How to Measure Customer Satisfaction

This is the worst restaurant I’ve been to in my entire life!

That website is so annoyingly slow. Don’t even waste your time trying to read something there.

I really hope that nobody will ever buy this software again. This interface is so frustrating!

When you read these, it doesn’t seem too difficult to estimate customers’ satisfaction level, right? But what happens when things aren’t so clear? What if they love your products, but they hate your support? What if you need more constructive feedback to make things better for your customers?

Well, you have to understand how to measure customer satisfaction by expressing it in meaningful, comparable, and unbiased numbers. And that’s what we’re helping you learn in this article. 

What is Customer Satisfaction & Why is it so Important?

Generally speaking, customer satisfaction represents the way your customers feel about your brand. 

Accordingly, customer satisfaction metrics are important business assets that show how happy your customers are with the products or services that you provide. 

These metrics comprise different phases of your customers’ journey and help you realize their thoughts and emotions in each of those phases. 

There are 4 Ps of customer satisfaction. That include Product, Policies, People, and Proces.

Customer satisfaction as a category is extremely important to track because it helps you know how loyal your customers are to the brand. And, your customers’ loyalty is a cornerstone of every successful and sustainable business. 

To begin with, a high level of customer satisfaction significantly reduces their churn rates and bounce rates. Besides, it also provides you with a stable income, so you don’t have to spend too much money trying to attract new customers to do business successfully.

And these are only some of the reasons why more and more businesses keep focusing on customer satisfaction metrics and investing in this business aspect. So, read on and check out more of them in the following section. 

Key Benefits of Measuring Customer Satisfaction

Like we’ve already said, customer satisfaction level has an incredible impact on your business performance as happy customers bring some awesome advantages to your business results. 

Apart from increasing cost-effectiveness and customer loyalty, which we’ve already mentioned, the high satisfaction level enhances your business performance in numerous other ways, as well. And that’s what makes satisfaction-related parameters incredibly important to track.

So, let’s check what you can expect if you pay more attention to tracking and improving your customers’ opinions and feelings.

1. High customer satisfaction level helps you gain the status of a recommended brand

There’s no better marketing than word of mouth. And happy, loyal customers are those who will make it possible for your brand to become a widely known and trustworthy option in your product or service niche. 

2. High customer satisfaction level helps you stand out from the competition 

If you become recognized as a brand that offers high-quality products and reliable service, while providing excellent customer experience, you get a chance of becoming the first business that new customers will reach out to if they need a product from your niche. This way, you’ll be standing out from the rest of your market competitors, leaving them behind. 

3. High customer satisfaction level reduces the risks when launching new products or services

Once you’ve already established a positive reputation and successfully developed products or services that customers like, you’ll have greater chances of making your new products a success as well. Your satisfied customers will be more open to testing them out. 

4. High customer satisfaction level makes your customers into your allies

If you’re capable of keeping your customers happy and, therefore, loyal, then you should utilize this trust by and collaboration to both additionally improve your relationship and get new ideas for your further product and service development. 

5. High customer satisfaction level reduces your customers’ price sensibility

The truth is, if your customers are aware of the quality and reliability that you provide, it will be easier for them to spend more money on your brand. In other words, they will know that they will be using their money for something that impeccably satisfies a certain need, so they’ll be less focused on the price and more focused on the value they’ll get. 

How to Measure Customer Satisfaction: 5 Essential Steps

If you’re wondering how to measure & achieve customer satisfaction, in the first place, you have to realize that it should be a well-planned and carefully designed process.

If you don’t measure customer satisfaction in a consistent and well-thought manner, you may end up with some unrealistic data that won’t be too helpful. Instead, the misleading numbers and, therefore, partial interpretations may jeopardize your business performance. 

To help you measure customer satisfaction properly, we’ve created a list of essential steps to follow. So, read on and make sure to get the most out of measuring customer satisfaction by sticking to them.

1. Plan every single detail of measuring customer satisfaction 

To be able to measure customer satisfaction properly, first, you have to plan the entire process and make it purposeful. In other words, it should be helpful to you when working on achieving your goals. So, to be able to determine your customer satisfaction measurement tools meaningfully, you should first decide what your goal is. Some of the goals you may set up can be:

• the improvement of product/service quality, 
• the improvement of your customer support system, 
• the improvement of your customer experience on your social media or website landing pages, etc.

2. Define the relevant customer satisfaction metrics for your business 

Not all businesses require the same metrics to be able to successfully analyze customer satisfaction. That’s why you should think about your customers and those critical factors that shape their experience and satisfaction. For some businesses, these valuable metrics may refer to their: 

• website and shopping experience, 
• product or service performance, 
• the quality of customer support service, 
• the business image from the customers’ perspective, 
• customers’ loyalty, etc.  

Finally, what matters the most in the process of measuring client satisfaction is to only keep track of the metrics that really make an impact on your business and not to waste time on the calculations that won’t take you anywhere. 

So, what are the essential metrics for measuring customer satisfaction?

Some of the most valuable metrics that businesses frequently rely on, no matter the size or industry, are the Net Promoter Score, the Customer Effort Score, and the Customer Satisfaction Score. So, let’s check out how to use these methods of measuring customer satisfaction to obtain realistic and useful results.

I. Net Promoter Score

The NPS is an easily calculated metric that helps you figure out how interested your customers are in recommending your brand to other people. Practically speaking, this metric quantifies your customers’ emotional attachment to the product or service they’re buying from you, and therefore, their willingness to spread the word about it as well as remain loyal customers. 

Now, How to calculate NPS? The calculation of this metric includes three major processes: 

On a scale of 0 to 10, how would you describe your likeliness to recommend our brand to your friends and colleagues?

B. The categorization of the collected answers, which practically divides all your customers into three major segments:

• Those who give you a 9 or 10 out of 10 should be considered loyal customers that are pretty likely to share a positive recommendation, also known as promoters. 
• Those who give you a 7 or 8 out of 10 should be considered neutral.
• Those who give you no more than a 6 out of 10 should be considered as a critical group, representing the frustrated and disappointed customers, which may end up sharing negative comments about your business. They are also known as detractors.

C. The subtraction of detractor percentage from the promoter percentage. This calculation will provide you with a score between -100 and 100. It’s in your best interest to get the highest possible score, as high scores improve your likeliness of getting recommended.

Third, subtract the percentage of detractors (0-6 answers) from the percentage of promoters (10-9 answers). 

II. Customer Effort Score

The CES represents an easy way of calculating the time your customers need to perform a complete action. So, practically, you can use it for any type of action, including placing an order, making a purchase, complete interaction with your support staff, solving an issue with your product, etc.

Based on this analysis, CES lets you identify the difficulties your customers may have to experience during their shopping journey. Thanks to this identification, you can try and solve the problem areas to avoid future frustrations and improve customer experience.

To calculate CES, all you need to do is:

A. Create a statement that you want to be evaluated by your customers, such as: 

The purchase process was effortless. 

The support agent provided relevant information.

B. Provide a scale with marks from 1 to 7. Indicate that 1 means that they don’t agree at all while 7 means that they absolutely agree.

C. Collect the feedback and calculate your average score (the total sum of marks in responses divided by the number of respondents). The higher this score is, your customers are more likely to complete the tasks fast and effortlessly. 

Optionally, you can also add some extra space for them to leave additional feedback with the explanations of the marks they left in the survey.

III. Customer Satisfaction Score

Helping you quantify customers’ satisfaction with your product, service, or an interaction with your support staff; CSAT lets your customers rate their experience using a 1 to 5 metric scale. On this scale, number 1 represents the lowest level of satisfaction, and number 5 refers to the highest satisfaction level. 

So, to calculate CSAT, you should:

A. Make a question followed by a scale. Some examples of representative questions are:

How would you rate your satisfaction with the purchased product?

How satisfied are you with your recent live chat session with our agent?

B. Collect the data and divide the number of satisfied customers by the number of survey responses. Then, multiply the obtained value by 100 to make it into a relevant percentage. 

Read More: What is Customer Effort Score & How to Measure it.

3. Create an adequate survey that reflects your goals

Depending on business goals and nature, customer satisfaction surveys may have different purposes and ways of being sent to customers. 

For instance, the most popular surveys that are frequently used by a diversity of businesses are the post-service surveys. Like their name says, they follow certain services that you provide and refer to your customers’ experience afterward. It’s essential to have this survey completed while customers’ impressions are still fresh.

The two most efficient types of surveys, depending on the complexity of your questions and the preferred way of sending and collecting them, are:

1. the in-app survey, which is usually a quick survey that comprises just a couple of questions and requires instant feedback, and it’s sent to your customers while they’re still using the service. 
2. the email survey, which makes it possible for you to ask a larger number of questions and provide enough time for your customers to answer them when they are ready.
3. the post-service survey, which helps you capture customer satisfaction scores post providing a service. For example, you can create post-chat survey forms and send them via mail or show one in the chat window once a chat comes to an end. With your live chat software, you can capture their experience with the brand and the operator.

Now, once you choose your ideal type of survey, you should also think about the ways to build it. Apparently, speaking of the creation of adequate surveys, we don’t only think about the ways of sending them, or just about the use of questions that reflect your goals (even though that’s extremely important!). We’re also referring to the technicalities that this process consists of. 

So, to make sure that you’ve created your survey in the best possible way, apart from having well-thought b2b customer satisfaction survey questions and a convenient sending strategy, you should also pick the right form of the survey and use a reliable platform or tool to build it.

And if you’re looking for a free survey maker that you can put your trust into, then you may want to test ProProfs Survey, as this platform, based on the drag-and-drop system, lets you choose among a diversity of options that you can base your survey on. 

4. Think about the right moment to send your survey to your customers

Depending on the purpose of your survey and the thoroughness of the information you want to collect, you should be careful with the survey timing. 

So, to measure your customers’ satisfaction after a certain interaction they had with your customer service, you should send the survey right after providing that survey. And if you want to check how they feel about your product or service, you should give them some time to test them out and form an experience-based opinion. 

No matter whether you choose to collect your customers’ feedback right after an interaction or waiting some time, what matters the most is not to be annoying and constantly keep sending new surveys. It’s highly important to respect your customers’ time and space if you want your surveys to provide meaningful and accurate results. 

5. Make sure to use the obtained data properly

No survey can help you measure customer satisfaction if you don’t know how to use the feedback that you obtained. So, first of all, you have to scan the surveys and look for the issues that appear in them. Once you’re aware of the most frequent issues, you should analyze them profoundly to be able to fix them.

First of all, you should define the touchpoint at which your customers experience the problematic situation and try to understand why the problem appears. Then, you should deepen your knowledge of the problem by realizing both direct and indirect negative effects that are provoked by that issue.

Finally, once you’re aware of all these aspects, you have to decide what departments should be working on fixing this problem and its effects to avoid further complications. 

So, if you’re capable of using the obtained data in the right way, you’ll soon be able to notice the improvements in your customers’ experience, as you’ll be addressing their pain points and adjusting critical processes to suit their needs.

Best Practices to Measure Customer Satisfaction

There is a poll conducted by Call Centre Helper, how businesses measure customer satisfaction in their organization? And the result shows most businesses contact measure customer satisfaction via post contact surveys (70%), followed by analyzing routine samples of the customer base (49%).

Now that we’ve answered the questions Why and how to measure customer satisfaction, let’s deepen this knowledge with some useful and practical tips. These best practices in measuring customer satisfaction will help you obtain the most precise and accurate results. 

#1 Don’t even think about measuring customer satisfaction without surveys

Not only are they the most efficient way of collecting data, but they’re also the most convenient option for your customers as well. They will be more likely to fill in a two-question form than to answer endless questions of your call operators or send emails with the feedback on their own. 

#2 Ask your customers to provide feedback in a polite and unobtrusive manner

If you’re too pushy or spammy, not only will you end up ignored, but you’ll also increase your customers’ frustrations, and, probably, make them go away instead of staying and sharing their honest opinions. What you may want to do if you’re not happy with the number of customers leaving feedback is find a way to incentivize their involvement and engagement. 

#3 Make sure to create surveys that are easily completed

By this, we refer to reducing the time of filling in the survey as much as possible, saving your customers time. And this is succeeded by asking only the most relevant survey questions and formulating them clearly and concisely.

It’s also incredibly important to keep your business opinions and attitudes away from your surveys. Don’t try to lead customers towards certain answers and ask biased questions, as it may only make you seem sneaky and jeopardize the objectivity of your results. 

Bonus Read: Advantages And Disadvantages of Surveys

#4 Don’t rely on direct feedback only

Apart from using surveys to obtain direct feedback from your customers, you may also want to consider their thoughts and opinions that they don’t share directly via live chat sessions with your agents or an email to your support. 

Some of the ways of getting to know more about their experiences with your brand are the research of different online communities, such as forums and focus groups, where they share their impressions and discuss products, as well as social media groups, pages, and personal profiles (as long as they are public). 

#5 Provide a way of leaving feedback on every channel that you use

If you communicate with your customers using several channels, and only offer the possibility of completing a satisfaction survey and leaving feedback at one of those channels, you’re losing valuable chances of collecting complete and thorough feedback.

So, make it possible for customers to talk to you about your business wherever they feel like it. Live chat, emails, call centers, social media, special offline meetings… it’s up to you. 

Related Read: 5 Channels for Collecting Customer Feedback

Measure Customer Satisfaction: A Key to Stable Business Future

As you’re probably aware by now, there’s no realistic and unbiased image of your relationship with your clients without measuring customer satisfaction. And even if you’re trying to measure it, if you’re doing it the wrong way, without a thorough plan and clear goals on your mind, you may end up using the wrong customer satisfaction metrics and obtaining useless results. 

So, if you want to work on your relationship with your customers seriously, you better had your measurement strategy well-planned. And by this, we refer to:

• Determining your business goals and a satisfaction measurement strategy that follows those goals,

• Choosing the most appropriate ways to measure customer satisfaction in the case of your business, 
• Learning what metrics to observe and how to explain and use the obtained numbers,
• Taking into consideration customer feedback provided indirectly, as well. 

Only when you’ve successfully come through all these phases that prepare you for a reliable and professional customer satisfaction measurement, you can expect the results that will help you improve your business position and relationship with customers. The process of measuring may require some time and effort, but the results and hints that they will provide you are absolutely worth it. 

Now that we’ve seen how measuring customer satisfaction is important and how it helps you improve your business, let’s take a look at some of the frequently asked questions below.

Why is it important to measure customer satisfaction?

The reason why it is important to measure customer satisfaction is that you should know who is loyal to your brand, why some ended up leaving you, how much revenue increment does your brand loyals bring in, and how you can further improve and personalize the brand experience for your existing customers.

How to measure customer satisfaction without surveys?

There are various ways through which you can measure customer satisfaction without using surveys. Some of them are inclusive of techniques such as stepping into the customer’s shoes by checking out what they are saying about your brand on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and even Instagram.

You can also start your own community, whether it is on your website or through a Facebook page. This will allow you to understand what’s going on in the customer’s mind easily. Besides these, you can create an open forum too. Here you can monitor the issues closely that customers end up saying publicly and improve your services accordingly.

How to track customer satisfaction?

To track your customer satisfaction rate, you can always go back to sources such as customer feedback surveys, customer emails that are sent to report a bug, query or issue, usability tests, conversations that take place with customers via phone, email or chat, website feedback boxes, social media forums, website analytics, and focus groups too.

How to achieve customer satisfaction?

There are multiple practices that you can take into account when planning to achieve customer satisfaction. You and your support members should make sure that when having a conversation with customers, hearing is not enough.

Coming up with solid solutions that offer instant gratification to your customers is also essential. Plus, always be responsive. So, just in case you think that your team might end up losing customers through phone support, add more platforms such as live chat and email to never miss an opportunity.

Other than that, make sure that you know your customers and what keeps them happy. Also, make sure that your team and you never miss out on brand awareness opportunities too.