Weighing on the Prominence of a Customer Satisfaction Score: Definition and Methods to Increase Your CSAT.

By: Harmeet Singh

What's the principal driving force for a company? Without a doubt, it's HAPPY CUSTOMERS.

There's no business where the phrase "happy customer" doesn't find itself on the priority list. This means that every entity working for a business knows that "happy customers" are the ultimate target.

Why on earth then, many companies fail to satisfy their target consumers?

Maybe because they don't focus on providing the desired quality of a product and/or service.

And definitely, because they don't try to find whether the customers are happy or not. Even if they do so, they don't have a proper measurement in place.

Thus, two shortcomings can be put forth. First, businesses aren't always committed to providing value. Second, they don't have knowledge about the appropriate method to analyze the emotional stance of their customers.

This article explicitly addresses the latter issue and, in doing so, sheds light on the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT).

First off, why is Customer Satisfaction essential for your business?

Satisfied customers are advertisers of your business. How?

Satisfied customers indicate that the company has put in extra effort and resources to provide the best output. In short, they consider your business a successful venture. As a result, they talk about your business to their peers and immediate connections.

Satisfied customers enhance your brand's reputation. Really! How?

If I'm a loyal and committed customer of a perfume manufacturer, I'll prioritize doing business with them. At the same time, I'll keep perpetuating the positives of my preferred brand. In other words, I, as a loyal customer, will act as a catalyst to potentially multiply the business's audience.

Satisfied customers never leave you

This is a UNIVERSAL TRUTH. In the aforementioned scenario, I'' keep visiting the perfume manufacturer for my requirements. In other words, the perfume manufacturer will be able to retain me. Businesses that are capable of retaining customers reflect on the utmost level of professionalism. At the same time, the loyal consumer base acts as a catalyst to potentially multiplying the audience.

These facets demonstrate that the essentiality of customer satisfaction for your business's progress can't be stressed enough.

Embrace the Tip: A satisfied customer is east to cater to than attracting a new one. Sure, you want to increase your customer base exponentially; however, that entails making a system that can treat them right for a prolonged period. Simply put, don't forget your customer after a single deal—treat them sincerely—better your revenue.

Second, what is CSAT?

Now that you know how vital customer satisfaction is for your business, you must comprehend the method to score it. The CSAT score acts as a feedback system to help find out flaws in the operations. When you know what's wrong, half of the problem is solved.

CSAT or Customer Satisfaction Score lets you:

—Know how satisfied a customer is with your service or product

—Understand Customer Sentiments which help in improving the business methods

Technically, it can be computed as follows:

CSAT average = Sum of scores of all the responses received ÷ Total number of responses received

CSAT % = (Number of positive responses ÷ Total number of responses received) X 100

How to gather these responses?

Well, they can be anything ranging from 1-3, 1-5, or even 1-10-star reviews about the customer service. Just mandate feedback after the service, and you'll get these scores from the consumers.

Some brands even add a qualitative factor to it. For instance, they add a question or two with 1-5 scale answers. That method is particularly beneficial for noticing the QoS of each aspect of the business.

CSAT's benefit over other methods is that the questions are easy to answer, and it takes seconds to complete them. Also, scores are easy to plot on a graph, which makes the assessment more straightforward, facilitates locating bottlenecks, and working on them.

Along with these, customers feel valued when asked for feedback, which is always an added benefit.

Finally, some suggestions to improve your CSAT score

Build a customer-centric environment

By a customer-centric environment, I am referring to a workplace atmosphere where customers are valued. You, as the owner of the business, might be very inclined towards making the customers happy. However, the same couldn't be said about your employees.

Thus, you should invest your resources in training the staff about best practices concerning customer support. Besides, you must explain to the employees about the different types of customers and how to profoundly handle them.

Embedding points about customer satisfaction in orientations and policies is a go-to approach to let the employees know about the work culture that the business promotes.

Satisfy the employees to satisfy customers

If your employees aren't content with the workplace culture, you won't be able to comply with your vision of a happy customer base. Naturally, your employees won't feel like giving their best, which will negatively influence the quality of services and products.

Therefore, it is essential to make sure that your employees are happy and well-equipped to handle any problems that arise. And since they interact directly with the customers, it is always advisable to keep healthy communication channel between you and them intact.

Ask for detailed feedback, if possible

An amazing way to show your customer that they matter is by listening to what they want to say. After the customers have filled their customer satisfaction form (I'm assuming you've added the form to the feedback page. If not, do it now!), direct them towards elaborating their experience.

Don't make it mandatory. Instead, make it as CREATIVE as possible.

For instance, you can go for something like this.....

Hey, I saw that you checked out my service. I'm assuming that you liked it. If not, why don't you use this precious minute to let me know where I lack.

And if you like it, why not use this time to shower some love. You see, appreciation and criticism are equally important.

And one more thing, be BRUTALLY HONEST!

Thanks in advance.

Carry out an in-depth analysis of reviews and feedbacks

You must have active social media channels where people interact and comment about their experiences. The same goes for Google, Freelance Marketplaces, etc.

Why not use these reviews to your benefit? Carry out an in-depth analysis of these reviews/feedbacks and try to find out patterns within them. Consider every comment highly-valuable regardless of the channel where it comes from. This is because, as a business, you have to be good everywhere.

And if possible, interact as much as you can with the customers on social media because it lets them know that you're noticing. The BUSINESS's NOTICING. Believe me; it's a big thing—an opportunistic area.

Be proactive when it comes to customer support

People across the world, and not just in the US, complain about the ill-customer support of several businesses. Take it both as a problem and an opportunity to act upon.

Besides, the technologies these days complement improved customer support. For instance, Support Genie (LINK TO THE RELEVANT PAGE) develops AI-powered chatbots (LINK TO THE RELEVANT BLOG) that are explicitly designed to help businesses cater to the needs of customers in the best ways possible.

These chatbots are prompt and provide 24 x 7 service. Not only this, but AI-powered software also contributes to the working of the human workforce by handling repetitive tasks and carrying out data analysis.

This results in you garnering insights about what the customer wants even before he /she has raised his/her query. Cool, isn't it?

And if you're worried that customer support supported by the combination of robots and humans won't personalize the experience, you're mistaken, my friend.

Because these bots are able to handle redundancy and mathematical tasks, they leave room for the human workforce to be innovative and carry out sound communication with the customers.

You see, Artificial Intelligence is the present and future of customer support (LINK TO THE RELEVANT ARTICLE).

Conclusion

Congratulations! Now, you have sufficient knowledge about keeping customers happy and improving your CSAT scores. As a business, there's a lot you can do with the resources at your disposal. Think of yourself as a customer, and you'll be good to go for satisfying your endeavors.

A good way is to consider CSAT as a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) and include it in the work methods. Define a strategy for consistently analyzing this score, and you'll notice the changes in your approach to deliver services and develop products. GOOD LUCK!