Customer Satisfaction: Leveraging Your Audience to Grow Your Business
There’s one thing that every single business should have in common when it comes to pursuing their goals — and that’s achieving high customer satisfaction.
Customer satisfaction, simply put, is the level of happiness your customers have with your business’s products, services, values, capabilities and communication skills. We all know how the saying goes, no matter what industry you’re in, customer service is always your number one product.
We’ve recently put out a couple blogs surrounding brand loyalty and customer retention. However, you can’t focus on either of those within your business unless you begin to leverage customer satisfaction. It is the core value and root of customer retention, and without increasing your customer satisfaction, your business will never truly grow.
In this blog, we’ll be breaking down why customer satisfaction should always be a priority for your business, especially in the digital age of 2021. We’ll also be covering some great strategies on how you can start leaving a more positive impact on your customers moving forward.
Why Customer Satisfaction Matters
Provides Feedback
Whether you’re an individual or operating as a business, it’s nearly impossible to improve if you don’t understand what exactly you need to change. That is why recognizing and targeting your flaws makes feedback so important. Whether a customer leaves you a good review or a bad one, they usually have something insightful to say that you can use as feedback to improve your business.
Later in this blog we’ll discuss the importance of surveys and how they help you connect with your customers. However, aside from surveys, a great place to start looking for feedback on customer satisfaction is Google reviews and within your company’s social media pages. Stay connected with your community, and always be open to constructive criticism.
Increases Word of Mouth Referrals
Ever have such an incredible experience with a business or their product that you just can’t help but tell your friends and family about it? We know we have. Word of mouth marketing has been, and will continue to be, the most successful form of marking. When someone you know and respect tells you to try out a business, there’s a good chance you will.
How do you get customers to recommend your business to other people? Well, it’s not that complicated. You just have to provide them with the customer satisfaction that will turn them into loyal customers. According to , 55% of customers display loyalty of a company by recommending it to friends and family.
Also, it’s important to remember that word of mouth marketing doesn’t actually mean words from someone’s mouth, especially in the 21st century. Word of mouth also includes your customers posting about your company on their social media pages, texting/direct messaging their friends your new posts and promos, and more.
Reduces Churn
Churn is horrible for businesses. It’s when a customer uses your product or service, and then for one reason or another, decides to completely stop being your customer and switches their loyalty to someone else. An example that we’re sure a ton of us are familiar with are subscription based companies. Customers will sign up for a free trial, then cancel the subscription and/or turn off auto-renewal when the subscription ends.
The more you’re able to satisfy a customer and put a smile on their face, the less likely they are to decide to look somewhere else for what you’re providing. In fact, of churn happens because of bad customer experiences.
How to Improve and Leverage Customer Satisfaction
Going Above and Beyond
This one may seem like a given but it’s worth repeating time and time again. The quality of your product or service must stand out from the rest. Focus on what separates you from your competition. If you don’t, you’ll drown in the noise of other’s marketing. This is called your key value, and you need to be consistent about putting it on a pedestal through every communication channel.
This level of care also applies to how you treat every single customer. Treat each customer like they are bringing in much more business than they are actually spending, because when you think about it, that’s what they’re doing through word of mouth.
A personalized customer experience can go a long way in achieving this. Personal brand packaging and using your customers name in an email are great ways to do this, but make sure you’re being consistent in your brand’s voice.
In fact 48% of customers expect specialized treatment for being a loyal customer. It’s easier to make things specialized when you can anticipate your customer’s needs. So put yourself in their shoes and think about what they would like to see from your company.
Survey Your Customers
A great way to measure and understand customer satisfaction is by surveying them on their experience with your business. When you’re putting together these surveys, think about the results you’re trying to obtain by using them.
Consider the depth and specificity of your questions. If you want opinions on a specific product or feature of that product, ask those specific questions. The same can be said if you want to know more about your customer’s general experience.
These surveys will provide you with actionable feedback. Actionable feedback is feedback that provides insights into areas that you can change to better your company. Yes or no questions like “did you enjoy your experience?” get you nowhere. Instead, ask detailed and targeted questions that will yield answers you can work with.
There are a ton of free customer satisfaction templates out there that all serve different purposes and yield different actionable feedback answers. Take some time to do the research and figure out which ones will serve your business best.
Offer 24/7 Live Chat, Customer Service and Support
Not only is customer support and service vital for measuring customer satisfaction, it’s necessary for improving it too. The way that you communicate to your customers affects everything regarding your customer’s perception of you. You have to strike the right balance. If you’re too aggressive, passive, confusing, or overwhelming, you will have poor customer satisfaction.
You make customers feel welcomed to ask questions right from the get-go on your site when you incorporate a live chat. We’ve grown to expect instant gratification in 2021, and adding a 24/7 live chat to your site is a way to provide instant gratification to your customers.
The quicker you can reply or help customers solve their problems, the better. Otherwise, that time they spend waiting might be time they end up spending with your competitors.
Build a Customer Satisfaction Team
Having customer satisfaction always on the back of your mind is one thing. Building and dedicating an entire team towards managing and growing better customer satisfaction is a completely other thing that makes the world of difference. A team is able to set goals, strategies, and dedicate much more time than any individual will towards customer satisfaction. If the latter isn’t practical for the size of your business, make sure you take the former seriously.
Dedicate a certain amount of time throughout the week to focus on your customer satisfaction. An hour a day is enough time to be giving 24 hour responses to your customers. This includes checking and responding to Google reviews, replying to customer emails, and checking-in on your company’s social media page. You can set up an automated response message ensuring your customer you will respond to them within a 24 hour time period.
So now that we’ve covered a few ways to leverage customer satisfaction, as well as some reasons for why you should always be thinking about it, start making a plan today to improve it for your business!
As always, feel free to reach out to us here at Bookmark with any questions, our sites are designed with customer satisfaction features built right into them (like live chat on websites). Stay tuned for our next blog for more ways to improve your online business!
Originally published at https://www.bookmark.com on March 16, 2021.
