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Measuring customer satisfaction

Balaji Viswanathan Avatar

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You probably already know that customer satisfaction is one of the key elements to your organization’s success. Customer satisfaction measures how your product or services manages to satisfy or surpass user expectations. However, it is very hard to quantify this abstract concept. In this post, we will see the various ways to measure customer satisfaction directly and indirectly.

Why should you measure customer satisfaction?

  1. To realize how well you are doing in matching customer expectations. If the customer satisfaction is at a low level, go back to your drawing board and find new ways to satisfy customers.
  2. To identify your loyal customers and find ways to retain them.
  3. To reward your workers and internal organizations that contribute highly to the satisfaction.
  4. To track processes and strategies that help you satisfy the customers and fine tune them.
  5. To understand the gap between the manager’s perception of the quality given and the customer’s perception of the quality received.

Ways to measure customer satisfaction

1. Customer Satisfaction Survey – This is one of the most important tools to measure customer satisfaction. The survey can be mailed to your customers or you can pick random lists of customers and give them a simple survey options. To incentivize send them a small reward – 5% off on next purchase or a free sample of a complementary product.

When sending out a survey, try to cover the following points.

Basic customer satisfaction:

      • On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you with your recent purchase
      • On a scale of 1-10,  how satisfied are you with our service
      • On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you with our company
      • What aspects of the service or product, would you want to change

Customer loyalty:

      • On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to buy from us again
      • On a scale of 1-10, will you recommend our product to your friend

2. Customer complaint tracking through helpdesk – This is one of the implicit ways to measure satisfaction. If few of your customers are complaining about your product, it could indicate that the satisfaction levels are increasing. You need a good helpdesk tool to track this and keep records of complaints against time. A falling curve in complaints/sales is a positive indication of your customer service.

3. Tracking repeat purchases through CRM – As the popular adage goes, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” Satisfied customers are those who have a higher likelihood of purchasing from you in the future. Thus, you should see which accounts are making repeat purchases and are those accounts increasing across time. If more of your accounts become repeat purchasers then you are probably getting better at customer satisfaction.

4. Social Media Engagement tracking – This is now becoming a very important way to measure customer satisfaction. In this, you measure your social media influence and the quantity of engagement (likes, retweets, shares, reposts) you get for your various posts from your paying customers (you need ways to identify who among the interacting people are your customers). In general, a higher degree of engagement on your social media channels indicate a higher level of customer satisfaction and loyalty.

5. Online Sentiment tracking – You should also pay a keen attention to the customer sentiment not just in your channel, but also in other channels such as your customer’s personal blogs, forum posts, etc. Negative sentiments in blogs and forum posts could indicate a drop in satisfaction and loyalty. One important tip here is to separate the real customer posts from those made by the rare outliers and pr agencies of competitors.

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