Top 5 metrics for measuring customer satisfaction

More than 90% of unhappy customers will never choose to do repeat business with you. But, 95% will if you fix their complaint instantly according to Lee Resource, Inc. As a smart business owner or manager, your priority needs to be creating satisfied customers.

In today’s customer-focused business world, that means you need to view customers as the boss.  At the very least, focus on their concerns and satisfaction. Highly satisfied customers become another sales arm for your business. How? Happy customers are more willing to refer others, leave reviews, and generate a buzz about their experience with your business. Unhappy customers can be deadly to your business spreading negativity and refusing to return.

Take a look at your current goals. Are they focused on creating happy customers? Are they focused on driving growth? If it’s the latter, to see success, you will need to build a customer-centric plan to achieve growth. The first step in the process is to track customer satisfaction.

What is Customer Satisfaction?

Customer satisfaction is often used to gauge how well a business delivers on customer expectations. While most businesses want to know how satisfied their customers are, the majority don’t track their success. A customer satisfaction score gives businesses insight into what customers expect, where the business is failing, and how to make it right.

What metrics really matter in customer satisfaction scores?

There is a never-ending list of metrics you can track.  But do they all actually tell you if a customer is satisfied? Some only touch the surface of customer’s view and thoughts, leaving you to think they are happy when they’re not. It’s important to establish a set of criteria that digs deep and lets you see the underlying measures of customer satisfaction.

Here are our top five metrics that give you the answers you need to build a better customer experience, improve satisfaction rates, and grow your business.

1. Customer feedback.

Your customers hold the information you need, and it makes sense to ask them to share this information. Make it part of every customer conversation to ask if the customer is satisfied with the outcome of the call, live chat, e-mail, or text conversation. Your service representatives can ask for this information, and you can create automatic surveys for the customer to receive when the conversation comes to an end.

Don’t limit measuring customer satisfaction based on customer-initiated communication. Create a process where a sales representative reaches out to customers 30 days after purchase. Being proactive increases the authenticity of your customer satisfaction score so it’s not skewed by high call-in rates.

2. What is the response time to inquiries?

When customers reach out to your business, they expect a response that answers their questions. In some cases, they expect a near-instant reply. Measuring call wait times along with response times to emails, live chat, etc. shows you exactly what the customers experience is when they contact you.  Long response or call waiting times typically mean the customer will be less satisfied with the outcome.

3. Call trends.

Every customer has unique needs. When they contact your business, it’s not to make small talk. Tracking why customers contact you gives you as part of your process gives you access to information to identify customer trends. Train your representatives to tag conversations with the reason. Consistently review these tags to determine common trends.  If customers only reach for negative reasons, your customer satisfaction scores will suffer. It’s important to take proactive steps to fix negative trends and keep your customers onboard.

4. Net promoter score.

A net promoter score (NPS) measures how willing the customer is to recommend you to others. Those willing to recommend you to others are typically satisfied with your products or services.

It’s an easy question to include when you ask if they are satisfied with the outcome. It lets customers rate you on a scale of 0-10 and then determines which are promoters and which are not. Calculating your net promoter score gives you the opportunity to find out what non-promoters need to become promoters.

5. First call resolution rates.

First call resolution rates is one of the most important metric to track in your business. How many customer calls are resolved on the first contact? How many require a call back to the customer? How many result in multiple follow-up calls from the customer until they get the answer they want. Customers that don’t get their questions or complaint resolved on the first call are less likely to be satisfied with your business.

Speech and customer engagement analytics can help you track all five metrics of customer satisfaction. Analyzing 100% of conversations, whether they happen over the phone, email, webchat or social provides actionable data on first call resolution, net promoter scores, response times and trends and other metrics that are important to your business.

Takeaway

Understanding every layer of the customer’s thought process is the key to tracking and improving customer satisfaction. Highly satisfied customers are less likely to take their business elsewhere which means you generate more revenue with increased sales and fewer marketing expenses. Use these five metrics to make sure you have an accurate picture of your customer satisfaction score.