Are You Crushing Your Competition
“Measurements of customer’s satisfaction”
By Jeff Earlywine
Most companies say they believe in great customer service, but few set up a system to insure that they provide it and achieve customer satisfaction. Delivering great customer service takes both understanding what your customers want and a way to see that they receive it.
It’s widely accepted that it is at least five times more profitable to sell to an existing customer than to find a new customer. More important, the difference between satisfied customers and Raving Fan customers can make a big difference in customer repeat business and your profits.
There are several ways to gather input from customers. The simplest way to find out how customers feel and what they want is to ask them. If you have only 20 customers, you can talk to each one personally. The advantage of this approach is that you’ll get a personal “feel” for each customer. The disadvantage is that you’ll gather different information from each customer depending on how the conversation goes.
Customer surveys with standardized survey questions insure that you will collect the same information from everyone. Remember that few of your customers will be interested in “filling out a questionnaire”. It’s work for them without much reward.
Here are a few of the possible dimensions you could measure:
quality of service
speed of service
pricing
complaints or problems
the closeness of the relationship with contacts in your business
types of other services needed
In a business world where customer acquisition costs are sky-rocketing, small and medium businesses must focus on building a customer experience to increase customer satisfaction.
Here are six game-changing ideas to help you on your way:
1. Treat your customers like they are your boss. With no customers, there’s nobody to pay you!
2. Focus on measuring customer satisfaction. Did you know that 91% of your unhappy customers will never purchase services from you again? Measuring customer satisfaction can help you reduce the number of unhappy customers.
3. Build customer loyalty to increase customer satisfaction. Below are five ways to do just that:
Remember special occasions like birthdays
Strive to empower and educate customers
Invest in a self-service support channel, but never forget to help them when they need it.
Top level managers must lead from the front with customer service
Talk to your customers, tap into what they want and deliver
4. Avoid making these customer retention mistakes. No business is immune to unhappy customers. In fact, even companies with the best customer service in the world will still lose up to 9% of their customers to competitors. Here are three common customer retention mistakes that are killing your customer satisfaction:
You are ignoring customer feedback
You are taking customer feedback to personally
You are using long, boring customer feedback surveys
5. Set customer expectations early. Setting expectations too high is a common mistake a lot of businesses make when bringing on new business. How many times has your sales guy made ridiculous promises to push a deal over the line? There’s no better feeling than as a customer to have your expectations exceeded.
6. Learn how to survey your customers the right way. A customer feedback survey is the best way to find out how satisfied your customers are, find ways to improve your product or service, and identify customer advocates who really love your product.
In conclusion, stats don’t lie, understand the importance of customer satisfaction. Here are three mind-blowing facts that should motivate you to start focusing on increasing customer satisfaction.
According to Bain and Co., a 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75%.
Gartner Group statistics tell us that 80% of your company’s future revenue will come from just 20% of your existing customers.
Lee Resource Inc. found that attracting new customers will cost your company five times more than keeping an existing customer.
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