Customers are the most vital asset of every business. A study by Helpscout suggests that 80% of companies say they deliver “superior” customer service, However, only 8% of customers agree with that assessment. Customer satisfaction act as the primary catalyst in pushing a company forward, and ensuring repeat business. However, companies cannot create their customer service strategies based on vague data or few interactions and can only trust quantitative data. Needless to say, thorough survey work and few measuring parameters have to be employed to understand the standards of customer service. These metrics will help in improving customer value while reducing the churn rate.

Customer-centric companies make it a healthy practice to determine the customer’s satisfaction levels, very frequently. Marketing teams can also improve their strategies using this particular data. Such practices keep them far from service deficits and place them ahead in the competition.

There are many worldwide methods for measuring customer satisfaction. However, only a few of them provide near to accurate data. Here’s a look at the most commonly used customer satisfaction metrics:

1. Customer Feedback Through Surveys:

Customer Surveys are one of the most common and important methods of measuring the quality of customer service. It is better to ask your customers directly what they think of your service, rather than just self-assumptions. You may initiate different types of surveys on various channels, mostly after the service is provided. Surveys can be hosted in 4 different ways:

a) In-App Surveys:

Customers often tend to overlook such surveys unless they are caught in the action. In-app surveys are presented to the customer while they are in the process of using your service. This facilitates an immediate reaction and a potentially high response rate.

However, such surveys should not deter the customer experience when availing of the service. The survey should be short and precise and seamlessly inserted into the interface.

b) Post-Call Surveys:

The best feedback is received as soon as the service interaction gets over. CSAT surveys can be initiated immediately once the call gets over. The customer can provide feedback by just pressing a key, which is automatically rolled up to the manager in the CSAT report.

c)Email-Surveys:

If you’re looking to ask insightful questions about the entire customer experience, then email surveys are a sure thing. You can also target segmented customers to ask in-depth questions about their situation and feedback.

While these surveys will give you the lowest response rates, still they allow customers who wish to do so to answer in greater details and provides you constructive feedback on your services. You can use this in-depth feedback to create CX strategies and increase customer satisfaction across a wider spectrum.

d) Voluntary Feedback:

Sometimes customers who had a bad experience or an extremely good experience want to let you know of the same and hence it’s also important to offer a way for customers to speak up of their own desire. However, an automated response often deters them from further engagement.

Thus, you should ensure a personalized response or arrange a phone call to understand the customer’s expectations. Furthermore, positive feedbacks can be recorded as success stories to encourage other customers and can be published as a success story on your website also.

2. Net Promoter Score:

As per a study in 2020, 64% of customers are more likely to recommend a brand to their friends or families if it offers simpler experiences and communications. The net promoter score or the NPS method of measuring customer satisfaction revolves around this point.

NPS was introduced to fill in the gaps that CSAT couldn’t as it lacks the predictive power to gauge customer loyalty. NPS uncovers how likely your customer will recommend your product/service to their friends. The scale ranges between 1-10 where 1 denotes ‘Not at all likely’ and 10 denotes ‘Extremely likely.’ You can calculate your NPS by subtracting the percentage of detractors from that of promoters. The higher your score, the better is NPS.

NPS is ascertained upon the basis of an emotionally motivated question. Thus, the response rate is higher, and often dissatisfied customers never miss this opportunity to answer the survey. Ideally, you should use this opportunity to retain dissatisfied customers and make an impact on them with absolute customer service.

3. Customer Satisfaction Score:

The customer satisfaction score or the CSAT score is a universal and most common metric used to rate a customer’s recent interaction with the customer service team. The parameter ranges from 1-5, where the lowest number denotes highly unsatisfied, and the highest number signifies highly satisfied. The more respondents give a positive answer, the higher is your CSAT score.

The CSAT is the basic method of understanding the quality of your service as it does not indicate any essential factors from the interaction that took place. The method won’t cover a customer’s principal impression of your company. Similarly, its results tend to be biased, since mildly satisfied or dissatisfied customers will tend to neglect the question entirely. Though the CSAT is an inevitable metric, it is by no means a complete one.

4. Customer Effort Score

The customer effort score, or CES, is a customer-centric approach for understanding the quality of customer service. It asks the customer: “how hard did you have to work to get your issue with product/service fixed/query answered/service rendered?”. The measuring scale here ranges from 1 to 5, where 1 denotes fewer difficulties, and 5 denotes excessive hassle, and the lower your score, the better it is. The CES is a good indicator of increasing customers’ loyalty by saving their time and effort and shifting their efforts more towards unhappy customers. Most organizations also add a text box after the survey so that the customers can elaborate on their issue, assisting the organization to improve specifically on those fronts.

5. Web-Analytics

Website analytics is a data-driven metric that works without any direct involvement of the customer. It crawls your website traffic actively, reads your sales funnel, understands your customer behavior, and predicts future conversions. Such insights, if compiled and utilized smartly, can result in the creation of a successful customer service strategy that can be a crucial differentiator among your competition

6. Social Media Metrics

Customers can reach you from any medium and Social media is one of the most popular one nowadays. They openly flaunt their purchases on social media and even go on insulting the brands who dissatisfy them. Social media is an important channel to monitor customer happiness. Most social media platforms come with a business account facility that provides an analytics dashboard and insights. Carefully observe your audience and focus on their comments, on their recommendations. Customer support teams should gather this data and create CX strategies to improve the satisfaction/engagement levels for a better social media presence.

Conclusion:

Customer service metrics are the food for every business. Ways for measuring customer satisfaction might vary across industries; however, the above-stated pointers are the most successful parameters that are used to guide a customer support team. You cannot improve what you don’t know or what you can’t measure. Thus, measuring customer satisfaction must be a widespread practice at businesses of all sizes, and domains

DialDesk is a company that understands the importance of this practice and pushes a synergetic support system for businesses across the world.