A decade or two ago, customer satisfaction meant your customers are happy with the product or service they paid for. With the rise of social media use by brands and consumers, customer satisfaction became something more.
Today, it’s not just about making customers satisfied but also surpassing their expectations. If a customer’s expectations have been met and exceeded, they are more likely to sing praises about your brand online. Similarly, if the service they received was subpar, they go online to warn other people.
This goes to show that customer satisfaction is paramount to your business’ success. It leads to repeat sales and brand loyalty. So, it’s something that every business should try and focus on improving. Below, we share a few ideas on how you can increase customers’ satisfaction with your brand.
1. Listen to your customers.
It’s easy to tell your customers that you’ve heard their feedback. It’s harder to say you’ve listened—the difference between the two lies in the action you do or do not take. Listening means acknowledging your customers’ complaints and changing something in your process to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
2. Provide multichannel support.
Each of your customers has a preferred communication channel, whether it be e-mail, phone, or social media. With various communication channels available, it would be a great move for your brand to develop a multichannel support system that allows you to meet your customers on the channels they prefer to use.
3. Turn data into action.
With plenty of customer survey solutions available online, collecting data from your customers is easier than ever. Apart from collecting data, your goal for these customer surveys must be to uncover what your customers want and what gaps they perceive from your services.
But it’s not enough to simply collect data. When you have the details you need, you must also devise an action plan to work on customers’ suggestions and improve your overall process.
4. Be empathetic, not robotic.
In your services, it’s important that the customer feels like they matter to your business. In the era of automated responses and AI chatbots, any kind of personalization is welcome.
A good example is always using a customer’s name when addressing them and showing empathy and understanding for their concerns instead of giving them template responses. These tiny personalized moments make customers feel at home, which fosters familiarity and brand loyalty.
5. Don’t forget your employees.
As important as customer satisfaction is, you cannot forget about your employees too. In retail, especially, your employees are the ones directly interacting with customers, either on the ground as salespeople or as customer service representatives. As such, they can directly influence customer satisfaction.
If your employees are treated and compensated well, they are more likely to perform better at their jobs. If you don’t have one already, introduce an employee of the month program. Now and then, it’s also important to thank your employees so that they know they’re not being overlooked.
With all that said, keep in mind that there’s no one solution to improving customer satisfaction. It’s an ongoing process, and the key is to develop a customer-centric mindset.
