Bulletproof Ways to Manage Customer Satisfaction in 2024
- Managing customer satisfaction is crucial for businesses as it leads to loyal customers who will stay with them long-term.
- By actively managing customer satisfaction, agencies can reap benefits such as less customer churn and fewer subscription downgrades.
- To ensure high levels of customer satisfaction, agencies should focus on consistency, communication, and customization across all touch-points.
Managing clients doesn’t just come down to answering their questions like a robot. You need to know their needs and anticipate potential issues. You’ll be rewarded with loyal customers who’ll stay with you for a long time.
In order to achieve that, you need to manage customer satisfaction. And for that, there are many metrics to track, and a dozen of things to keep in mind.
Follow me along as I introduce you to strategies that will help you improve your customer satisfaction.
Why it’s vital to manage customer satisfaction
Happy wife, happy life—what is true in human relationships also goes for those between businesses and their customers. Imagine your agency is delivering services on time, your employees know the clients well, and everyone is happy—so happy, that customers are leaving reviews on their own, and willingly upgrade to a higher tiered package.
Isn’t that every agency owner’s dream? Dream’s do come true, you only have to work for it. Customer satisfaction isn’t a situation of rolling the dice and seeing what happens next. You can actively manage it, control it, shape it.
Only then are you able to reap the benefits of happy customers, namely less customer churn, fewer subscription downgrades, and less stress looking for new leads.
10 customer satisfaction metrics to track in 2024
How do you know if your customers are satisfied with your work? Luckily, there are a few metrics to help you out.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): NPS is a widely used metric that measures customer loyalty and likelihood to recommend a company’s products or services. It involves asking customers a single question: “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?” Responses are given on a scale of 0–10, with scores of 9–10 considered promoters, 7–8 passives, and 0–6 detractors. The final NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters, resulting in a score ranging from -100 to 100.
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): CSAT measures customer satisfaction with a specific interaction or overall experience. It typically involves asking customers a single question, such as “How satisfied were you with your experience?” Responses are usually scored on a scale of 1–5 or 1–10, with higher scores indicating greater satisfaction.
Customer Effort Score (CES): CES measures the ease of doing business with a company, focusing on the effort required by customers to accomplish a task, such as resolving an issue or making a purchase. It involves asking customers a single question, like “How easy was it to solve your problem with our company today?” Responses are typically scored on a scale of 1–7, with lower scores indicating less effort required.
Customer Churn Rate: Customer churn rate measures the percentage of customers who stop doing business with a company over a given time period. It’s calculated by dividing the number of customers lost during a period by the total number of customers at the beginning of that period. Lower churn rates indicate better customer retention and satisfaction.
Other notable customer satisfaction metrics
In addition to the metrics discussed above, agencies should consider tracking:
First Contact Resolution (FCR): The percentage of customer issues resolved on first contact with customer support.
Average Resolution Time: The average time taken to resolve customer issues or inquiries.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): The total revenue a customer is expected to generate over their lifetime with a company.
Customer Retention Rate: The percentage of customers who remain with a company over a given time period.
Net Promoter Score for Detractors (NPS-D): A variation of NPS that focuses specifically on understanding and addressing the concerns of detractors.
Customer Health Score: A composite metric that combines multiple data points, such as product usage, support interactions, and survey responses, to provide an overall assessment of a customer’s relationship with a company.
By tracking a diverse set of customer satisfaction metrics and analyzing the relationships between them, companies can gain a holistic view of the customer experience and make data-driven decisions to improve the metrics.
Understanding the 3 c’s of customer satisfaction
In order to ensure that your customers leave high ratings, let’s look at the three c’s of customer satisfaction.
Consistency: the foundation of customer satisfaction. Customers expect reliable, predictable experiences across all touch-points, from the quality of your services to the attention to details they receive. Maintaining brand standards and messaging across channels is crucial to building trust and loyalty.
Communication: clear, transparent, and timely communication is essential for customer satisfaction. Customers want to be kept informed about their orders, issues, and any changes that may impact their experience. Active listening and prompt responses to inquiries show customers that you value their feedback and care about their needs.
Customization: in today’s competitive landscape, customers expect personalized experiences tailored to their individual needs and preferences. By using customer data and insights, you can customize your offerings and interactions to create a more engaging and satisfying experience.
Tracking & measuring customer satisfaction
The easiest customer satisfaction metric to track is the CSAT score. In SPP, we’ve created a simple emoji-based poll that you can enable for your tickets and orders.
Once they are marked as complete, customers can rate the order or ticket with an emoji, assigning a score from one to five, the latter being the highest score. You can then export ticket and order ratings, and use as follows:
5-star rating: ask for a review on TrustPilot
4-star rating: request feedback what you could’ve done better
lower ratings: inquire why they weren’t very happy
While ratings from one to three can be used as an indication that there is room for improvement, use the 4-star rating to show the customer you care about their happiness, and the 5-star rating to get a testimonial or review.
Receive ratings for your projects and tickets.
Implementing proven customer loyalty strategies
To keep your customers happy, and increase the ratings they give you, you can follow industry best practices, and rely on proven strategies, such as:
Loyalty program: A well-designed loyalty program is one of the most effective ways to incentivize repeat purchases and boost customer retention. By offering exclusive perks, rewards, and discounts based on a customer’s lifetime value, you can encourage them to keep coming back to your agency. Offer them dedicated account managers, or a more hands-on approach when it comes to your service delivery.
Personalization: Creating emotional connections with customers is crucial for building great agency-client relationships. Tap into your data and offer your customers services they might be interested in, for instance, someone ordering SEO services might want to also order backlinks.
Onboarding: Closing deals isn’t everything when it comes to happy customers. Invest in your customer’s onboarding experience to really convince them of your services. The onboarding can be anything from using an onboarding page in SPP to an introduction call.
Your customer satisfaction action plan
Customer satisfaction is the lifeblood of any successful business. By tracking the right metrics, analyzing feedback, and implementing proven strategies, you can create a customer experience that drives loyalty and growth.
Focus on consistency, communication, and customization across all touch-points. Empower your team to deliver exceptional service and continuously improve processes based on customer insights.
