How to Improve Customer Satisfaction

There is more to running a business than sales and marketing. To make a company a success, you must focus on the customer experience to ensure you continually cater to your target market. Read our informative advice on how to improve customer satisfaction.

Ask the Customer

Do you want to know what the customer wants? Ask them. Contact them either via email, over the phone or in person. Not only can you discover what they want, but you can also identify what they don’t want. This will allow you to alter the customer service experience to complement their needs. Gather opinions with handy mail-back forms, comment cards or feedback sheets.

Host a Focus Group

Don’t be afraid to host a focus group comprised of customers to enjoy an open-ended conversation. Speak to them casually about what they like, dislike and hope to receive from your business, products or services. However, don’t be defensive to their feedback. Simply ask them questions and take plenty of notes, before thanking them for their valuable time.

Review Your Existing Feedback

Customers love to write feedback following a positive or negative experience. Many business owners are often afraid of reviews, but complaints will allow you to create a plan of action, while compliments will help to build on your success.

Hire a Customer Service Manager

Hire a customer service manager to ensure every customer receives an exceptional service. Not only should they oversee the training process, but they should develop ways to resolve common customer problems or complaints that may prevent business growth.

Improve Internal Operations

The one thing ruining the customer experience could be your internal operations, as you could be using slow-performing platforms, unproductive methods or lack the right management systems.

One way to deliver a superior customer service experience time and again is with Zendesk integration. This innovative solution will allow you to support customers by offering back office visibility from NetSuite but within Zendesk. It will synchronize the data from both platforms to provide a comprehensive solution to transform customer support.

Follow Up on Feedback

Unhappy customers are not afraid to share their dissatisfaction on social media, online review websites and with a company. Instead of ignoring the negative feedback, you should look at a review as an opportunity.

For instance, if a customer writes a poor review on TripAdvisor, reply with a professional response apologizing for a problem. You could even ask them to contact you for compensation or to provide an apology over the phone. The angered customer, as well as prospective customers, may appreciate the fact you have taken the time to respond. As a result, you will prove you are a caring company who simply made a mistake.

Reply to Customers Quickly

No customer wants to feel ignored, which is why your team must strive to respond to every email, social media message or telephone call as soon as possible. Aim to respond within 24 hours, if possible. Any more than 48 hours and a customer may become frustrated and may turn to a competitor in the future. Retain their loyalty and satisfaction by providing a professional, friendly and helpful response at a rapid rate.

Utilize the Internet

It’s not only review sites where customers are willing to share their opinions on your products or services. Nowadays, many people write a personal blog or are social influencers, who are happy to talk in detail about a product or service.

Visit a customer’s blog or social media page to learn more about why they bought a product from your website; how they use it and how satisfied they were with the item. You never know, you could see your products or services from a whole new perspective, which could transform a marketing campaign.

Buy from Your Competitors

Do you want to find out if you provide the best products, services or customer experience in your industry? Well, the only way to do so is by becoming a competitor’s customer. While you might not like the idea of handing over your money to your industry rivals, it’s a great way to gain an insight into their services.

Regularly use their products and services so you can compare them against your own. Identify where they are going right or wrong, so you can improve on their successes or learn from their mistakes.

Consider Multimedia

There are some instructions, products or services that are little too complicated for text alone. Boost engagement by providing images, interactive guides or videos to show a customer how to successfully use a product or reach their goals. Visual content can provide detailed directions that can show them how to make the most of a product, which could improve their satisfaction.

Less Customer Service Support

53% of customers reportedly expect to receive a company response within 3 minutes of their phone call. Is your customer service team struggling to cope with phone support, social media messages, email and chat support? If so, you should consider reducing the number of support platforms, as less can sometimes be more. Focus on developing your popular customer support systems, rather than having many bad support channels that offer next to no value.

Anticipate a Customer’s Next Question

A forward-thinking approach to customer service could set a company apart from its competitors. To do so, you must try to anticipate a customer’s next question, which may speed up the process while proving you are a proactive, caring company. It will also demonstrate to a customer that you want to resolve their problem as soon as possible to reduce their inconvenience.

Don’t Make Customers Repeat Themselves

Customers don’t want to telephone a company to air the same complaint time and again, but sometimes they may believe they have no choice. Reduce their frustrations by tracking their history in their user profile. Not only will it prevent them from having to repeat themselves, but it will prove you have listened to their complaint and want to resolve the issue as soon as possible.