Benchmarks for Measuring Customer Satisfaction

Your customers are the lifeblood of your organization, and keeping them satisfied is an obvious must-have if you want to ensure the future of your products and company.

A satisfied customer is one who will continue to buy from you, seldom shop around, refer other customers and in general is a raving fan for your business.


But measuring customer satisfaction can be a little tricky for many business owners.

Customer satisfaction has a direct relationship with financial performance; thus, the happier your customers, the more successful your business.

According to Livework, 96% of unhappy customers will never complain but 91% of those customers will never purchase from you again.

The Number #1 objective of any business therefore, should be the creation of happy customers because businesses that create happy customers grow and flourish, while the ones that don't, stagnate and perish.

Toolbox.com

Petra Jorgenson, in her post over at Toolbox.com distills measuring customer satisfaction down to 4 key benchmarks.

• Experience
• Loyalty
• Advocacy
• Experience

For the best results, you should collect feedback from customers at least twice a year, after you’ve conducted your initial surveys to establish internal benchmarks.

To obtain an overall picture of customer satisfaction, you should be conducting surveys for measure customer experience, customer loyalty, customer advocacy, and customer preferences.

Improving Customer Satisfaction

So what steps can you take to keep your best customers happy?

Here's five tips for tracking and measuring customer satisfaction with the opportunity of getting some really positive outcomes for your business.

1. Thank Them - with a coupon/discount or a gift

To keep our customers happy, send a postcard or gift after their first order. You'd be amazed at how well it helps with buyer's remorse.

But don't just make it generic. Customise it.

2. Survey them via email or after a customer service call

An easy way for measuring customer satisfaction is through a simple, binary survey at the conclusion of each customer support interaction.

For example, a simple 'Good - I'm Satisfied' or 'Bad - I'm Unsatisfied' rating after each interaction could help determine where you're succeeding and what you can improve upon.

3. Visit Them

Automation is great but it's also impersonal.

A couple hours face-to-face is better than months worth of standing phone calls and relentless emails. Customers are more honest and open, and appreciate the effort taken to go and see them.

4. Check and solicit customer reviews

Businesses can (and should) have their own blog or website or keep up with reviews on social media sites.

This is where you will see how your customers are describing you, what they are discussing about you, and what they are asking of you for the next time, giving you another avenue for measuring customer satisfaction.

5. Make sure your internal customers are happy

Happy employees are more motivated and more productive, and therefore able to deliver higher levels of customer satisfaction.

So, make sure your employees feel appreciated and recognised for their work.

Measuring Customer Satisfaction as a Repeatable Process

There's a saying in the world of marketing automation...

If you do the same thing more than 3 times...automate it.

The process of measuring customer satisfaction and collating the information is a repeatable process that can, and indeed, must be automated if you want to be able to make better business decisions fast.