Nowadays customer satisfaction is more critical than ever. Whether your business is a hair salon, a spaza shop, shisanyama or an accounting firm, chances are you will be dealing with people. The more happy they are with your services, the more likely they will continue doing business with you.Social Media has made it easy for dissatisfied customers to voice their feelings or refer customers to your business. As HubSpot notes:”Every single interaction a user has with you, your co-workers, your website, and your content feeds into their overall experience—and overall impression of your organisation as a whole. The better that experience is, the happier your customers are, and the more likely they are to stick around and tell their friends about the great experience your brand provides.”
High-growth companies are more likely to incorporate customer satisfaction into their strategy than low-growth counterparts. Why? Because high-growth companies get referrals from happy customers.
According to a research conducted by Marketo, there is a correlation between profit and customer satisfaction. Also, companies with a lower Net Promoter Score (NPS) tend to lose clients and report lower profit margins.
What is Net Promoter Score?
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a customer loyalty and satisfaction measurement taken from asking customers how likely they are to recommend your product or service to others on a scale of 0-10.
NPS can be used as a predictor of business growth. When your company’s NPS is high (or, at least, higher than the industry average), you know that you have a healthy relationship with customers who are likely to act as evangelists for the brand, fuel word of mouth, and generate a positive growth cycle.
Promoters (9-10)
Happy customers who are happy to refer friends to your business. They represent a company’s most enthusiastic customers: these people are likely to act as brand ambassadors, enhance a brand’s reputation, and increase referral flows, helping fuel the company’s growth.
Passives (7-8)
These are customers who have a neutral impact, in most cases they are susceptible to competitor offerings. are not actively recommending a brand, but are also unlikely to damage it with negative word of mouth. Although they are not included in the NPS calculation, passives are very close to being promoters (particularly when they give a score of 8), so it always makes strategic sense to spend time investigating what to do to win them over.
Detractors (0-6)
These are unhappy customers. They are unlikely to recommend a company or product to others, probably won’t stick around or repeat purchases, and—worse—could actively discourage potential customers away from a business.
They can harm your brand by voicing their dissatisfaction to people who have not done business with you.
Use your NPS as the key measure of your customers’ overall perception of your brand. Because NPS is a leading indicator from growth, it provides the best anchor for your customer experience management (CEM) program. Complement NPS with other metrics and insights from various points along the customer journey, and you have a comprehensive, actionable view of your customer experience performance.
Take the following steps to improve customer satisfaction in your business:
- Take the steps to fully align your sales, marketing, and service delivery operations.
- Create a culture around customer feedback. Whether you use customer satisfaction surveys, Net Promoter Scores (NPS), or incorporate feedback channels into monthly or quarterly meetings, be consistent.
- Track customer satisfaction as a company-wide goal. Goals carry gravitas that can sometimes be lost when something is viewed as cultural, not procedural. If implemented correctly, NPS scores can be used to measure customer satisfaction.
- Measure customer satisfaction scores in the most effective way, providing an accurate representation of how your customers are feeling.
- Set clear customer expectations from day one and take steps to exceed these. This might look like setting realistic goals, delivering tasks on time, replying to emails and other communications in an agreed timeframe, and providing added value when possible
- Rally all employees around one mission-critical objective: earning more enthusiastic customers.
