You might think, shouldn't the rise of new technology increase customer satisfaction?  But, the reality is opposite. 

According to the Harvard Business Review, customer satisfaction is at the lowest point in the past two decades!

Why? Despite having every tech and automation at our fingers, why are companies unable to satisfy customers? 

This blog highlights key strategies and tools that you can use to improve your customer satisfaction. 

By the end of the blog, you will have the following key takeaways. 

Key Takeaways

• Customer satisfaction is a measure of how well a company meets or surpasses customer expectations.
• Improving customer satisfaction leads to increased customer retention, loyalty, cost savings, and positive word of mouth.
• Methods to measure customer satisfaction include visual and interactive surveys, in-product feedback, help center satisfaction ratings, NPS, CSAT, and CES.
• Strategies to improve customer satisfaction include proactive support, free product training, Tools to improve customer satisfaction include AI Copilot for customer support, bulk messaging, and team inbox.
• B2B customer satisfaction surveys are used to gather feedback from business customers on various aspects of their experience with the company.
• Top customer satisfaction surveys include Coca Cola, Kroger, Fred Meyer, Dollar General, and Panera Bread.

What is Customer Satisfaction?

Customer satisfaction is a business metric that reflects how happy customers are with a company's products, services, and overall experience. It's essentially a measure of how well a company meets or surpasses customer expectations.

What are the Benefits of improving customer satisfaction for your Business?

Improves Customer Retention

Acquiring new customers is more costly than retaining existing customers. When a customer is satisfied, they will stay longer with your brand. 

Fosters customer loyalty and advocacy

Customer satisfaction fosters a sense of loyalty to your brand. Loyal customers are less likely to be swayed by competitor offerings and are more resistant to marketing efforts from other brands.

Cost Effective in long long-term

If a customer is satisfied, they will stay with you. According to a study by Bain & Company, increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can lead to a profit increase of 25% to 95%.

In another study by InfoQuest, a delighted customer contributes 2.6 times as much revenue as a somewhat satisfied customer.

Why? Because satisfied and happy customers are naturally ready to buy more products or services from your business. They are naturally happy to try any of your new product launches. For example, Apple users love Apple products and will almost always buy headphones, laptops, and iPads instead of going with other brands. This increases Apple's overall revenue even without trying! 

Positive word of mouth 

Word of mouth is still the most effective marketing strategy today. A happy customer will always share product recommendations with his family and friends. According to a study, people believe family and friend's recommendations more than others. 

Another wonderful thing about satisfied customers is free and genuine advertising. People almost always ignore ads, many times. A satisfied customer will voluntarily advocate your product or services, which can create positive brand endorsement for your business. It also acts as a shield to protect your brand or product from negative reviews and publicity. 

How To Measure Your Customer Satisfaction?

Visual and Interactive Surveys

Visual services, like star ratings using emojis, are much better at getting feedback than plain text surveys as they are more intuitive, fast, and visually impactful. There are typically three types of visual surveys.

• Star surveys
• Smiley surveys
• Thumbs up/down surveys

The best times to display these surveys are after providing a specific service. For example, you can send a visual star survey when a customer checks out of their hotel room. 

In-product customer feedback and satisfaction surveys

Most companies use customer feedback after customers have gotten problems or help from customer service. But you don't have to limit yourself to this scenario. 

Top digital product companies like Google and Reddit incorporate customer feedback into their apps and products. This way, the customer gets the feedback form when actively using the product. Moreover, in-product customer feedback and satisfaction surveys are almost always more reliable than the ones taken after getting help from the customer service team.

Help center satisfaction ratings

Help center satisfaction ratings is a survey sent to customers after they receive support or help from the help center. How to collect this rating? Simply trigger an automated CSAT survey after the customer has been surfing the page for some time. 

Use essential metrics to track customer satisfaction 

Customer satisfaction metric gives a quantitative measure of your customer satisfaction. They are easy to track using automation software. Below are the critical customer satisfaction metrics that you should be tracking.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS measures how likely your customers will recommend your product or service to others. It shows a single question to your customer. The question is, "How likely are you to recommend the product to a friend or colleague?". Responses are typically on a scale from 0 to 10.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

This metric measures overall customer satisfaction after a specific interaction. Customers are asked to rate their satisfaction on a scale ranging from "Very Unsatisfied" to "Very Satisfied."

Formula:
CSAT% = (Number of positive responses / Total number of responses) x 100

Customer Effort Score (CES)

The customer Effort Score measures the ease of use in carrying out specific tasks from the customer side.  These tasks can range from making a payment to resolving an issue. It's measured on a scale of very difficult to very easy. 

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How to achieve your customer satisfaction?

Proactive support

Keeping customers waiting is the best way to upset them. The key factor contributing to declining customer satisfaction is the prolonged duration of processes utilized to address issues. This will frustrate your customers, and they will sometimes take their business elsewhere.  

This is where technology and automation help you. Let’s take an example. Suppose you can resolve the issue quickly by refunding the customer who doesn't want to continue with your service. If the refund is not huge, it must be automated. Customers won’t wait days to get in touch with a customer service agent to receive their refund. 

Another example of using automation in providing proactive support is chatbots automation. If visitors are experiencing issues while making a purchase, or surfing your site, they can use a chatbot to resolve the issue. Drift chatbots do this seamlessly. 

Offer free product training.

Have you ever hated a product because you couldn't figure out how to use it? Well, this often happens with buyers and can drastically slide down customer satisfaction. 

One way to combat this is by providing free product training. It doesn't have to be live training. You can provide guides, recorded demo videos, and short online courses to help customers understand your product and use it to its full potential. 

Semrush, an SEO software suite, has nailed this. They provide free online courses where the instructors demonstrate how to use Semrush software to accomplish many things like finding the right keywords, running an agency, building links, etc. 

Ensure seamless interaction

Most customers want to contact brands easily. It can be through call, email, social media, DMs, website forms etc. However, it's frustrating when they have to restart conversation again on every channel. That’s where omnichannel interaction comes into the scene. 

For example, suppose a customer contacted you through email, so when your customer support calls them to resolve issues, the customers shouldn't have to repeat the info on mail. This can be easily achieved through omnichannel support software, which links every support channel together. 

Train your team

Do you know when customers complain about service or product, it's almost always related to customer service who was not able to help the customer. Customer service teams play a huge role in satisfying customers and if they are not trained, it will definitely have negative repercussions. 

How do you train your team to boost customer satisfaction? 

• Have product knowledge- If your brand is selling a product, make sure that your team understands the product thoroughly and have used it themselves. This is because when Your customer support team understands how your product works, they can easily answer most of the product related questions instantly and enthusiastically. 
• Teach them how to communicate: A team of researchers conducted a survey where they tracked communications between employees and clients. The result was clear. Teams with fast response time, direct communication, and simple language received higher Net Promoter scores than teams who used difficult languages. 

Build customer-friendly policies 

Almost all businesses have policies regarding refund, sharing information, payment options, etc. When you build them, keep both your business and customers in mind. For example, make it easy to refund in case customers do not like your service/product. 

Here are some tips that will help you build customer-friendly policies.

• Having some flexibility. Rigid policy adherence in all cases can lead to a negative customer experience. For example, sometimes, people forget to cancel their subscriptions while their credits are charged for a month. In such a case, show some flexibility. 
• Fair cancellation policies - Have you seen some brands make it nearly impossible to cancel the service? Don’t be one of them. Make it easy for customers to cancel the service in case they don't like it. 

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Tools & Solutions to Improve your Customer Satisfaction

AI Copilot for customer support

AI copilot is an automated customer support tool that suggests responses based on past conversations from platforms like Slack. It's one of the best tools to improve customer satisfaction by providing accurate and timely responses.

Features of AI CoPilot include: 

• Ticket Deflection: It deflects 30% or more tickets. Which leads to faster issue resolution and reduced workload on customer support teams. 
• Sentiment and Summary Analysis: It also analyzes conversation sentiment at both the overall and participant levels. Based on the emotional tone of the conversation, this CoPilot also triggers workflows. Thus creating a personalized experience for the customer. It also summarizes the long conversation by providing insights and flagging the need for follow-ups with relevant teams.
• Smart Tagging: Sometimes, customer support teams cannot find the right messages in time. In such a scenario, the smart tagging feature of AI Copilot comes to the rescue. It categorizes conversations using company-specific categories to create better insights. This helps identify the knowledge gaps within the team and addresses customer issues more effectively. 

Bulk Messaging

Worknet’s Slack Bulk Messaging is designed to simplify and streamline the distribution of messages within the Slack platform.

• Broadcast Messages: Bulk messages tools help teams broadcast messages to multiple channels or individuals via DMs. Especially helpful when the product is facing outages and you need to update customers. 
• Elimination of Repetitive Tasks: Eliminates repetitive copying and pasting of messages when sending on various channels. Thus saving time and effort for the support team. 
• Boost Engagement: Initiating messages across various Slack channels and direct messages is intended to boost engagement. This can be crucial for ensuring that the relevant audience notices and acts upon important information.

Team Inbox

Customer agents are often at a loss as they don’t know what the customer conversed with previous agents. Worknet’s team inbox resolves this issue by centralizing locations for monitoring and responding to messages. This way, customer teams are constantly updated regarding past queries. 

Features of Team Inbox: 

• Centralizes information- It centralizes all channels within Slack into a single feed, thus allowing everyone to stay updated and respond on time. 
• Workload Organization: It helps teams organize their work, as they don't have to switch between the channels to answer the queries. 
• Integrated with the ticketing system - Worknet's Team Inbox allows users to escalate Slack conversations to their ticketing system. This integration ensures that conversations and support tickets are synchronized bi-directionally. In this way, teams can, seamlessly between Slack and their preferred ticketing environment.

What is b2b customer satisfaction survey?

A B2B customer satisfaction survey is a specific type of questionnaire designed to gather feedback from businesses that have purchased products or services from another business.  The goal is to understand their level of satisfaction with your company, identify areas for improvement, and ultimately strengthen the B2B relationship.

These surveys can be short and to the point, focusing on overall satisfaction, or they can be more in-depth, asking detailed questions about specific aspects of your product or service.  The right approach will depend on your specific needs and goals.

Top 5 Customer satisfaction survey

1. Coca Cola Customer Satisfaction Survey: This survey is designed to gather feedback from customers on their experiences with Coca Cola products and services. It typically includes questions about the taste of the products, the convenience of purchasing them, and the overall satisfaction with the brand. By gathering this feedback, Coca Cola can identify areas for improvement and make changes that will increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
2. Kroger Customer Satisfaction Survey: This survey is used by Kroger, a large grocery chain, to gather feedback from its customers. It includes questions about the cleanliness of the stores, the availability of products, and the friendliness of the staff. By gathering this feedback, Kroger can identify areas for improvement and make changes that will improve the shopping experience for its customers.
3. Fred Meyer Customer Satisfaction Survey: Fred Meyer is a subsidiary of Kroger and uses a similar survey to gather feedback from its customers. It includes questions about the shopping experience, the availability of products, and the friendliness of the staff. By gathering this feedback, Fred Meyer can identify areas for improvement and make changes that will improve the shopping experience for its customers.
4. Dollar General Customer Satisfaction Survey: This survey is used by Dollar General, a discount retailer, to gather feedback from its customers. It includes questions about the cleanliness of the stores, the availability of products, and the friendliness of the staff. By gathering this feedback, Dollar General can identify areas for improvement and make changes that will improve the shopping experience for its customers.
5. Panera Bread Customer Satisfaction Survey: This survey is used by Panera Bread, a bakery-cafe chain, to gather feedback from its customers. It includes questions about the quality of the food, the cleanliness of the restaurants, and the overall satisfaction with the brand. By gathering this feedback, Panera Bread can identify areas for improvement and make changes that will increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

By using these surveys, businesses can gain valuable insights into the needs and wants of their customers and make changes that will improve their satisfaction and loyalty. This can ultimately lead to increased sales and revenue for the business.

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Conclusion

Happy customers keep the business going. It's time to organize your customer support service and raise customer satisfaction rates. We have designed Worknet.ai by keeping both customer and employee needs in mind. We focus on reducing the support team's workload while getting customers' queries answered on time. Try out Worknet today.

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