“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”

As said by Bill Gates, these words stand true for fundamentally any business whose revenue depends on customer response.

Without customers, your business would cease to exist. As a marketer, you need to understand how to gain new customers and retain them. And customer retention can only happen if you pay attention to their grievances, act on them, and create a personalized and happy experience at the end of the day.

This is where customer satisfaction comes into the picture. The following blog will provide you with a detailed account of how customer satisfaction determines your business’ growth and what measures to take to keep your business up and running. So, take out your notepads, and let’s begin.

What is customer satisfaction?

Customer satisfaction discerns whether your business will bloom or doom. It is a tool to determine how happy a customer is with your company’s service and how likely are they to recommend your services to their friends or family. A happy customer is synonymous with the success of your business.

A happy customer doesn’t solely refer to receiving a high-quality product in less time, but the overall experience of how satisfied they felt throughout the buying process.

Why is Customer Satisfaction important?

In simple words, a happy customer will provide you with leads, and an unhappy customer will leave in a heartbeat. Every customer wants a personalized experience and if they are not getting it from your company, they will be happy to go elsewhere to get it.

Doing business is a fierce game and you should know all the rules before the game starts. So, here are a few reasons why good customer service is required:

1. Higher customer retention: It builds customer loyalty as satisfied customer is more likely to come back and bring their friends and family along. This provides a higher ROI

2. Low Acquisition Costs: A higher customer retention will help you streamline your services according to your loyal base and this would negate the extra effort required in targeting new customers thus, reducing the acquisition costs.

3. Provides Competitive Edge: A lot of companies sell the same product that you do. But by establishing a culture around good customer service, you can stay ahead of the curve and strengthen your position in the market.

4. Improves Employee Efficiency: Evaluating the customer service KPIs and other metrics will help you determine your team’s performance and aid in boosting morale as a better workflow will help your team to do a good job.

5. Upholds Brand Standards: Loyal customers act as informal brand ambassadors. Therefore, keeping them happy is pertinent to upholding the legitimacy of what your brand stands for.

The main aim of customer relationship management is to alleviate the customer experience. You need to consider all the touchpoints between the company and the customer. One way to improve this could be feedback in the form of surveys and audits. The results from these can be clubbed together to calculate the Customer Satisfaction Index and CSAT score.

What is the difference between the Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) and the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT score)?

A CSAT Score is assigned by asking your customer to choose from the “Five Levels of Customer Satisfaction” by answering a simple question i.e. “How would you rate your overall experience with the product/service received?” The customer can assign a score based on a scale from one to five, with one being, “Very Unsatisfied” and five beings, “Very Satisfied”

CSAT scores provide a great starting point to gain insight into whether your framework is progressing or not.

On the other hand, CSI or Customer Satisfaction Index is a sub-total of all the CSAT scores gathered at various touch points. CSI allows you to compare various attributes spread across departments and identify the weaker ones.

This way, both CSAT scores, and CSI can help you mitigate risks and recommend accurate suggestions and tools to strengthen the customer satisfaction process.

How to Improve Customer Satisfaction?

The holistic way to up your customer service game is a two-way approach. Conducting surveys and audits, commonly called mystery shopping.
Customer Satisfaction Survey

To provide high-quality customer service, you as a marketer, need to delve into the buyer’s psychology. And the most feasible way to do it is via CSAT surveys.
These surveys help in meeting customer expectations, reducing churn rates, improving service across all touchpoints, and analyzing the processes that might put your business in jeopardy.

You can utilize an omnichannel approach to collecting customer feedback. Ensure a customer-centric mindset so that you ask the right questions, receive feedback, and work those metrics into your internal structure.

Mystery Shopping

Mystery shopping is the process of gathering objective, unbiased feedback from a third party that enables you to determine whether your teams consistently adhere to your standards.
Contrary to its name, mystery shopping solves the mystery behind the shortfall in a satisfying customer experience.

It monitors staff performance, improves customer retention, and pinpoints the strengths & weaknesses of your policies. And if you are clever enough to use mystery shopping skilfully; it can even provide helpful intel on your competitors’ strategies.

You probably know that HS Brands provides exceptional mystery shopping services to its clients. Their skilled shoppers tactfully conduct mystery audits of the company’s services or products and provide their observations on various parameters such as staff service, ambiance, product quality, and similar contributing factors responsible for a happy customer experience.

What is better: A Customer Satisfaction Survey or Mystery Shopping?

CSAT surveys capture the customer’s feelings that mystery shopping can’t fully achieve. On the other hand, mystery shopping provides thorough information about your competitors as well as your internal functioning.

Both tools must be used in concert with one another to guarantee that you’re providing an outstanding customer experience that meets your customers’ expectations.

Conclusion

Customer experience is a crucial component of every flourishing company. Therefore, enhancing customer happiness should be a top priority for all businesses.

It is impossible to create a setting where your customers and staff members are content all the time. However, now that you are aware of how crucial customer satisfaction is, you can work on creating and attaining objectives for this while also ensuring that both your customers and team are treated with respect and understanding.

HS Brands aids in increasing the efficiency and quality of customer service to deliver better overall customer satisfaction. Hence, mystery shopping can be used as an effective tool to handle customer satisfaction metrics and reduce churn rates.