Customer satisfaction: Score that reflects your ability to retain and acquire more customers

Are your customers satisfied? Are you taking the necessary measures if your customers are not satisfied with your service? What is Customer Satisfaction? Why CSAT play a vital role in your organization?

Having these questions as a growing organization or if you have just started is vital, as CSAT indicates the satisfaction level of your customer with your business. And this is the crucial ingredient which leads to becoming the “My Brand” to your customers, and nothing beats good word of mouth.

CSAT is a survey which indicates how delighted your customers are with the transaction they are doing with your business and overall experience they had with your company.

It is a result of the time your customer spends with your business from navigating your website to locating a product, purchasing the product, the delivery, and contacting your customer service team if any assistance is required.

As an organization, I’m sure that you have created the best platform in which your customer can navigate easily and be able to use the service without any hassles. However, what if things don’t work as expected? Here, the excellence of your customer service team comes into the picture.

In today’s digital era, customers have various means to share an opinion in the form of social media platforms. If happy customers tweet or post something good about your business, they can be your brand ambassadors and can lead to increased business through positive word of mouth.

However, if an unhappy customer shares a negative view of your company on any of the social platforms, it can take some time to minimize the damage to business reputation.

How Is the Customer satisfaction performance indicator calculated?

“Top 2 box” measure of customer satisfaction: This approach only takes the two highest possible ratings into account, i.e., Satisfied and Very Satisfied.

Per this approach, to get a customer satisfaction score, the customer is presented with a question at the end of the session, and they get an option to rate the interaction with the customer service agent.

Note: On a scale of 0 – 5 only reviews which are rated 4 or 5 and similarly, on a scale of 0 – 10, reviews which are rated 9 or 10, are considered as reviews with a satisfaction rating.

The calculation is performed by entering the data of the “number of satisfied customers” into the following formula:

No. of Satisfied Customers

———————————— X 100 = % of Satisfied Customers

No. of Satisfaction Survey Responses

Variations of questions in a CSAT survey can be:

On a scale of 1-5, how satisfied are you with your experience today?
Did the representative resolve your issue?
On a scale of 1-5, how would you rate your interaction with [Representative’s Name]

Net Promoter score:

Net Promoter score and CSAT are slightly identical yet different things. Customer satisfaction measures user satisfaction, whereas NPS (Net Promoter Score) measures customer’s loyalty.

Per https://www.netpromoter.com, Net Promoter Score®, or NPS®, measures customer experience and predicts business growth. This proven metric transformed the business world and now provides the core measurement for customer experience management programs the world around.

A simple question such as, On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend this company to your friend or a colleague? Where 0-6 are considered detractors, 7-8 are considered as passive, and 9-10 as Promoters.

Promoters are loyal customers who keep purchasing from your company and recommend you to a friend or a colleague.

Passives are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who are vulnerable to competitive offers.

Detractors are unhappy customers who can damage your brand and impede growth through contrary word-of-mouth.

The calculation of NPS:

Total percentage of Promoters – Total percentage of detractors = Net Promoter Score.

Customer Effort score:

Customer Effort Score refers to the score which measures user experience with your company. Customer ranks your service on a 7 point scale ranging from Very difficult to Very easy. If the customer gives a rating of 6 or 7, it signifies that the representative made it very easy for the customer to handle the issue.

Customer effort score rose to popularity in 2010 with the publication of an HBR article titled “Stop trying to delight your customers.”

Some tools which you can use to calculate your customer’s satisfaction score:

· Stella connect

· Survey Monkey

· Survey Gizmo

· Bird Eye

· Nice reply

· Reputation.com

· Instabug

· Getfeedback

The excellence of your customer service team results in CSAT :

There are many factors which impact CSAT scores. When a customer purchases a product or a service, they expect it to work according to the expectations they came with when they signed up with your company and made the purchase.

Now, if everything is fine and there are no issues and the customers received what they paid for, then it is a CSAT, and if anything goes wrong, the customers expect a swift resolution so they can continue enjoying the product or service which they had purchased.

When a customer contacts your customer service team, and they explain their situation, here are some factors which can keep in mind to make sure that the customer leaves satisfied.

1. First response – It is really important since a customer is waiting for their issue to be resolved as soon as possible, and if they do not know that you are working on the case, then the customer might get anxious and irritated which leaves a reputation that the company they are doing their business with, is non responsive and this can impact your customer satisfaction score.

2. Human-like responses – As a customer service agent might receive many queries every day, we tend to provide a copy-paste response which is nothing but a way of creating customers frustration. So, you might want to train your representatives in a way which a customer feels that they are talking to an actual human who is working on their query. Some organizations use templates to respond faster, but there is a downside to this, customers do not like robotic responses, If they have contacted you with an issue, they expect to get an answer from a human and a precise answer to their query.

3. Active listening, Engaging conversation (In live Phone/Chat)– Customers want a representative to understand what they are asking, not listening properly and trying to resolve only part of the question they think they heard can also result in a customer’s frustration. And NO long pauses, no customer likes to be on hold for a long time. So, your representative needs to make sure that they are asking relevant questions and engaging with the customer every 1-2 minutes.

4. A good wrap up – Asking the customer if their issue is resolved, if they have any further questions and a good closing line like “have a great day ahead” is an excellent way to wrap up an interaction leaving your customer delighted.

So, in conclusion, CSAT is vital and achievable. If you care about your customer’s concerns and are ready to act on it, there is no stopping you from achieving customer satisfaction which results in a good brand reputation, and revenue. And providing an excellent service creates promoters, and it will result in your company gradually becoming the “My Brand” to your customers.