Every company should know which are the important customer satisfaction metrics to track in 2023. Customer satisfaction used to be a trendy term, but it is now a standard requirement for long-term success. Not measuring customer satisfaction is like asking your customers to unsubscribe from your service. Customer experience has become one of the most important factors determining the success of a business. That’s why tracking the right satisfaction metrics (NPS ®, CES, CSAT…) is crucial. What customer satisfaction metrics should you measure and why are they essential to business growth?
Why is customer satisfaction so important?
First and most importantly, happy customers are loyal customers. In addition to avoiding churn, it is also an important factor for your return on investment. Using good customer satisfaction metrics allows you to be more profitable and generate more revenue. An unhappy customer can be a good warning sign to question your processes, customer support or services. Today more than ever, the customer is centric: it is hand in hand with your customers that your product/service will evolve.
What are the benefits of customer satisfaction metrics?
A satisfied customer will tend to return to your business. Having a clear picture of your customer satisfaction has the advantage of keeping your customers loyal but also of improving and increasing word of mouth. A satisfied customer who tells another prospect about your services is worth their weight in gold. On the other hand, an unsatisfied customer spreads the bad word about your company. Investing in the right tools to interact and communicate with customers regularly is essential for any business.
Use the right tools to increase your customers’ satisfaction:
Customer satisfaction tools have become very important metrics in modern management and quality models. Therefore, some valid and reliable models have been developed to assess customer satisfaction and loyalty. Here are some of these tools:
Metric #1: NPS ® or Net Promoter Score ®
The Net Promoter Score ®, or “NPS ®”, is an efficient customer satisfaction tool for companies. To obtain an NPS ®, customers complete a simple survey that assesses how likely they are to recommend a company to a friend or acquaintance.
NPS ® is measured by your customer’s responses to the question “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely is it that you would recommend our customer service to a friend or colleague?”. Customers are then divided into 3 categories: Promoters, Passives and Detractors. Scores 0-6 are detractors, scores 7-8 are passives and scores 9-10 are promoters. Learn more about it in this article.
Another advantage is that you can benchmark your NPS ® score. By using industry NPS ® benchmarks, you can see how your NPS ® score compares to your competitors. This will give you a clear picture of your performance and customer satisfaction compared to the rest of your industry. For example, if you run a call center, any score above 50 is a good score. It means you have at least 50% more promoters than you do detractors.
There are several tips to improve customer care. Holding regular meetings to discuss the NPS® score, using NPS® feedback to train staff. Especially to make structural changes and see what works. Any company that wants to keep customer satisfaction high must focus on this score and continuously analyse it!
Metric #2: CES or Customer Effort Score
The CES survey explores how much effort a customer feels they have to put in to resolve a problem. Rather than simply measuring customer satisfaction, the CES takes an in-depth look at the customer’s experience as they go through the effort of interacting with your business. The Customer Effort Score is an index from 1 to 7. Usually, you sent it after interactions with customer service.
Use CES to help your customer service shorten resolution times and create better experiences. In this way, you can drastically reduce the churn rate. With CES surveys, the effort question is ideal for getting actionable feedback for specific use cases.
Metric #3: CSAT or Customer Satisfaction
CSAT is the abbreviation for Customer Satisfaction. It is a basic metric that measures how satisfied customers are with your company’s products and/or services. A good CSAT score varies depending on the sector of activity. Use the CSAT to identify problems within your company and especially to evaluate different parts of your company.
The CSAT score is on a scale of 0 to 100 and total customer satisfaction is 100%. The formula is the number of satisfied customers (those who answer 4 or 5) divided by the number of responses to the satisfaction survey multiplied by 100 to get the percentage of satisfied customers.
Metric #4: CDP or Customer Data Platform
First, did you ever heard about a CDP or customer data platform? It is a platform that helps you as a company to understand your customers. The CDP provides a true and unified view of customer behavior and transactions. It allows you, with the right configuration, to clean and store data in one place and not spread it across many different applications.
A CDP is even more than customer satisfaction metrics, it is a super-comprehensive and responsive database. It is easier to describe it with a practical example. Let’s think about your last online purchase:
- You searched in your search engine for “the best ecological coffee machine”
- Than, you visited several coffee machine review websites
- Also, you have visited some retailers that sell eco-friendly coffee machines
- Finally you watched a few videos to learn more about the technical details of green coffee machines.
After searching for the best place to buy it and visiting various websites to compare costs, delivery times, etc. you finally decide to go ahead with the purchase of this coffee machine. During the process, you probably interacted several times with the company you finally bought the coffee machine from (via Messenger, WhatsApp or online advertisements). Does each interaction with this company seem more and more personalized, do the ads seem relevant? It is likely that the company in question uses a customer data platform (CDP) to tailor its marketing to your needs. As a company, you can complete your customer satisfaction strategy by combining various metrics, tools and communication channels.
Difference between CDP and CRM
This is why there is an important difference between a CDP and a CRM. CRM is not as good from a marketing point of view. CDP is more advanced in deploying an omnichannel strategy and communicating in a hyper-personalized way with your potential customers. That’s customer experience!
Once you have your metrics, choose your customer’s favourite channel
Now you know which customer satisfaction metrics to choose, you have also several alternatives to send your surveys. Indeed, several channels exist to send your satisfaction surveys. This is where you push customer satisfaction even further. Which channel (or channels) do your customers prefer? Does your customer mix different communication channels? Several alternatives exist. You can learn more about it in this article about customer survey alternatives. You’ll learn how to choose between E-mail, SMS or Voice depending on your customers.
It seems that you’re all settled! You know all about the best customer satisfaction metrics to track and the channels to use. Let’s improve customer satisfaction in your business right now. Naxai can fit your needs to improve the customer satisfaction rate in your company. Ask for a demo!
