There is nothing more effective marketing strategy than when it comes directly from your existing customers. No matter what marketing strategy you adopt, your prospects would be more moved when they hear from your satisfied customers.
Marketing now has become more saturated than ever. Even if your product is ahead of the curve, your prospects would always be apprehensive about the product. They know that your marketing is biased towards your product. And you would go up to any extent to show how your product is the right fit for them.
But the over-promises in your marketing message becomes clear to the prospects when they actually start using it. Experienced prospects do not have enough trust in the brands, especially if they are in their growth phase. Hence, they need to relate their future experience with someone who has already tread that path. That’s why customer satisfaction is so important.
What is customer satisfaction?
According to customer satisfaction definition, it is simply the measure of your customer’s happiness with your product or service. When they are satisfied, they tend to stay subscribed to your business and become a loyal customer. And when their satisfaction level is too high, they even turn into your brand advocates. That is something which every brand aspires for.
Through client satisfaction, companies can know how their products are performing in the market. It is also an indicator for the growth potential of a brand. Because through the response of existing customers, a company can extrapolate how it will be received by a larger audience.
Customer-centric brands have realized it deeply that building relationships with their customers is key to their growth. It not only helps them expand their business but also helps them acquire new ones. Hence, they are practicing and implementing customer satisfaction strategies upto greater heights. And how to keep a customer happy has become one of their prime objectives.
What are the benefits of customer satisfaction?
Having read an introduction of customer satisfaction, you must have figured out by now the importance of it. Yet, to give voice to your inner thoughts, I would mention them distinctly through below points.
Customer loyalty
Customer loyalty is one of the main goals for businesses that run on a continuous stream of income. Especially in a SaaS organization, you need to retain your customers to increase their lifetime value. This ensures that you are:
- Able to recover your cost of customer acquisition. Even though it is more costly to acquire a new customer than retain an existing, yet in a survey, it was found that 44% of companies have a greater focus on customer acquisition.
- Able to find more opportunities to expand your business through upselling or cross-selling to your existing customer base. This generates more revenue from your existing customer base. And when you achieve net revenue retention, that is the most ideal situation for a brand.
Brand reputation
When your satisfied customers share their experience with others, it empowers your brand in building its reputation. People want to hear real-time experiences of the consumers, not some fabricated message developed by your marketing team. And when it is shared in the social media, the words spread among the online users like a forest-fire.
No matter how hard you try to by yourself to build your brand, the impact which your direct users create will always be manifold.
How to build customer satisfaction?
Every business is trying their own ways for building customer service satisfaction. There is no one solution that fits all because every brand has different customer expectations. Yet, there are few generic steps to ensure customer satisfaction that you can take for your company.
Proactive approach
Through right customer success strategies, you can keep a proactive approach in serving the customer. You don’t have to wait for the customer to raise their voice when in difficulty. You must track their usage proactively so that you know in advance, what solutions they need even before they realize.
Understand your customer
One of the best ways to keep your customers happy is to give them personalized service. For this, you need to understand their goals and expectations to give contextual solutions. Customers love when you talk in their terms. And if you do some research on their business domain, it will help you on a larger scale.
Collect actionable feedback
Taking feedback directly from your customers is more effective than figuring out what’s best for your business. These feedbacks must be actionable in that you must improve upon your product or service to the extent you can afford. Your product management team cannot get more honest feedback than that from your direct customers.
Customer satisfaction surveys
On a timely basis, you must conduct a wide survey on your customer base. These surveys are nothing but a set of questionnaires you ask your customers to help improve your service. There are basically three types of surveys you can conduct:
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Customer Effort Score
- Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score
The third survey gives you a clear picture of your customer satisfaction level through a specific metric. You ask them how satisfied they are with your service on a scale from 1 to 5. 5 being the most and 1 being the least. A sample customer satisfaction survey question can be something like – What improvements do you think we can include in our service?
For detailed knowledge on this topic, I suggest you have a look at another article I wrote on customer satisfaction surveys.
Customer Satisfaction Examples
Customer satisfaction is the biggest goal for the smallest to biggest brands of the modern world. Here is a glimpse of few of the companies that are measuring their customer satisfaction through various means.
Netflix
Netflix conducts its survey by sending a warm email to its customers. In the email, they appreciate customers for taking the time out and gently implore to take the survey. Here’s a screenshot of the mail they send.
Amazon
Amazon sends a similar mail to its customers and requests them to complete the survey. They specifically mention in the email how customer feedback would help them improve their service. The purpose of their customer satisfaction survey is to improve their service. Check out this sample customer satisfaction email they send.
Wrapping up
When your product is identical to what your competitors are offering, customer satisfaction becomes a differentiating factor to retain customers. In fact it has been predicted in a study that by this year, 2020, customer experience would overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.
It is necessary to interact and communicate with your customers regularly to keep yourself updated on their evolving needs. What you knew about them a year ago has changed with time. You need to stay constantly in touch with them so that you can evolve in your response to their needs.
A satisfied customer develops a sentimental attachment to a brand. Once that is established, it plays a vital role in nurturing the relationship with your customer. After they turn loyal and become your brand advocate, you can reap the benefits of marketing without spending a single penny. And wouldn’t that be an ideal state for any business to acquire?
Rakhin has over 10 years of experience driving business development and client services. In his prior roles, he stayed close to customers to understand their requirements and help them achieve their business goals. He is passionate about customer success.
Published September 22, 2020, Updated March 02, 2023
