As businesses navigate the “New normal”, and try implementing all the new norms, adjusting their modus operandi to the situation, soliciting feedback and increasing customer satisfaction, now more than ever will not only influence businesses bottom line, it will determine it.

Focusing on customer satisfaction increases your:

• Revenue – Satisfied customers accelerate cash flows, buy additional products and services from a business ultimately increasing revenue.
• cash flows – satisfied customers are less sensitive about the price and willing to pay more, and additionally profitability gets affected as the retention level increases, which brings high future revenues
• stock market price- companies with greater customer satisfaction will outperform their adversaries in the stock market, as their satisfaction leads to greater cash flows, stable revenue flows with less uncertainty, and reduced risk associated with future cash flows resulting with an impact in value and stock price.

(Source Researchgate)

Simply, customers that are satisfied with our company tend to complain less, increase our cross selling, stick around longer, and bring in new customers by a simple word of mouth.

How do we find out what makes our customers satisfied? In order to find that out, one of the easiest way is to ask them directly. They will appreciate it.

Stats about feedback:

• 95% customers read reviews prior to purchase
• 92% of B2B customers are more likely to buy after reading a trusted review
• Customers spend 31% more when a business has positive reviews
• For every 1 star increase in rating on Yelp, a business can expect 5-9% increase in revenue
• 54% of consumers will visit a business website after reading a positive review
• Negative feedback can stop about 40% of your buyers from wanting to do business with you
• 53% of Customers expect a follow up to their online review from a business within 7 days
• 75% of businesses never respond to their customer reviews
• When a business replies to 25% of their online reviews, they earn a whopping 35% more in revenue

(Source Learning Hub)

Numbers show that the voice of your customers is important for the growth of your business, and we should never ignore it.

Once we have that set, let’s talk about how we can collect customer feedback?

Collecting Customer Feedback

As an alternative to collecting feedback on a sheet of paper, or gathering a focus group in one place to conduct questionnaires about your services, and conduct market research, today you can find an array of online platforms that allow you to get in touch with your customers.

Prior to, during or post event you can reach out ask for their opinion about your brand strength or services.

The amount of information you can get is limited only to the questions you ask. In some future articles we will be discussing the plusses and minuses of every method in a deeper manner.

One thing is certain. It is proven that just by asking your customer for their opinion, their trust in your brand increases, so please do ask your customers for their feedback, take that feedback as a basis for your improvement, and follow up with your customers.

One way you can collect and analyze your customer feedback is with pollymetrix.

Most Common Types of Metrics

Once businesses chose to focus on customer experience as drivers, to track how they stand, most likely they will focus on one or all of the below metrics to measure their customer satisfaction: in our future articles, we will be writing more in depth about these and others, so stay tuned.

• NPS

NPS stands for Net Promoter Score, and is usually presented with an index ranging from -100 to 100 showing how likely a customer is to recommend a product or company usually on a scale from 0 to 10.

To measure that, it is essential to ask customers a simple question about the likelihood of recommending your product and rate it using the 11-point scale (from 0 to 10).

Using this scale we can distinguish 3 main types of customers:

• Detractors – those who rated their 6 or lower. They are not very interested in promoting your company or product and are likely to try to detract your customers from using your product or service.
• Passives – rated us 7 or 8. They could be willing to recommend your products, but would have no issues with switching to competitors.
• Promoters –score of 9 or 10. They are your brand ambassadors. Truly enjoy your services and will gladly share the word

As successful companies always strive to give an amazing service, it is also very good to keep count of the number of passives and try to enhance the experience from just ok to superb, to reap maximum financial benefits in the future, and minimize the risk of losing customers to competition.

• CSAT

CSAT is used to measure whether or not your customers are satisfied with your product or services, usually on a 5 point scale, with just the upmost satisfaction being counted in your total score.

It allows asking a vast variety of questions mostly focusing on a specific interaction. You can ask about support, service quality, hospitality etc., resulting in finding points that need improvements, or the ones you are a superstar in.

Key in achieving higher CSAT is to contact your clients before you get contacted by them. Do it in a timely manner, and be frank. Have a clear set of expectations, so you remove uncertainty for your customers, and then try to exceed them. That will show your customers you are all about success. Theirs and your own.

• CES

The point of the metrics is to determine whether a certain point of your service was easy enough for the customer to interact with, use, purchase, and how much effort client had to put in a certain interaction, and unlike the NPS, and CSAT, here the lower the number, better the actual score for your company.

If we reduce customer effort we make life easier for customers, improve our brand impression and overall customer experience.

Today’s consumers lead a busy life and don’t want to jump around and ask for help, especially in cases where the product they purchased isn’t working, or the service offered was poor.

Final Thoughts

Keeping your customers happy, and maintaining the happy client environment is the most crucial factor when driving a business to success. Benefits are enormous, and it all starts with collecting primary feedback, and the will to act upon that data, as numbers itself without the will mean nothing.

With the numbers and good analysis, you will be able to determine what your strong points are, identify your weak points, prevent dissatisfaction, and optimize your customer service to perfection providing an amazing experience. In short, your customers will be hungry for more.

Need more information about collecting and analyzing customer feedback?

Contact support@pollymetrix.com

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