Do you know how satisfied your customers are with your business?
If not, it’s an imperative metric you want to measure. Why? It shows you first the rate of customer satisfaction. Ultimately it helps you increase customer loyalty and your revenue.
You can measure customer satisfaction with the CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score). In this article, we look at six myths about the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), debunked.
Myth #1: The Only Survey I Need is NPS
One myth about the CSAT is that businesses don’t really need it because they already measure their NPS (Net Promoter Score).
The real truth here is that you want to use both of these scores. You get valuable data through both CSAT and NPS surveys.
First, the CSAT can help you drill down and assess individual opinions on your products and services. The NPS is better for assessing customer loyalty.
You can use the CSAT to measure the following:
- Overall customer satisfaction
- Customer satisfaction with your customer service staff
- Feelings on new products
- Customers’ ideas on your store or your website
The CSAT survey can help you find out pretty quickly where you stand on new introductions from products to websites to team members. This allows you to pivot with lightning speed to improve overall customer satisfaction. (tweet this)
Myth #2: There’s No Set Time to Send Your Survey
Some people may think you can send your CSAT survey at any time. While times may vary, you will find there are some best practices for obtaining customer feedback. Let’s look at those:
- If someone calls your service department, you want to send your CSAT survey right away. You want to ask for this feedback sooner than later so their interaction with your service staff is fresh in their mind.
- For the customer who has signed up for a subscription service that is ongoing or purchased a product, you’ll want to consider giving the customer a few days to a week or so to really dive in. Give them some time to use your product/service before asking about their overall satisfaction.
Myth #3: You Can’t Use CSAT Survey More Than Once
Another myth is that you can’t send the CSAT more than one time per customer.
This is actually false.
You can send this survey to your customer multiple times during their life cycle with you. For example, your customer purchases a product, and you send the CSAT survey. Then, a month later, they call customer service. You again want their feedback, so you send another CSAT survey.
The CSAT is something you can use over and over again. Just be careful not to overload your customers with too many surveys clustered together.
Myth #4: Scores are Hard to Calculate
It’s actually quite easy to calculate your Customer Satisfaction Score. You take your positive responses and add them all together. You then divide them by the total number of responses and multiple by one hundred.
Your final number is a percentage of customers who are satisfied with your business, products, or service.
To break this down, you’ll have the following possible answers on your survey:
- Very unsatisfied
- Unsatisfied
- Neutral
- Satisfied
- Very satisfied
When taking the positive responses, you only include those customers who are “satisfied” or “very satisfied.” For example, you have 20 people who marked satisfied and 10 who marked very satisfied. For the other three choices, you have a total of 10 people.
You divide the number of satisfied customers (30) by the number of survey responses (40) and multiply by 100, getting 75% of your customers are satisfied.
Myth #5: You Don’t Need to Share Your Score
Some business owners learn their Customer Satisfaction Score and don’t share it with anyone.
The best thing you can do is share your CSAT with your employees. This is a perfect coaching opportunity.
You want to use your CSAT data to improve your overall customer service. This data is the perfect chance to teach your employees how to improve the overall customer experience by working better with your customers.
You’ll find that using the CSAT data with your employees helps you improve your customer satisfaction scores.
Myth #6: You Don’t Need to Take Action
It is quite easy for busy business owners and managers to send surveys, look at the data, and then file it away.
While you may have looked at the data, that’s not quite enough. You must create an action plan based on your survey data.
There are some things to consider when looking at your CSAT results so you can create a strategy for attending to customer satisfaction issues.
Use the CSAT survey anywhere you can. This might include after a purchase, a specific interaction with a team member, or another touch point.
Then, analyze the data for each instance. For example, you may find a significant percentage of your customers are unhappy after an interaction with one of your customer service staff members. You can use this data to work with your team member to improve your data.
In addition, you mind that after sending a CSAT survey about a new product, that a majority of your customers aren’t satisfied with it. You can then follow up to learn more about the issue so you can improve them.
It’s important that once you have the feedback after each survey, that you take immediate action. Your brand depends on it.
Final Thoughts
Now that you know six myths about the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), debunked, you can get ready to create a strategy for measuring customer satisfaction.
Remember that you need to survey all your customers and not just the ones you think will respond in a positive manner.
Try to send surveys to larger groups of people so you have as much data as possible to draw from.
Consider using a following up question after the survey. This should be an open-ended question that prompts respondents to elaborate on their numbered responses.
Finally, keep sending your CSAT surveys. Use them often and strategically to improve your overall customer satisfaction rates.
Surveys can help you get valuable customer feedback about what your customers need and want. You can then use this feedback to scale your business. Are you ready to get started with your Survey Town account? Start with your account today.
Image: Jakob Rosen on Unsplash
