Did you know that a satisfied customer is willing to spend at least 3 times the amount of money on your business than a “somewhat” satisfied one?
To improve customer satisfaction, let’s first understand what this term means. There are several ways to describe customer satisfaction, but they all narrow down to this:
What is Customer Satisfaction?
Customer satisfaction measures how satisfied a customer is with a company’s products, services, and overall experience. Customer satisfaction is typically measured using surveys that help companies identify the best path to improve or make changes to their products and services. Customer satisfaction score is a strong indicator of customer retention.
Maybe in 2021, rather than sending an automated birthday email, follow these 7 actionable strategies to improve your customer service, thereby multiplying customers’ satisfaction levels. A study by Forrester Research reveals that customer satisfaction can be attributed to three main factors:
- The ease of solving the query (25%)
- The success of solving the query (25%)
- Emotions during the process (50%)
Let’s see how a company can improve customer satisfaction with the methods given below:
1. Ensure your Company Culture is Still Thriving
When working on improving customer satisfaction, you need to begin at the foundation.
You need to make sure your company’s culture thrives and you live up to it on a day-to-day basis.
A strategic approach will improve customer satisfaction — if it is instilled in life.
Every interaction session with your employees will give you an opportunity to do so.
You have to ensure your customer service executives are aware of your company’s vision and values and can communicate them confidently.
2. Set Clear Expectations and Follow the Path
- Know and understand your capabilities.
- Communicate it clearly to your customers.
- Do not overdo when customers ask for special treatment, simply because they asked for it.
The few steps mentioned above to set the right expectations seem practical and not very customer-oriented.
However, it will save your customer service team a lot of trouble and give you more time for delivering reliable, high-quality customer service that meets all the requirements of the customers.
The “meet and greet” technique was applauded in the 80s and 90s. Considering the number of customers a company has to deal with in a day, this approach is unsustainable in most cases.
3. Try to Mitigate the Effort a Customer Takes
Customer Effort Score (CES) is a measure to evaluate the effort a customer experienced during a session with a company.
The interaction session can involve anything from purchases to questions regarding a product or service.
If you lower the customers’ effort to reach out to you and resolve the query, it will improve customer satisfaction.
In this case, comprehensive FAQ sections and live chat on your website become the go-to tools for a feasible customer journey.
Live chat offers Chatbot to address basic queries and AI driven routing, which effortlessly connects the customer to the right customer service executive for complex issues.
In case a query needs to be forwarded, e.g., to the technical support team or a supervisor, the issue can be solved without disrupting the web browsing experience via live chat service.
4. Multiply Employee Satisfaction
The mood of your customer service reps will depend upon an interaction session with a client.
According to a study by the University of Western Australia and Carleton University, your customers’ mood is likely to mirror that of your service team.
The findings of the study highlight that employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction are related to one another.
Both your customers and your employees want to feel appreciated, respected, and valued.
5. Use Cheat Sheets
You’ll find several books on the internet about proper communication approaches to improve customer satisfaction. At their foundation, you are bound to find these three key elements:
- Transparency
- Active Listening
- Empathy
Good communication should be effortless, but too often, it’s not even close.
One of the key reasons is negative bias, leading to people assuming the worst. Therefore, communication training is crucial for your customer service reps.
Until the time they gain more experience, it is recommended to use cheat sheets to help your customer service team set the perfect tone, align with the company’s culture, and make the customers feel respected.
Cheat sheets should be used as handy guidelines, not rule-books. If you mandate some protocols on your customer service team, the customer experience might become rigid and impersonal.
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6. Solve Issues Before They Appear
If you visit a doctor because you wake up every morning with a terrible headache, you would expect to receive more than just a bunch of painkillers. An experienced and skilled doctor knows that your goal isn’t just temporarily to get rid of the headache but to return to normal health.
A customer service rep needs to initiate meaningful conversations with customers in a similar manner.
Once the executive is interacting with a customer, he has the perfect chance to explain the further steps of the process or help the customer with solutions that he could implement on his own.
You will considerably reduce the resolution time by preventing the client from reaching out multiple times.
7. Know When Your Customer Needs Your Service
It’s simple to wait for the client to reach out to you when a problem arises.
But wouldn’t it help your customers if you resolve an issue even before it arises or right when a customer needs help?
With the help of tracking, you can determine how long a potential customer has stayed on your website. Use this data to provide them with well-timed tips and subsequent help.
For example, if a customer stays on your page for more than two minutes, it means he might need additional information about a product/service or a piece of advice. Particularly in crucial moments, such as the check-out-phase, immediate help is much required.
The idea is to map your customer journey with appropriate answers based on the queries customers might have.
This move not only improves customer satisfaction but also saves your company resources. However, proactive help does not end here. Following a successful purchase, you can connect with the customer and ask if everything is running smoothly, provide some quick tips, or direct him to a possible tutorial video.
This shows that you care about your customers’ needs and satisfaction even after a successful purchase has been made.
Conclusion
Customer satisfaction is more than just retaining customers. It is about preserving the integrity of your brand. When your company cares more about how to increase customer satisfaction, the outcomes will soon follow.
Simplify360 provides a convenient solution for businesses to help improve customer satisfaction. Helping businesses build strong and memorable connections with their customers is at the heart of Simplify360. The platform offers intelligent and integrated customer experience with streamlined workflows to assist customer service teams.