suggest taking the conversation in a more private place.

4. Messaging apps are an excellent channel to provide a good customer support

The hotel industry can especially benefit from using messaging apps to improve their customer service and support. From booking reminders to promoting events to replying to guest queries, artificial intelligence is no longer a technology related to the future and the hospitality industry can and ought to take advantage of it.

With HiJiffy, the guest only needs to find the hotel’s Facebook Page, click the message button and start the conversation with the chatbot. With this solution, guests don’t need to install a new app and get to, instead use one they are already familiar with. The chatbot allows guests to have a 24/7 communication channel with the hotel.

5. Ask for and track guest’s feedback

Being proactive is a must! Most of the times, customer satisfaction is linked to the level of customer communication. Hoteliers, by creating a dialogue with guests, can see their weak and strong points regarding customer service. Feedback can be gathered in several ways and, when used correctly, these tools can be a huge advantage in gaining new costumers and keeping old ones.

However, collecting surveys is not enough if you do not listen to your guests. You should read their opinions and measure whether they are actionable or not. The feedback can be applied to decision-making in all departments. Besides, you cannot forget to reply to your guest, it is fundamental to show that you listen to their thoughts and ideas. Always express appreciation for their review and apologize for any mistakes or misconduct made by your hotel.

8 Quick Tips on How to Improve Customer Satisfaction

First and foremost, customer satisfaction affects your business revenue. Low customer satisfaction levels mean your retention rates will likely be low, too. Kolsky’s research reveals that only 1 in 26 unhappy customers actually complain. More importantly, though, 91% of unhappy customers who are non-complainers simply leave.

With that in mind, can you afford to lose 91% of your unhappy customers? If not, see the tips in the next section and find out how to identify dissatisfied clients by collecting customer feedback.‍

‍Based on customer insights, you can improve the experience for your customers, boost customer satisfaction, and increase your retention rates. Check out our infographic on customer satisfaction for more info.

Let’s dive into 8 ways to increase customer satisfaction, then!

How to Improve Customer Satisfaction?

So how can you improve customer satisfaction in today’s customer-centric world? To improve customer satisfaction, follow these steps:

So, improving customer satisfaction comes down to gathering customer feedback and then acting on it. For this reason, these 8 tips will help you improve customer satisfaction:

Offer Multi-Channel Support

The easier your customers can contact you, the higher your customer satisfaction levels. To offer multi-channel support, you need to be where your customers are.

Consumers use various channels and devices to make purchases. That’s why it’s worth having a presence to cover any channels your customers use. These channels include:

In short, what’s the one biggest benefit of multi-channel support? You can engage your customers over their preferred method of communication. So ensure that you offer top-quality support across all the channels. This lets you boost brand credibility as well as your customer satisfaction.

Don’t know how happy your customers are with the support you offer? Try sending them this free, ready-to-use survey to find out:

Make Collecting Feedback a Company Process

Who knows better what your customers want than the customers themselves?

Customer feedback is one of the most powerful resources your business can have. It’s a clear indicator of how pleased your customers are with your brand, services and products. Above all, customer feedback indicates what your customer satisfaction levels are.

It’s no surprise, then, those customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than companies that don’t focus on customers. Here’s one simple recipe to become a customer-centric company:

It’s simple. You collect customer feedback. You act on customer feedback. You improve the customer experience and increase customer satisfaction. Rinse and repeat.

Taking customer feedback into account shows you value customers’ opinions.

With that out of the way, let’s discuss how else you can improve customer satisfaction.

Measure Customer Satisfaction Regularly

companies with a customer experience mindset drive revenue 4-8% higher than the rest of their industries.

But how do you know your customer satisfaction scores?

The first step is measuring customer satisfaction. As a result, you can receive valuable insights into areas to improve. But also find out what works well.

So how to start measuring customer satisfaction? Here are the three most important customer experience metrics:

NPS (Net Promoter Score)

Ask how likely customers are to recommend you. Predict repurchases and referrals.

CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score)

See if customers are happy with your product or service.

CES (Customer Effort Score)

Measure the ease of doing business with your company.

By running these three customer surveys you can understand the drivers for improving customer satisfaction.

For example, imagine you know what your customers are complaining about. And you also know what they like about your product or services. Isn’t it then easier to keep them happy?

Suppose a customer mentions slow response times when giving a low CSAT score. You know you’ll need more people in your support team!

Ask for Feedback Across All Touchpoints

It’s simple. Ask customers for feedback where they are most engaged. There are many survey distribution channels for you to choose from.

For example, if you’re looking to run CSAT surveys after closing a ticket, you can use email surveys.

And if you’re looking for feedback on a specific feature of your web app, run an in-product survey. You can trigger it to appear when a customer uses that feature!

There’s also an extra advantage of in-product survey besides laser-sharp targeting. If you integrate your survey software with a product analytics tool, you’ll be able to connect qualitative and quantitative data points to understand your clients even better. Survicate, for example, lets you connect with tools such as Mixpanel, Amplitude, and Productboard.

So what happens when you collect customer feedback across all your channels? You can then improve the entire customer journey.

Here are all the survey channels you can use with Survicate:

And here’s an example of a survey you can run after your customer interacts with your product:

12 Actionable Strategies to Improve Customer Satisfaction in 2022

In the competitive marketplace, new businesses are springing up and the power is solely in the hands of customers to choose the brand, which is why understanding customer satisfaction is critical to ensure your long-term success. Hence, customers should be the focal point of every business.

Customer satisfaction is essential to keeping your current customers and retaining new ones. As dissatisfied customers are a great retention risk, and losing them will impact your brand.

70% of the customer’s journey is based on how the customer feels they are being treated. So what are the factors affecting customer satisfaction? How do you improve it?

With increasing evidence that customers are the backbone of businesses, they should be obsessed with their customers. It means constantly listening to customers, and then continuously enhancing, and personalizing the customer experience to increase customer satisfaction.

Collecting customer satisfaction data can help your company determine what is working well with your products, services and internal processes, and what you need to improve or change completely.

What is Customer Satisfaction?

Customer satisfaction is defined as how happy your customers are using your company’s products or services. It can be also reflected in how they rate your business and how they refer it to their friends or families.

Improving customer satisfaction is an important part of your business to maintain or enhance your customer relationships. It reflects the degree to which you have managed to provide a customer experience that meets expectations.

Customer service satisfaction is measured by understanding how your customers interact with your brand and collecting their feedback through surveys using different channels. You can use satisfaction metrics such as NPS (Net Promoter Score), CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score), or CES (Customer Effort Score) to know about how your customers feel.

How Improving Customer Satisfaction is Significant for your Business?

Putting efforts towards increasing customer satisfaction is the primary step towards elevated customer experience. With the rising competition, acquiring new customers can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer.

Thus, it makes sense for you to invest in how to enhance customer experience and focus on delighting the existing customers. In return, you will increase their lifetime value.

Here are four solid reasons why increasing customer satisfaction is beneficial for your brand.

12 Practical Ways to Improve Customer Satisfaction and Boost Loyalty

An effective way to kickstart your customer satisfaction strategy is to build a blueprint of the customer journey and touchpoints that can happen across the journey. The action steps below will help your business to supervise the end-to-end experience you will deliver customers. The customer satisfaction tips also highlight the areas for improvement you make CSAT surveys.

Let’s get started on understanding the ways to increase customer satisfaction.

1. Understand your customers

Understanding customer psychology should be the focal point of every business and meeting their needs will help to deliver a better experience. When businesses operate under a cyclical process of anticipating, identifying and meeting customer needs, you can expect quick positive results.

Knowing your customer’s preferences, interests helps you to connect through personalized conversations that strengthen your relationship. 48% of customers expect specialized treatment for being a loyal customer. When the customers are satisfied they turn out to be the best brand advocates sharing their success stories and experiences.

How anticipating customer needs help to improve customer satisfaction?

2. Deliver omnichannel support

Omni channel communication gives you the opportunity to serve your customers’ consistent support across all the touchpoints and not only delivers a unified brand experience but also boosts your brand credibility.

How to increase customer satisfaction by delivering omni channel support

Oasis’s Instagram account is an excellent example of a social engagement point of view. It created a special gallery of user-generated Instagram content, substantially encouraging customers to model the clothes they have bought from the Oasis store.

3. Provide instant response with live chat

Generally, customers leave your site if their questions or concerns are not addressed fast. The two most common customer service frustrations are: waiting for sales or support assistance and being put on hold for a long time.

Response time is an important component to increase customer satisfaction. 89% of consumers say the number one factor that leads to a great customer service experience is having their issues resolved quickly.

How does live chat help businesses increase customer satisfaction?

When it comes to providing instant responses, there is nothing better than AI-powered customer support tools. Start a free trial of chatbot and deliver quick responses to customer queries.

4. Maintain customer service etiquette

Global State report says,” 62% of consumers worldwide mentioned they have stopped doing business with a brand after a poor customer service experience”. Every business should set ground rules for how to communicate with their customers. This is what helps to increase customer satisfaction and long-term customer relationships.

Here are some customer satisfaction tips you can follow:

5. Help your customers help themselves

Self service support works well as one of the alternative methods to reduce the customer service gap. In fact, 40% of consumers now prefer self-service over human contact.

It is most often deployed in the form of user forums, videos, tutorials, a comprehensive knowledge base, etc. The benefit of having self service portals is to improve team productivity. By providing a hub of information, you allow customers to assist and educate themselves on their own terms & pace.

How self service can be an effective way to improve customer satisfaction?

6. Act on negative reviews & customer complaints

Reviews have created a new communication that bridges the gap between traditional word-of-mouth and a viral form of feedback that can influence consumers’ opinions. 72% of customers won’t take action until they read reviews.

Analyzing reviews left to you by customers helps with respect to overall customer satisfaction, as they can provide your business with feedback regarding what your customers truly want.

The businesses that can turn their customer complaints into opportunities for building closer relationships with customers are the ones that are most likely to grow.

Here are the key customer satisfaction strategies to be followed:

7. Engage customers 24×7 with chatbots

One of the primary reasons why chatbots are becoming incredibly popular is to increase customer satisfaction, which can enhance business sales and profits. Bots are always active to engage customers by answering their simple queries and pre-qualifying leads by asking relevant questions.

34% of consumers preferred to communicate with artificial intelligence in an online retail situation. Bots can engage customers across websites, applications, and messaging apps and improve customer satisfaction scores.

How to achieve customer satisfaction by using chatbots?

Dominos has built a Facebook chatbot to make the ordering process faster. The famed restaurant offers the easiest way to order a pizza from “Anywhere”. They are making their chatbot widespread and expanding its capabilities.

Domino’s is leveraging the chatbot capability to introduce an entirely new shopping paradigm. The main idea behind this frictionless experience is to provide customers what they want in just a few steps.

8. Provide real time assistance with visual tools

Real time assistance is one of the key drivers of customer satisfaction. By using live engagement tools you can connect with customers instantly without letting your customers wait for a long time.

The chat conversations can be made interactive by using face-to-face video chat and co-browsing for a better live chat customer experience. Combining live chat with co-browsing and video chat helps resolution of the query in a meaningful manner.

Customer satisfaction best practices

9. Measure your customer satisfaction regularly

According to the McKinsey study, “70% of the buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated”. Measuring customer satisfaction is vital for all kinds of businesses. It provides valuable insights into what works and provides opportunities for optimization.

How to improve customer satisfaction scores?

In order to improve customer satisfaction scores, you have to measure it by choosing the right metrics used to analyze the CSAT score in the overall customer journey.

The key customer satisfaction metrics to evaluate & improve satisfaction scores are as follows:

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) – This metric is a kind of survey that asks a basic question to customers i.e. “How would you rate your satisfaction with our product or service?” across different channels such as live chat, email, etc.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) – NPS measures the overall customer experience with the help of the key question i.e. “How likely is that you would prefer the brand to others?”. It has an index on a scale from 1 to 10.

Customer Effort Score (CES) – With the CES metric, you can ask customers to evaluate their experience with their products and services.

10. Value your customer feedback

Feedbacks help to identify the gaps between customers and businesses. Customers appreciate when their voices are heard. The simple acknowledgment that a company is receptive to feedback that will be implemented can be a catalyst for repeat business.

Measuring CSAT helps you to know the current position and the areas you need to improve. Collecting feedback and acting on it is the best way to increase customer satisfaction.

Here are some customer satisfaction tips:

11. Empower your team to go the extra mile to delight customers

Why is empowering the support team vital?

It gives authority to the support team to decide independently to make happy and satisfied customers. The team should be well trained to identify and act on opportunities to enhance the customer service experience.

Empowering your team will allow them to perform together to make a move to deliver superior customer service and delight your customers.

Let’s see how Ritz Carlton empowered its team to go the extra mile.

You can structure and incentivize your team so that your employees can work independently to resolve customer queries keeping themselves on their feet. Empower your reps by measuring the feedback collected and the total resolved queries that were assigned.

12. Build strong communities

Research says that businesses with online communities witness a 5.4x greater annual increase in customer satisfaction rates.

How exactly do you ensure customer satisfaction and get results? One very important way to engage customers, that many businesses tend to ignore, is building a customer community.

Final thoughts

As customer expectations grow, the drive to improve customer satisfaction also continues to grow. Investing in modern customer satisfaction strategies like artificial intelligence, visual tools, omnichannel approach will increase your ability to offer personalized experiences.

With REVE Chat, you will find the right kind of engagement tools and take steps towards improving the satisfaction of your customers. Sign up and give your support team the kind of software they need for improved service delivery.

In nutshell, delivering a better experience:

Start a 14-day free trial, no credit card required!

How to increase customer satisfaction and get more business

Customers form the most important part of the business and hence businesses always try to increase customer satisfaction. It is the key to a loyal customer base and a successful business. They are great advocates of your brand, give you repeat business, and genuinely want you to succeed in the market. Without satisfied customers, you will not have loyal customers. Without customer loyalty, you may not have customers that stay long. They will switch to your competitors or the next best option as and when they get the chance. Customer satisfaction and loyalty saves you money; it is 7x costlier to acquire new customers than retain old ones.

A recent customer study suggested about 65% of an organization’s business revenue comes from its existing customers.

20 Proven ways to increase customer satisfaction

To ensure you have happy and loyal customers and grow that number, you have to work towards elevating customer satisfaction.

The likelihood of selling to existing customers is 60-70%, as opposed to new customers at 5-20%.

Here’s how you can increase customer satisfaction in 20 different ways.

1. Understand customer expectations

You cannot hope to serve and satisfy your customers if you fail to understand and deliver on their expectations.

A recent study in the US suggested about 50% of customers believe brands do not meet customer expectations.

If you fail, there is a disconnect between customer expectations and your product or service, take the necessary steps to bridge it. Speak to them, send out customer surveys, and seek their feedback. Act on the customer feedback received; this will boost customer loyalty and encourage them to provide feedback in the future. This does not mean you can set expectations, and if you do, you best stick to it. Is their feedback relayed to the right departments? When can they expect their issues will be resolved? These are just a few examples that you can use to define and refine your customer processes.

2. Experience the journey yourself

There are several touchpoints at which your customers will interact before, during, or after purchase. Why don’t you go through the experience yourself? Sign up for a demo; see how it goes. Register a complaint, record the turnaround time. Once you know all of this first-hand, you will know which areas need improvement. This will make your processes and operations efficient boosting customer experience and customer satisfaction.

3. Connect with your agents

Often overlooked, but you need to interact with your agents regularly and on-a-need basis. They are the ones facing customers directly; they know what the issues are. Use that data to fix any shortcomings you have in the customer journey.

It is also important that you trust and empower your agents. Let them be involved in the process and passionately resolve customer issues. If at all, that does not work, they can always escalate it. This will ensure they are engaged and will reduce employee attrition.

Recent studies indicate support agents quit their work due to their work environments as opposed to their compensation.

4. Treat your customers right

Goes without saying but is very important. Tend to your customers the way you’d expect and then raise that bar. Treat them with respect, your utmost attention, and commitment. This has to reflect across all your teams and functions. Empathize with their issues when they post a concern, understand their reasons behind any concerns navigating your website or connecting with support, etc. If a customer feels the website is not helpful or hard to navigate, have a live chat for capturing that feedback. All customer-centric organizations put in efforts to make their websites user-friendly, visually appealing to make customers happy.

5. Train your teams

Teams that are trained well are better at handling and resolving customer issues. Trained customer service has better records and significantly increases customer satisfaction and loyalty.

A recent survey of US-based customers said 69% of them feel customer service is highly essential for their loyalty towards a brand.

6. Reduce wait times

Higher wait times significantly take customer satisfaction score down. It is the brand’s responsibility to plan for and hire support staff. You cannot provide excuses to customers such as high call volume, understaffed, holiday season, etc. You need to foresee such situations and plan measures accordingly.

7. Offer multi-channel help

There could always be some small issues that your customers may have due to oversight or some other reason. Provide videos, documents, and all sorts of support collateral to resolve small issues on their own. Have them reach out to support only for complex issues. Not only will your customers appreciate that, but it will also help them get solutions faster.

8. Listen to your customers

Listen to your customers, both satisfied and unsatisfied. Figure out what’s working for you and what’s standing in the way of excellent customer experience. Conduct customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys using a CX management platform and go through them. See which areas need improvement and how you can improve them. If you conduct customer surveys but not act on their feedback, you will not make them happy. Do not lose your customers this way to your competition. Get all your teams involved and work towards the common goal of elevating customer satisfaction.

9. Build communities

Setting up communities is a great way to handle customer service, promotional and marketing activities, and address any customer concerns. Having a community manager enhances your social media presence and responsiveness. The community manager can monitor all conversations and keep the conversations moving in the right direction. They can keep an eye out for any product or service concerns and flag them to the team for timely resolution. Communities are a great way to collect new product ideas, feedback on existing and upcoming products.

10. Ensure employee satisfaction

Employee experience (EX) and customer experience (CX) are inextricably linked. Engaged employees are known to go above and beyond to deliver a great CX. Appreciate your employees, reward their efforts, give them a great working environment, and enrich your customer experience. We discuss this in great detail in our customers and employees matter blog.

11. Improve your NPS

Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures customer loyalty and your customers’ willingness to recommend your products and services to their loved ones and peers. Conduct NPS surveys to measure your Net Promoter Score. Often increasing customer satisfaction leads to higher NPS. A good NPS score is essential to understand where you stand concerning your competitors. See what your competitors are doing differently or better from you and improve your NPS. This will help boost your customer satisfaction.

12. NPS detractor recovery

CSAT and CX play a crucial role in managing brand perception and image. Successful companies that care about and deliver on great CX follow up immediately with dissatisfied customers. This helps address customer queries and concerns, contain customer churn, and avoid the spread of bad or negative word of mouth.

Social media channels such Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc., provide the option to post comments, reviews, and feedback at the click of a button. Avoiding that by following up with customers and resolving concerns should be a key focus. We call that ‘Detractor Recovery ‘, and our CX management platform allows brands to automatically track negative feedback and take timely action.

13. Do not ignore your passives

14. Make CSAT part of your company culture

Make customer satisfaction a part of your DNA, your company culture. Let all your initiatives and processes be driven by this common organizational goal. When employees start aligning their individual goals with company goals, your customers’ experiences will improve. The positive word of mouth will have a rippling effect on the growth of customer base.

15. Leverage social media

16. Read customer reviews

Apart from leading social media channels, there are many websites and portals out there where customers can post their reviews. Monitor these or sign up on these portals to see what your customers are saying about your products and services. Good or bad, try and understand the reasons behind these reviews. If they are good, see if you can replicate them elsewhere and improve CSAT. If negative, what are the reasons, and what measures can be taken to improve their experience? Once you start analyzing these, you can use that data to increase customer satisfaction significantly.

17. Do daily stand-ups

Customer issues or product bugs do not follow any patterns. You can have none in a week and plentiful the next. Are you releasing any significant product updates next week? Are any product enhancements scheduled for next week? Plan for major events such as these to avoid overwhelming your staff with customer complaints or queries. Poor customer service affects customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. Foresee major holidays, infrastructural overhauls and plan accordingly to ensure great customer service.

18. Conduct CSAT surveys

Customer satisfaction surveys help in measuring customer satisfaction. These surveys help you understand the reason behind your customers’ satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Use them to gather data, share it with your teams, and bridge any gaps that may be hampering a smooth customer experience. We speak about the importance of CSAT surveys in great detail in this blog.

19. Convert customer survey data into action

Conducting customer surveys is just one step in ensuring smooth and rich customer experience. Customer satisfaction may go up or down depending on customer interactions at various touchpoints in the customer journey. Use these surveys to uncover reasons, discover patterns, identify trends, and use that information to define and refine your CX and CSAT initiatives. Conducting surveys and not using the data derived from those surveys can be a major disservice to your customers and brand.

20. Personalize for your customers

When customers buy from you, they give you their data willingly. Are you using it wisely? When was the last time you used it to personalize your marketing efforts or send personalized birthday wishes? Do not just gather data and sit on it. Personalize your customer interactions to engage customers, boost customer loyalty, and satisfaction.

These ways will work wonders in increasing customer satisfaction and enriching customer experience. To effectively manage your CX initiatives, you can check our CX management platform and its benefits.

Customer Satisfaction: Definition, Importance, and Improvement Strategies

In the guide, we cover what is customer satisfaction, why it’s important, how to measure it, and proven strategies to better satisfy your customers.

Written by: David Oragui

You don’t need to dig all that deep under the surface to know how important customer satisfaction is, right?

I mean, it’s pretty simple:

Satisfied customer, good. Dissatisfied customer, bad.

The thing is, though, it’s not always so black-and-white.

What Is Customer Satisfaction?

Customer satisfaction is more of a sliding scale—one that’s constantly in-flux based on a customer’s most recent experience with your brand.

And, as a given customer’s current level of satisfaction fluctuates, so, too, does their propensity to engage with your brand.

This makes customer satisfaction a true leading indicator of future sales: generally speaking, the more satisfied your customers are, the more likely they are to make future purchases from your company.

Customers making more purchases from your company sounds great, right?

Of course! But how do you go about creating a great experience for your customers that ensures that they’re completely satisfied with their interaction with your company?

In this post, we’re going to show how to exceed customer expectations as we discuss:

Why Is Customer Satisfaction Important?

For one thing, the probability of selling to a current, satisfied customer ranges from 60 to 70% (while the probability of selling to a new customer is at most 20%).

Basically, the more likely they are to do repeat business with your company in the first place, the less effort it will take on your part to get them to do so.

Along with this, you also don’t need to spend near as much to keep your satisfied customers on board as you do when bringing aboard newbies.

Depending on your industry, the cost of acquiring a new customer can be anywhere from 5-10x that of retaining your current ones.

Finally, consumers not only make more purchases as their satisfaction levels rise, but they also spend more altogether.

That is, your loyal and satisfied customers aren’t merely buying up more of your lower-priced products; they also set their sights on your more big-ticket items, as well.

All this being said, it’s important to note that the relationship between customer satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) and customer retention isn’t a direct one. Rather, the relationship looks more like this:

(Source)

As Keinengham and Vavra explain in The Customer Delight Principle, providing “mere satisfaction” isn’t enough, here.

To truly maximize your chances of retaining your customers, you need to ensure they’re not just content with the service you’ve provided them—but that they’re completely blown away.

(Source: Shep Hyken)

Now that you see the benefits to ensuring truly satisfied customers, let’s discuss the main drivers of customer satisfaction.

What is Customer Satisfaction Really All About

While a lot of “little things” go into ensuring your customers’ satisfaction (which we’ll get to in a bit), it really all boils down to your ability to cater to your customers.

That is, it’s all about the customer’s expectations from your company and your ability to live up to those expectations.

So what do your customers expect from you?

It comes down to the following three principles.

Be Responsive to Their Needs. On an individual level, this means responding immediately to inquiries and help desk tickets (even if only to acknowledge and reassure the customer at first to ensure they feel you’re taking their issue(s) seriously ).

On a macro level, responsiveness involves making overarching changes to the customer experience your brand provides based on feedback and other metrics.

Be Helpful. This is pretty straightforward and obvious: Your product or service needs to efficiently help your customers overcome their initial pain points. Additionally, your service and support team needs to be just as efficient (if not more so) in solving any unique problems your customers may have as they use your product or service.

Be Attentive. While this involves being responsive and helpful in terms of providing business-related services, it also refers to the more human side of the relationship. That is, your individual customers expect you to be attentive to their individual needs as consumers and as people.

(Note: Keep these expectations in mind for later, as we’ll bring them back up when discussing how to go about improving customer satisfaction.)

Before we do that, let’s talk about how to measure customer satisfaction in the first place.

How to Measure Customer Satisfaction

To be sure, customer satisfaction is subjective from industry to industry and audience to audience.

In other words, what might be an expectation in one area might be considered above-and-beyond in another.

For example, the typical attentiveness provided by your average B2B company would probably blow the average B2C customer away. Similarly, if you’re used to eating at McDonald’s, you’d likely be amazed at the service at even a subpar “five-star” restaurant.

That said, it’s not enough to simply do all the things you’re “supposed” to do to satisfy the “average” consumer.

Rather, you need to have a solid plan for measuring your customers’ satisfaction levels—and for using this data to improve your customer experience moving forward.

Now, while you will need to actively collect additional information as you get started, it’s important to realize you already have access to a ton of relevant data right now.

In terms of quantitative data, you can take a closer look at your:

(Note: Such quantitative metrics can give you an idea of where your strengths or weaknesses lie—but that’s all they can do. To get more specific regarding how to proceed, you’ll need to dig deeper.)

On the qualitative side, you’ll want to dig into your product or brand reviews, mentions on the web, and any other such feedback you’ve already collected from your target audience.

As we said, you’ll also want to begin actively soliciting information related to customer satisfaction, as well. A

side from the main benefit of getting a better feel for your customers’ expectations, this also gives you the opportunity to prove that you truly care about helping them succeed.

And, as Annette Franz (CCXP) notes, «it also allows you to measure how well you’re performing against their expectations.»

Perhaps the most common method of collecting this information is via a customer satisfaction survey.

Through these questionnaires, you can learn more about what they want from your company, and also gauge your company’s ability to provide for these needs from the customer’s perspective.

Again, it’s not about providing a specific “something”; it’s about the value your customer receives from their experience with this “something” that really matters.

At any rate, your surveys can also touch on both the quantitative and qualitative sides of the equation.

Quantitative Customer Satisfaction Measurements

Quantitatively, you’ll want to collect data relating to your brand’s Customer Satisfaction Score, Customer Effort Score, and Net Promoter Score.

(Source)

You can then compare your data to your competitors’ and industry average to see where your company stands.

As time goes on, you’ll also be able to compare your current score with that of previous months or years.

You’ll also want to develop additional surveys regarding more specific topics relating to your services, as well.

You can then quantify this information to analyze trends and identify and assess any “problem” areas with your service.

Qualitative Customer Satisfaction Measurements

Qualitatively, it’s also important to give survey respondents the chance to explain their answers in certain instances.

The more complete and authentic your customers’ answers are, the more reliable—and valuable—the information they’re providing you is.

Now, when creating these surveys, there are a few things you need to do to get maximum value out of the initiative.

First, you need to ensure that the information you’re asking for will allow you to make improvements to your customer experience in ways that matter to the customer.

You don’t want to go through the trouble of collecting a ton of data, only to realize that it doesn’t really tell you all that much.

Secondly, you also need to ensure the information you’re asking for is the information your respondents end up providing.

While receiving unusable information is bad enough, receiving inaccurate data (with no way of knowing it’s inaccurate) can be much worse for your company.

That said, you need to make your surveys easy to understand and respond to, while also eliciting in-depth, laser-focused information from your customers in the process.

As we’ll revisit throughout the rest of this article, staying up-to-date with these quantitative and qualitative metrics is essential in order to ensure maximum customer satisfaction.

After all, you can’t improve your services if you have no idea where to start, right?

8 Ways to Improve Customer Satisfaction

By now, you probably have a pretty good idea of why customer satisfaction is so important and how to measure it.

Now it’s time to discuss how to actually improve customer satisfaction so that your business can reap the benefits.

1. Put the Customer at the Center of Your Business

Without your customers, your business wouldn’t exist.

So it just makes sense to consider the customer first and foremost when making any type of decision within your company.

Taking a step back, it’s essential to realize in the first place that every decision you make impacts your customer experience in some way or another.

Whenever a business decision or choice is to be made—no matter how minor or inconsequential it may seem—you need to ask your team:

“How will this affect our customers’ experience with our brand?”

While this might sound obvious in terms of customer-facing decisions, internal changes within your organization can also indirectly impact your customers experience, as well.

As a rather simple example, let’s say you switch to a different supplier for your retail store in the interest of saving on delivery fees.

A few months down the line, the new supplier is a week late with its shipment, leaving your company late on your individual deliveries. Unfortunately, your customers are the ones that end up suffering, here.

While digging into the nuances of customer centricity go beyond the scope of this article, we’ll quickly refer to Deloitte’s guide to embedding customer centricity into your organization’s DNA.

The keys to doing so are:

As you can see, many of these principles align with the keys of customer satisfaction as a whole.

That’s because customer centricity goes hand-in-hand with satisfying your customers.

In other words, by putting your customer at the center of your business, you inherently guarantee that everything you do will lead to them becoming more and more satisfied with the services you provide.

2. Treat Your Customers by the Platinum Rule

Piggybacking off of customer centricity, another key to satisfying your customers is treating them by the Platinum Rule.

While it’s easy enough to tell your frontline employees they need to “treat the customer the way they’d like to be treated,” this is a bit misguided (and a bit trite, if we’re being honest).

The problem with the Golden Rule is that it puts the focus back onto the company. Operating under the Golden Rule is essentially saying, “We treat our customers the way we think they’d like to be treated, based on how we’d like to be treated.”

The Platinum Rule, on the other hand, flips this on its head. This rule states that you should treat your customers (or, “others” in general) the way they’d like to be treated.

(Source / I guess Discover’s “We treat you like you treat you” campaign is onto something.)

This will allow you to avoid a variety of potential pitfalls, such as:

It’s simple logic:

If you can manage to treat your customers exactly as they hope to be treated, there’s no doubt they’ll leave the experience completely and utterly satisfied.

3. Set the Bar High—and Still Exceed Expectations

Remember the graph we presented earlier showing the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty?

Another message to take away from this is that competing for loyalty by satisfying your customers becomes tougher and tougher the more successful you are at doing so.

(This might sound counterintuitive to what we said earlier about how retaining customers becomes easier over time, so bear with us, here.)

Think of it like this:

Every time you do something that leaves your customer satisfied, you’ve essentially raised the bar for them.

While whatever you just did for them may have previously been “above and beyond,” your customer will now expect it whenever they engage with your brand.

If they don’t receive equal or better treatment moving forward, they’ll at the very least be a bit disappointed.

Now, just because it becomes tougher to measure up to your customers’ expectations doesn’t mean you should stop trying.

In fact, it means quite the opposite: You should continue striving to find that “little something extra” to give your customers each and every time they do business with your company.

For one thing, as you continue to raise the bar, you’ll continue to build your customers’ trust in that you have their satisfaction in mind at all times.

Secondly, continuing to raise the bar also allows you to always stay one step ahead of your competition—and do so in a way that makes you stand out to your target audience.

Lastly, as you continue to exceed expectations, you give your customers a reason to talk about you business thereby creating brand advocates that help spread the word around about your business.

While going above and beyond for your customers will mean something different depending on your industry, there are a number of stories you can check out for inspiration on how to do so, including ones about:

As we said earlier, ensuring customer satisfaction is all about being attentive and responsive to your customers’ needs, and doing anything in your power to help.

In each case, the company in question didn’t need to do what they did, but they did—and that’s why we’re still telling their stories all these years later.

4. Add Value at Every Opportunity

In the previous section, we talked about giving your customers more than they expect whenever they engage with your brand.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean you need to give, give, give of yourself whenever you do so. It certainly is possible to provide more value to your customers while also reaping benefits for your company, as well.

For example, if you run an ecommerce company that sells guitars, you can provide cross-sell offers of accessories like cases, amplifiers, and lesson books to add to the value of your “main” offering:

(Source / Not sure why you’d buy a Fender shirt while buying a Martin guitar, but anyway. )

Think about it like this:

If you sell a customer a set of golf clubs, you’ve enabled them to play golf. If you sell them a set of golf clubs, a pair of golf shoes, an outfit, and three professional lessons, you’ve enabled them to become a golfer.

Basically, your goal is to expose your customers to all of the things you offer that they’ll find valuable.

At the very least, doing so will be an investment for the future, as it will make the customer more likely to return at a later date.

Best-case scenario, though, staying focused on providing value to your customers at all times can lead to immediate gains for your brand.

5. Provide Multichannel or Omnichannel Support

As you surely know, your job isn’t done once you’ve made a sale.

Your job isn’t even done once your customer has reached their intended goals.

Heck, we’d even say that once you’ve brought a customer on board, you have a sworn duty to help them overcome their problems for life.

(At least, that should be your goal. The longer you keep your customers on board, the better!)

Anyway, the point is, to keep them satisfied and truly happy with your brand, you’ll need to provide ongoing service and support to them from time to time.

Now, when we say “From time to time,” what we really mean is, “When your customers need it, where they expect to get it.”

That is, the modern customer expects brands to be available and responsive on a variety of different channels—and is becoming more impatient with companies that don’t meet these expectations.

This is why a multichannel—or, better yet, omnichannel—approach to customer service is key in today’s world. While the more nuanced differences between these two options are a discussion for another time, the main difference can be laid out as such:

By today’s standards, even the smallest of companies should offer multichannel support to its customers.

Not only is it relatively easy to provide a self service option like a knowledge base or wiki as well as make yourself available via, say, email, Facebook Messenger and telephone, but being available on more channels adds another point of value to your brand.

Over time, though, your goal in this regard should be to build an omnichannel system of customer service and support throughout your company.

As we said earlier, this means integrating your service teams, as well as the information they take in, store, and communicate.

Continuing with the above example, this might mean taking in messages through voice mail, then responding via phone call, text message, and/or email at your customer’s request.

If you’re looking for a way to provide responsive, helpful, and retentive customer service, an omnichannel approach to customer service is essential to your company.

6. Allow Self-Service Whenever Possible

While you might not have the bandwidth to provide live service to your customers at all times, you’ll at least want to provide some level of accessible support 24/7.

Perhaps the most effective approach, here, is to enable self-service whenever logistically possible.

(To be sure, self-service software and automated transactions are essentially what allow ecommerce and other online businesses to thrive in the first place.)

But, more than simply automating certain transactional processes, you’ll also want to allow your customers to help themselves as best they can before needing to reach out to your service team.

In developing a self-service knowledge base for your customers, your support team will dig into both common and uncommon issues your current audience faces over time, and create in-depth solutions to each.

As shown in the example above, Meijer home delivery provides answers to commonly-asked questions and more by making use of knowledge base software.

In turn, both current and potential customers can get the information they need from Meijer—right when they need it.

The benefit of creating self-service solutions for your customers in need of support is twofold:

For one, you’ll save time and other resources in the long run, as your service team won’t need to be “hands on” for smaller issues your customers can now take care of on their own. In turn, your team can invest more time and energy into tackling the larger customer issues that come their way.

Secondly, by proactively providing support documentation and other such info to your customers, you again make it clear that you truly care about their circumstances, and will do whatever it takes to help them succeed.

7. Improve Employee Satisfaction and Engagement

The happier your employees are, the more engaged in their duties they’ll be. The more engaged they are, the better they’ll be at giving their customers exactly what they want. When your customers get what they want (and more), they’ll be happy.

«It all boils down to dealing with employees who are happy, aligned and engaged in their work which just FEELS better for the customer.

You have probably experienced this first hand whereby you were served by an employee and you had the sense that the person would rather be anywhere other than helping you as a client. You have probably also experienced the opposite example whereby you are served by someone who takes a genuine interest in you and wants to help you solve your challenge or ensure you get what you need. The latter just FEELS better!

So, by increasing your employees’ satisfaction levels, you’ll end up positively affecting your customer satisfaction, as well.

According to Cal Misener, «the simple formula is happy employees = happy customers = happy shareholders.»

And this isn’t just conjecture; it’s a fact.

A study conducted at Washington State University took this statement even a step further, showing that, due to this direct relationship, employee satisfaction also plays a major role in a company’s overall financial situation, as well.

Now, your approach for getting your employees more engaged in their work will depend on a variety of factors.

Above all else, though, it requires you gain a true understanding of where they stand within their own hierarchy of needs.

For those unfamiliar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in psychological terms, the premise is that people in general must have certain prerequisite needs met before they can become more fully autonomous and self-actualized.

As the image above shows, when applied to employee engagement, the hierarchy details the continuum employees follow on their way to becoming what any manage would consider a “model employee.”

That is to say that, for example, employees who are “only here for a paycheck,” or who tend to count down the seconds until quitting time aren’t going to become highly-engaged employees overnight.

While we won’t get into the nitty-gritty of how to improve employee engagement on a granular level here, what we will say is this:

If your employees’ basic needs—as employees and as people—aren’t met, there’s no way they’ll ever be able to reach the level of engagement you’d like them to.

That said, the onus is on you, as the owner or manager of your organization, to ensure your team members have everything they need to succeed and grow.

8. Actively Solicit and Act on Feedback

We talked about this in-depth much earlier, so we’ll just reiterate here:

If you want to improve your customers’ satisfaction levels, you absolutely need to reach out to them to find out what it is they actually want from you. More importantly, you need to take action upon receiving this feedback to either:

On either an individual or macro level, the goal is again the same:

Reassure your customers that you’re dedicated to helping them solve their problems, and making the changes necessary to make it happen.

Wrapping Up Customer Satisfaction

Like we said in the intro:

Ensuring customer satisfaction is, at its core, a pretty simple task.

After all, all you need to do is exceed your customers’ expectations at all times, right?

All kidding aside, satisfying your customers (and more) each and every time they engage with your brand is a monumental and ongoing task.

And that’s okay; it’s supposed to be.

By staying laser-focused on staying one step ahead of your customers’ expectations at all times—and following through by consistently providing added value to their experiences—you’ll end up leaps and bounds ahead of your competition, as well. In turn, you’ll easily be able to position your brand as the go-to within your industry.

Using Helpjuice to Improve Customer Satisfaction

Knowledge bases are used by companies in a variety of industries as a way to further connect with consumers and enhance customer satisfaction across the board.

By providing valuable, easily-accessible information to their customers with no questions asked, brands that use knowledge bases like Helpjuice can quickly build trust among their audience

Helpjuice enable brands to provide valuable, easily-accessible information to their customers free of charge, they’re a necessary part of any company’s customer satisfaction game plans.