Customer satisfaction is an indicator of how well your business’ products or services meet customer expectations. It’s one of the most important factors affecting customer loyalty and predicting business growth and revenue. However, while customer satisfaction might sound like it’s easy to define on paper, it can be more difficult to define customer satisfaction within your company. 

Just because your business has a lot of purchases and a steady number of returning customers doesn’t mean you have a high customer satisfaction rate. 

Measuring Customer Satisfaction

To track your customer satisfaction, you can set up a Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) survey that asks your customers or clients to rate their experience with your business. Then, you can measure their satisfaction with your services and specific touchpoints, such as contacting customer support or making a purchase. 

You can also choose to include an open-ended customer survey to learn more about how your customers feel about you and your company by having them explain why they rated you what they did. 

The CSAT isn’t the only customer satisfaction metric available for businesses. Others can help you gauge loyalty and happiness. 

Importance of Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is a necessity if your business revolves around your customers. There are also tangible benefits of customer satisfaction. 

Promotes Business Growth

Loyal customers can help you build your business. Maintaining your current customers is more valuable than acquiring new ones and can increase your profits because it provides you with a continued revenue stream. The sad news is you can’t have loyal customers without focusing on customer satisfaction, which is why service-based businesses are always willing to go the extra mile for their clients. 

Keeping your customers satisfied can prevent businesses from spending additional resources to constantly find new customers. Meeting customers’ needs, solving their problems, and building a relationship with customers can help you keep them satisfied and grow your business. 

Unhappy Customers Go to Your Competitors

Unhappy customers will leave you behind and go to your competitors for the same products and services. Brand switching happens frequently, but one of the main culprits is poor customer experience. Unfortunately, one negative experience can outweigh multiple positive experiences, and most customers won’t stick around long enough for you to make it up for them. 

Customers avoid an easy relationship, so avoiding customer service issues by going out of your way to provide value to your customers can help you keep their business. When mistakes happen, you have to make up for them. Instead of simply apologizing, try solving the problem and providing the customer with something they can’t get anywhere else. 

Drives Business Decisions

Prioritizing customer satisfaction allows you to easily prioritize your goals. Whether you’re working on product development, marketing campaigns, or business development, you should make sure your actions can improve your customer satisfaction and how those decisions might impact customer satisfaction. 

For example, if your customers all have similar complaints about your product, you should fix the problem before you try to sell the product to new customers. If you don’t quickly solve problems, your current customers will stop purchasing from your company, and you’ll get stuck in a cycle of dissatisfied customers. 

Through feedback, customers can help you come up with new ideas to improve your product and service offerings. 

Helps You Compete

Unless your product is one of a kind, you probably have tons of competition out there. The only thing you can do to make yourself stand out is providing exceptional service and focus on customer satisfaction above all else. For example, an eCommerce business selling running shoes will compete with shoe manufacturers worldwide, so instead of trying to promote how their product is different, they can promote their dedication to customer satisfaction. 

If you’re not sure what you can do to provide better customer service than your competitors, take a look at their negative reviews and see if your business can solve those issues.

Helps Attract New Customers

Happy and unhappy customers will talk about your customer service and business. You should stay on their good side. Word of mouth is still the most popular form of advertising, so make sure you give your customers something good to say about your business. Loyal customers are your biggest promoters and can help new customers find you. 

Any positive reviews you receive can benefit your business, so aim to get social media reviews, Google reviews, and reviews on your website so you can build your trust with new customers. Also, it is important to respond to these reviews, as it shows that you are engaging with all of your customers, especially those who support you the most. 

Tips for Improving Customer Satisfaction

Regularly Collect Customer Feedback 

You should pay close attention to positive and negative feedback so you know what you’re doing well and what you can do better. Make sure to address all negative feedback and come up with the right solutions for your customers. 

React in Real-Time

Now that your customers can reach you and you value their opinion, make sure their feedback is addressed. When a customer complains, make sure you react to their complaint and try to solve their issue as quickly and effectively as possible. 

Be Personal

When you talk to your customers, keep this personal and professional. There’s no reason to sound like a robot. Customers want to know they’re talking to a real person who cares about their issues. 

Frequently Measure Customer Satisfaction 

You can’t improve customer satisfaction rates if you don’t know what they are. Measuring satisfaction with surveys can help you get detailed information so you can make changes where necessary. You can conduct these surveys as frequently and as necessary as you would like for your business.

Final Thoughts

You don’t have a successful business without customers, so make sure you do everything you can to address their issues on time. If a customer has a complaint and has to wait days for it to be resolved, you can expect they won’t be returning even if you do end up resolving their issue. Not only do you have to quickly respond, but you should have regular meetings within your company and processes in place for improving customer satisfaction. 

Matt Casadona

Matt Casadona has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, with a concentration in Marketing and a minor in Psychology. Matt is passionate about marketing and business strategy and enjoys San Diego life, traveling, and music.