How to Determine customer satisfaction metrics

It’s a given that a lot goes into creating a business and selling products.  After all, you must juggle your own employees and budget concerns along with sales figures and any other financials.  Sometimes, the happiness of our customers can be ignored, however unintentionally, which can have a serious effect on our number crunching.

Why is that?  Well, people stop buying if they aren’t happy with a product, of course.  However, overall image of a brand and their behavior can influence satisfaction levels as well.  That is why it’s so important to collect and analyze data surrounding this issue.  If you’re not sure how it all works, stick around!

What is Customer Satisfaction?

Not sure what it is?  Well, sometimes it is known as CSAT, as an abbreviation.  It is the overall levels of happiness that a customer has for a given product they have purchased.  A few things go into this – those being overall quality and value compared with expectations based on the brand and price point.

When considering this, it’s a good idea to identify who your customers are.  I’m sure you already have a target demographic, but this is not always indicative of who is actually generating your sales.  Try to look at the statistics of age ranges, genders, and even common interests.  This can help you get a better understanding of who they are.

Why it Matters

I know – to some of this, it is rather clear why we should care about this aspect of business.  However, I’m going to explain it anyway.  You might even learn something new!

You see, the higher a CSAT score, the more trust you build in your brand.  This will lead to your buyers spreading the word to their friends and family.  This is a critical part of building a network of consumers, though it seems like a simple concept.

Think about it, though.  We are much more likely to purchase a product that a friend or family member has recommended to us than something random we see online in an advertisement.  Apply that concept to your own company.

Something important to keep in mind that if a consumer stays loyal to your brand and makes repeat purchases, you will see an increase in profits.  This means that you should focus on retention as well as finding new markets.  All these things will compound and lead to more word being spread, too!

One concern that many companies are facing is something known as customer “churning” – many people switch where they buy from at least once a year, and sometimes more than that.  Why is this happening?  Well, somewhere along the line, there are low levels of satisfaction.

These are just a few reasons that knowing your customer satisfaction metric is so important, and I’m sure you can think of more.  However, let’s shift gears a little.  Next, I’ll cover what the statistics to pay attention to are, and how to gather them.

What to Track

First, you could try a rather simple measurement that asks the question outright.  This might be something like “how satisfied are you with your service?” or “how happy are you with your purchase?” This can give you a broad idea of these levels.

You see, you should try to get an idea of happiness levels for customers at every step in a transaction.  This includes customer service, of course.  If you are an e-commerce website, try to determine if their experience on your page was a good one.  If not, there are things you can do to tweak this.

If their dissatisfaction lies with the product, do your best to understand why.  Enforce stricter quality checks if applicable.  While in some cases it may just not have been their taste, it’s always a good idea to study reasons for displeasure and try to remediate them for the future.

You can get a better idea of some of the surveys to provide by looking here, https://www.forbes.com/sites/micahsolomon/2018/06/10/the-four-elements-of-customer-satisfaction-how-to-achieve-it-over-and-over-again/?sh=2f82a07d28c2.  Another good thing to look at is overall levels of loyalty to your brand.

While someone being happy with their purchase does not immediately make them loyal, there are ways we can connect the two on our ends.  To figure out these levels you could ask something such as “would you recommend this product to a family member or friend?” Following up with “why or why not?” is also a good idea.

A final option is to ask if they are going to purchase again.  This is another way to check levels of loyalty and of course satisfaction.  If you implement all these measurements, you will start to get a better picture of the overall state of customer happiness with your business.  You should remember to keep track of these statistics as much as possible, because you’ll regret it if you don’t!

*This is a collaborative post.