How to Measure Customer Satisfaction in 4 Proven Ways

Customer satisfaction is the degree to which a customer can be pleased with a brand. It describes how much the customers are satisfied with the quality of products or services, compensation service and price offered by a company.

It's no secret that a happy customer is a loyal customer. And, in turn, a satisfied customer will often be more likely to return for another purchase. Similarly, a dissatisfied customer will more likely to tell their friends or colleagues about their bad experience which ultimately leads to negative customer experience and affects sales.

According to this study: ‘’A dissatisfied customer will tell between 9-15 people about their experience. Around 13% of dissatisfied customers tell more than 20 people.’’

This is where customer satisfaction measurement comes in.

Why should you measure customer satisfaction?

Customer satisfaction is one of the first steps in addressing the common problems that exist between a business and its customers. This is why measuring customer satisfaction will produce positive results for your business and increase customer experience, especially if you continue to build on this measurement as part of your strategy.

Satisfaction is a key factor in lasting relationships, and it's increasingly important as more consumers have a choice of where they can go to do business. Customer satisfaction isn't just about keeping your current customers happy. It's about ensuring that your entire customer base is satisfied and will continue doing business with you.

There are many things that you need to be aware of when performing these assessments. Whether your business is small or large, this article will give you a step by step guide on how to effectively measure customer satisfaction in your company.

4 Proven Ways to Measure Customer Satisfaction in 2023

1. Cover All Channels

To get the best response, you must recognize and use the right channels to get feedback from your target customers. This can mean studying and understanding your customer demographic to gauge how receptive they are. Diversifying the channels through which you can get your customer feedback is a given.

There are four ways that you can reach your customers for feedback, and each of these may require different software and tools to measure customer satisfaction. Choosing the right channel also depends on the time of sending the feedback survey. Post-purchase, real-time feedback, triggered in-app survey, and more.

Another factor to consider is whether you’re looking to collect quantitative or qualitative data from your customer. This will dictate whether your feedback survey is in a long-form format or a quick click like the NPS  measurement.

The following are the different channels that can be used as customer satisfaction tools:

Email Survey

Email surveys are great to cover a broader brushstroke of customer experience feedback. More comprehensive, and also more likely to provide you with a wider set of post-purchase/service feedback, email format can be taken in long-form or short-form.

Customers are, however, less likely to respond to an email survey. But due to the comprehensive potential of this format, fewer responses are also enough to get you a goldmine of feedback. Other ways to engage your customers for feedback are with NPS, CSAT, or CAS questions.

Chat Survey

Live-chat surveys have a higher response rate and are closely related to customer service, as they can be used not only to measure customer feedback but also the performance of the support liaison.

This type of survey format can be used to collect real-time customer feedback, study and analyze customer behavior, and also get valuable insight into your entire customer service operation.

In-app Survey

In-app surveys, either in the form of pop-ups or otherwise, are a great way to get real-time feedback from your current customers.

The only downside of this type of feedback mechanism is that they do not have a lot of potential to be comprehensive or in-depth.

Website Survey

These are primarily made to gauge the website experience from the POV of your customers. It can also allow you to gain insights into the overall sales experience (buyer journey)  of your customer especially if you are an e-commerce website.

2. Use Monitoring Tools to Keep Track of Social Media Engagement

Social Media Monitoring Tools are made to look back and plan forward. They are measures of success and brakes to failures. In terms of gathering customer experience feedback, social media monitoring tools can be your hero.

71% of customers who had a positive social media experience with a brand are likely to recommend that brand to their friends and family. This is reflecting of not only the power of social media in today’s marketing world but also the sheer influence brands can have on people.

Social Media Listening is the process of keeping an ear out for what your customers are saying about you online and providing brand analytics for better-informed business decisions.

Social Media Monitoring Tools will help you understand your strengths and your fallacies online. This is especially important knowing that customers are less likely to express dissatisfaction on an official survey and much more likely to do it on social media.

The following are some of the industry leaders in  social media monitoring tools:

1. Hootsuite
2. Reputology
3. Mentionalytics
4. Nexalogy

Monitoring brand conversation online will facilitate a seamless customer feedback mechanism, as long as brands are ready for the harsher and at times somewhat needy world of social media.

3. Make a Solid Customer Satisfaction Survey Questionnaire

When making your customer satisfaction survey questionnaire, there are two ways to go about it: qualitative questions and quantitative questions. For the best result, you may integrate both to form a comprehensive and detailed survey to understand what you’re doing right and what’s not working.

However, it is also important to keep it brief, or customers are likely to abandon the survey altogether.

Quantitative Survey Questionnaire

The Quantitative feedback mechanism is a great way to analyze an overview of the entire customer experience in a numerical or machine-readable format. It can be great to provide you with quantifiable insights into your website, product, service, or app.

These insights are often retrieved using metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS). Customer Effort Score (CES), and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT).

Quantitative questions are to your advantage if you want to see if your product or service is a hit or miss and to analyze trends in sales and CX.

Qualitative Survey Questionnaire

Qualitative questions in your surveys can be the answers to a specific (or a broader) ‘why’, and provide you invaluable insights into the motivation, reasonings, and incentive for action (or inaction) of your customers.

One of the essential things that CX metrics lack is factoring in the human factor. In the sales funnel, there are checkpoints of human emotions that are often ignored by companies and at great costs. This is where qualitative questionnaires come in to allow you to peek into the thought processes of your valuable customers. In allowing ourselves to understand the context of customer complaints or satisfaction, we are making ourselves more human in the eyes of our buyers – and in turn, more accountable.

One of the most effective ways to use this type of metric is to have open-field questions.

Integration is the Answer

To craft a well-curated and thoughtful questionnaire that promises maximum returns, integrating the quantitative and the qualitative question style is a sure hit. Alone, neither of them is nearly as effective as they are when put together. Integrate, and get yourself the answers to the ‘what’ and the ‘why’.

4. Use key customer satisfaction metrics

There are three major metrics that most companies prefer to use with which you can measure customer satisfaction of your business.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

CSAT is one of the most popular surveys to measure customer satisfaction. They’re very easy to set up and they capture essential feedback from the customers.

CSAT surveys mostly contain closed ended questions (e.g., "How satisfied are you with the product?"), and they use a scale (e.g., "Very Satisfied," "Satisfied," "Neutral," "Unsatisfied," or "Very Unsatisfied").

Customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is a formula that gives you an idea of how loyal a customer is to your brand. It measures their level of satisfaction on a scale from 0-100.

Here’s how to calculate CSAT:

NPS (Net Promoter Score)

Net promoter score is a metric that measures how likely someone is to become a customer of your business (or, as they're sometimes called, promoters).

NPS is calculated by asking customers, "How likely are you to recommend us to friends and colleagues?"

To get an idea of how NPS can affect your business, think about this: If a company has an NPS of 50% or higher, that means half of the people who give them feedback will recommend them to others. That's huge!

This is a simple calculation that measures your likelihood to recommend your company to others. If you're not familiar with NPS, think of it like this: 0-10 = not at all likely, 10-20 = somewhat likely, 20-30 = very likely, 30-40 = extremely likely and < 30 = definitely not likely to recommend (even if you love them). The higher your score (the more positive your responses), the better!

How do you calculate it?

Segregated your customers into promoters (9-10), passives(7-8), and detractors (0-6). The final score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters.

CES (Customer Effort Score)

Customer effort score (CES) is a metric that measures the amount of effort and attention given to your customers by your organization. It’s a way to measure the degree of customer experience that you’re delivering on a daily basis.

The idea behind CES is simple: You want to know what your customers are thinking, feeling, and doing while they interact with your brand. And you want to know it in real time—so you can adjust what you’re doing based on their reaction.

For example, if they’re having trouble finding something on your site and they call you, it may be time for an overhaul of your homepage or landing page to make it easier for them. If they feel like they’re being ignored by one of your employees, maybe you need more training for that employee so he/she understands how important it is to respond as quickly as possible when customers reach out via social media or email.

Like CSAT, CES is also calculated by taking the number of customers who are satisfied and dividing it by the total number of responses. This figure is then multiplied by 100 to get a percentage.

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