How exactly are you supposed to measure your customers’ happiness/satisfaction? You could always fall back on the old method of emailing them a customer survey to rate you out of 1 to 5, but is there a more effective way?
Give the People What They Want and Make it Snappy!
By far, the most important focus should be meeting your customers’ expectations first, before attempting to exceed them. I realise this sounds like a customer service paradox, but before you go breaking your neck trying to impress your customers, first consider whether you’re actually providing them with what they want and if that’s an easy thing for them to obtain.
In 2010, Harvard Business Review published a game-changing article called “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers”, where the authors showed that the average consumer is far more concerned with having their needs easily met, rather than having their expectations exceeded. They argue that surpassing your customers’ expectations doesn’t lead to loyalty, but making it easier for them to get what they want does.
So that’s step one: You’ll know your customers are satisfied with you as long as you give them what they want without a fuss. Step two gets a little more hairy…
How to Conduct a Survey without Pestering Customers
When it comes to measuring customer satisfaction, at some point you’ll have to go the old-fashioned route of asking a direct question. However, how creative you are with this will determine the number of responses you’ll receive, so try phrasing your questions in practical ways the customer can relate to.
One of the best ways to measure a customer’s loyalty to you is determining whether they’d recommend your services to their friends and family. Rather than asking how likely they are to recommend your services based on a scale, why not just ask:
Would you recommend our services to your family and friends? Yes or no.
This question requires little to no effort on the customers’ behalf, plus it’s a quick and easy question to answer and provides you with a world of insight. If most of your customers wouldn’t recommend you, something is wrong.
Support Team and Social Media Considerations
If you have a support team that assists customers with technical issues, analyse how many questions are coming through, what kind of questions arise and whether or not you see a pattern. Are you receiving consistent questions on the same topic? Then perhaps you need to focus there.
Social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, is an invaluable source of feedback, as more and more customers are tending to air their opinions on these forums. Whilst you may not get a statistically acceptable sample on social media, you will gain some vital customer feedback – insights that may pinpoint an area of customer unhappiness you need to address quick-smart. Oh, and don’t Google your business name to assist in finding mentions and opinions you might have otherwise missed.
Holding Onto Happiness
Keeping your happy customers happy is an art in itself, which is why Canity has the Dealing with Happy Customers series to show you just how to maximise on that happiness. In the meantime, measuring your customers’ satisfaction doesn’t have to be a headache for you or your customers: simply provide them with what they want, make it as easy as possible and start watching their loyalty and satisfaction grow!
