customer satisfaction

What is CSAT and How Does it Work?

Survey Tips

Do you know if your customers are satisfied? Do you have processes in place to measure customer satisfaction?

If not, consider implementing the CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) survey.

To help you, we look at “What is CSAT, and how does it work?”

The CSAT measures how your products and services meet or surpass your customers’ expectations.

In today’s busy world, where everyone expects the best service, knowing how you meet your customers’ expectations can mean the difference between a successful business and one that closes its doors.

CSAT is Key to Success

Poor customer service affects your business in many ways, which is why it’s so important you know your CSAT.

Customer service is key to helping your business grow. And, in our digital age, it’s important to keep your customers satisfied. Why?

Quite simply it’s too easy for people to leave you bad reviews on Google and social media. It’s too easy for them to get in a negative discussion about you online, and their angry rants may go viral.

This spells disaster for business.

Yet, on the flip side, if you know your CSAT, you know you also have highly satisfied customers who go on to leave you glowing reviews. They become your brand ambassadors telling everyone they know how great you are.

How the CSAT Works

To measure customer satisfaction, you send out a survey with the following question. It might be a one question survey or included in your regular survey.

You ask, “How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the product or service you received?”

CSAT scores are expressed on a scale of 0-100% with 100% representing total customer satisfaction. Usually respondents rate their satisfaction on a scale of one to five:

The formula is the number of satisfied customers (those answering four or five) divided by the number of satisfaction survey responses times 100 to equal the percentage of satisfied customers.

To Conclude

The CSAT reveals important data about your company.

You can use your customer satisfaction score to make an actionable plan to improve your number.

Once you know your CSAT number, you can use it to improve your customer service, train your employees, develop new products or services, and make your business stand out from the competition. (tweet this)

At the end of the day, your CSAT helps you boost your revenues by showing your customers they are number one.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: rawpixel on Unsplash

Decoding the Customer Effort Score (CES)

Survey Tips

Have you heard people toss the term CES around the conference room? Struggling to understand just what it means?

In this article, we are decoding the customer effort score (CES) so you understand how it can help your business.

What is the Customer Effort Score?

In the simplest terms, the customer effort score measures your customers’ perception of how easy or hard your company made it for them to complete their chosen action. (tweet this)

This could be anything really. For example, how easy or hard was it for:

A customer to buy something from your website or in your store.
Someone to resolve an issue with your staff.
A customer to register a product.
Your website visitors to navigate your website.
A person to leave you a review.

So, you can see that while the CES most often involves your service and support staff, it doesn’t always.

You can use the CES metric to evaluate how easy it is for your customers to deal with your business in a myriad of ways. One of the most common uses it to learn how easy it was for your customers to find a resolution to their problem with your service team.

In the 21^st century and age of social media and review sites all over the internet, you know your customers want to do business with companies that are easy to work with. And, all too often, if they had a bad experience, they’ll spread it all over the internet.

You don’t want this to happen. It’s imperative that your customers are happy with their solutions and that they feel their issues were handled promptly and simply.

The CES allows you to determine if this is actually true.

When Should You Use the Customer Effort Score?

Best practice is to use the CES right after a customer has had an interaction with your business.

For example, you would send the survey after a customer purchased a product or service or had an interaction with your customer service department.

Your goal is to get real-time feedback. If you let too many days or weeks go between the interaction and the survey, you are likely to lose valuable data.

How to Measure Customer Effort Score

As we mentioned, you want to send out your CES survey shortly after any particular interaction.

The survey includes only one statement.

A sample question may look like this: “Your company (X) made it easy for me to handle my issue (buy a product, purchase a service, talk to support, use your website, figure out how to use a product).

The possible answers would be: strongly agree, agree, somewhat agree, neutral, somewhat disagree, disagree, or strongly disagree.

You might also ask the question like this: “How easy was it to solve your problem with (name of your business) today? The answer choices might be: very difficult, difficult, neither, easy, or very easy.

It’s also possible to send out your one question CES survey with just Yes/No as the possible answers.

Some businesses even include the option of allowing their customers to leave a comment. This can often provide a better look at what happened to that particular customer.

You’ll find many successful businesses measure CES right alongside the Net Promoter Score.

Why Use the CES

If you want to instill customer loyalty in the people who shop with you and retain them in the future, you want to explore the customer effort score.

The CES tells you in the most basic terms whether or not you are providing the best customer experience. If you are, great. If you aren’t, you know it’s time to improve if you want to better the customer experience.

When you reduce customer effort in all aspects of your business, but especially when it comes to service, you build customer loyalty.

Bottom line – you differentiate your business from the competition when you help your customers by providing them a quick and easy way to purchase from you, use your products or services, and work with your service staff.

Why Customer Effort Matters

You’ve been there before. You ordered something from a business, it didn’t work, and you called customer service. Then, you spoke with the first tier, second tier, and third tier, and yet you still don’t have a resolution.

That means you expended way too much customer effort. You probably won’t return to that business again, and you certainly won’t recommend them to others, and you may even broadcast your bad feelings about them.

Now, you don’t want that to happen to your own business, and that’s why your customers’ effort actually matters.

By reducing customer effort, this is what you get:

People who will recommend you to others in the form of positive word of mouth. This is where your Net Promoter Score can come in.
Customer retention increases and your customers purchase from you again.
Your costs decline because you solve customers’ issues quickly instead of spending additional money on labor costs.
Employee retention also rises because they are happy to provide a better customer experience, so they incur less stress and frustration.

How CES Helps You Improve Your Team

If you have staff members or customer service agents who above normal CES results in negative territory, you can recognize that they either need additional training or a new job.

Knowing your CES score can help you identify where you can help your team grow which ultimately makes your company stronger.

Do be cognizant though of your service staff who regularly handles the most difficult and complex cases. Naturally, their CES score may be less than the agents that handle the easier issues.

Final Thoughts

Measuring the customer effort score ultimately helps you grow your business. Combine it with your Net Promoter Score, and you’re well on your way to providing the best customer service.

Today’s customers demand a good shopping experience, and they’ll shop elsewhere if they don’t find it with you.

Effortless customer service will improve your bottom line. Make a concerted effort to eliminate hurdles and hassle for your customers, and they’ll soon be shouting your praises.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: rawpixel on Unsplash

NPS Score vs. Ratings: Measuring Customer Satisfaction

NPS Score: Measuring Customer Satisfaction

Survey Tips

For businesses today, the single most affirming action a customer can make is to come back to your business again. This is one of the true measures of customer satisfaction.

Your goal as a business owner is to ensure your customer’s happiness so they’ll return for a visit.

Right along with this and just as important is knowing your happy customers will tell others about you, and this is where the NPS (Net Promoter Score) comes in. An effective way to measure this is by actively asking for feedback through the net promoter survey.

In this article, we look at the NPS survey and how it relates to the customer satisfaction survey.

NPS and Customer Satisfaction Surveys

The Net Promoter Score is often calculated separately from the customer satisfaction survey, but it can also be part of it.

Remember that the Net Promoter Score survey is the way you learn your customer’s willingness to recommend your business to others.

It includes one question, “How likely is it that you would recommend x business to a friend or colleague?” The NPS survey uses a 0-to-10-point rating scale and people are categorized as either promoters, passives or detractors.

On the other hand, the customer satisfaction survey gauges how your customers feel about your services (both positively and negatively).

The customer satisfaction survey normally has five-10 questions, uses a rating scale of 1-10, and queries the customer on their experience, satisfaction and service delivery. It aims to find out how happy your customers are.

The customer satisfaction survey needs to ask more questions to come up with an overall rating, while the NPS only needs to ask one question.

Final Thoughts

The NPS survey and the customer satisfaction survey aren’t really interchangeable, but they can be used in unison when measuring customer satisfaction. (tweet this)

So, which is better? It could be that the two surveys complement one another. You might embed the NPS question in the customer satisfaction survey to give your team on the overall view of the customer’s satisfaction as well as their likelihood to recommend you.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: Mira Bozhko on Unsplash

5 Customer Satisfaction Survey Best Practices

Survey Tips

Do you know what your customers think about your business, your products and services or your staff?

Have you ever asked them?

A customer satisfaction survey is a great way to find out how your customers perceive you and to gain feedback so you can improve your products and systems.

When you send a survey to your customers, you’ll gain valuable data that you can analyze and then turn into action. (tweet this) This in turn helps you increase your strengths, work on your weaknesses and grow your business.

In this article, we look at five customer satisfaction survey best practices to help you send accurate, relevant surveys to your customer base.

#1: Have One Objective

Are you already saying to yourself, “But, wait, I have so many questions to ask?” That may be. So, in that instance we’d suggest sending several surveys spaced apart during the year.

The best practice when it comes to surveys is sending one survey with one very well-crafted objective.

Sit down with your team and find out what feedback you really want.

Do you want to know how your customers perceive a specific product or service?
Are you after their perceptions of your customer service?
Maybe you’d like to find out what they think about a new product you have in mind.

The possibilities are endless, and you do want to make sure that the objective of your survey is something you’re actually willing to take action on.

For example, if you ask several questions about your customer service, be sure you’re willing to do what it takes to help your staff improve.

When designing your survey, narrow down your survey goal. Once you have your goal, you can compose your questions. Be sure you stick to only the questions that apply to your one survey objective.

By doing this, you keep your survey focused. You also end up with better response rates because you won’t frustrate your respondents by bouncing all over with your questions and topics.

#2: Be Succinct

Now that you’ve narrowed down your objective, it’s time to come up with the questions. Brain storm questions so you have a pool to choose from.

The best surveys are short with very specific questions.

A general rule of thumb and best practice is to keep your survey under 10 questions. Better yet, make sure your customers can complete the survey in less than five minutes.

According to one study, adults lose their focus after just eight seconds. That means you have less than 30 seconds to grab their attention, convince them to take your survey and keep them interested.

Bottom line – the shorter the survey, the better chance you’ll have for a high response rate.

#3: Don’t Double Up

Make sure that you only ask one question per question as well. Sometimes survey writers are tempted to ask two questions in one. This isn’t a good idea. Make it easy on your customers so they don’t have to think too much to answer your questions.

For example, let’s say you want to know about customer service, and you ask this question, “Did you like the service you received in the deli department and the checkout lane?”

You aren’t going to get an accurate answer for either of these because while they seem related, they aren’t.

Don’t fall into the trap of asking two things in one question. Break your questions apart so your customers are very clear what you’re asking.

In the above example, they may have had a terrible experience at the deli counter and a lovely one at your checkout lane.

When offering check-boxes, don’t forget to also give respondents the chance to answer your question by selecting other or not applicable. Then, give them a text box for their answer.

This also helps ensure you get relevant answers.

#4: Test Your Survey

As with all things marketing, it’s a best practice to test your survey. Send it to your employees, a few friends or trusted advisors.

Ask them if it makes sense. Find out how long it took each one to complete the survey. Visit with them to learn if the whole survey made sense, and if they found it interesting to complete.

If you get positive feedback, that’s great, and you’re ready to send. If not, go back and revise what you need to so you can get the most valuable, relevant data from your customer satisfaction survey.

#5: Take Action

It’s a common problem – businesses send out surveys, compile the information, analyze the results, and then it sits on someone’s desk for months.

If you want to show your customers that you care about their feedback, you must take action on your results and share it with your customers.

Tell your customers what you learned. Then, explain to them what you’re going to do as a result of their feedback.

When you follow up with your customers, you show them that you value them, their feedback and their time. You increase their loyalty with your company and show them their opinions do matter.

What’s more, they’ll be happy to complete any other surveys you send them because they’ll feel like they have a voice and a say in your company’s products and surveys. This in turn confirms their reason for doing business with you.

Final Thoughts

While it may seem hard to craft your survey, it can be even harder convincing your customers to complete your customer satisfaction survey.

Your customers are busy, and as you build your survey, there are a few things to remember for the best responses. Make sure the following is in place before you send your survey:

A reason for them to complete the survey should be clear. For example, they are current customers with a connection to your business.
They believe they’re making a difference by completing the survey.
The survey is incredibly easy to complete.
There is a reward at the end. Consider offering something like a drawing or extra loyalty points for their efforts.

Now that you have five customer satisfaction survey best practices, you’re ready to begin building your survey so you can make the best decisions about your business, increasing customer loyalty in the process.

Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: Clem Onojeghuo

8 Excellent Ways To Track Customer Satisfaction

Survey Tips

We live in a super-charged world today. It’s one in which your customer will let you know immediately if they are unhappy with your product or service because they’ll share it on social media or write you a bad Google review.

But, what about all of your happy customers? Or, the customers who might benefit from your product, but aren’t sure how to use it?

In this article, we look at eight excellent ways to track customer satisfaction so you not only learn when customers are unhappy, but you learn what they like and how you can improve.

If you want to stay on top of the competition, you want to actively track customer satisfaction every day.

#1: Customer Feedback Surveys

Perhaps the easiest way of all to track customer satisfaction is through the online survey.

Create a succinct, three-five question survey to send to your customers. Don’t ask leading, loaded or biased questions and include an open-ended question or two as well.

Decide what results you’re looking for when crafting the survey. Only ask the questions that are actionable. In other words, don’t ask questions if you don’t intend to take an action on the answer.

Online customer feedback surveys work, and they’re a terrific way to track customer satisfaction.

#2: Email

Tracking customer satisfaction through email is a valuable way to monitor your customer satisfaction rates.

When sending email, be personal and to the point. Don’t ask too much and use open-ended questions to elicit a response.

Always follow up if the customer is unhappy.

One of the best times to solicit feedback is right after your customer signs up to join your email list.

You can then send an automated email asking a single question. Here are some ideas:

What are you struggling with (in regards to your products/services)?
What feature would you like us to add?
Why did you join our list?
How can we make your life easier?

You can use email to send out your online surveys as well.

#3: Usability Tests

Usability tests are terrific because you have a captive audience trying out your product or service. They are dedicated to giving your test their all, and they are willing to be serious about providing feedback.

Just imagine that you developed a new iPhone accessory, and you give it to 50 people to try for a month.

You ask them to record their observations every day for the whole 30 days. You ask them what they like, what they don’t like and what they don’t understand.

After the 30 days are up, your trial users can give you a wealth of information about your product.

By tracking customer satisfaction through usability tests, you’re better able to anticipate further satisfaction when you launch your product.

#4: Customer Conversation

Another excellent way to track customer satisfaction is with the direct interview – one-on-one and person-to-person.

Understanding your customers and their wants and needs is done easily when it’s done face-to-face.

When you conduct personal interviews in conjunction with your electronic customer surveys, you’ll end up with a wealth of information.

Focus on your customers’ attitudes towards your product or service. Be specific and ask open-ended questions. You aren’t after a yes or no answer here.

Ask your customers about their usage habits. For example, how often do they use your product/service, in what instance and for how long. Uncover if there are other products they use as well.

If you want to really understand your customer and dive deeper into the level of their customer satisfaction, interview them in person. (tweet this)

#5: Website Feedback Boxes

You can track customer satisfaction through feedback boxes on your website or with one question website surveys.

Grab your customers while you are top of mind. For example, if you want to know what they thought of your checkout process, put a feedback box on your shopping cart page.

Offering customers a quick chance to let you know how they feel is a great way to catch minor problems before they get broadcast all over social media.

#6: Social Media

Monitoring social media is an untapped arena for many businesses, but one you should be using.

Social media is a wide open world where you have the ability to create a huge impact on your customer base. This is where you do your heavy relationship building.

Social media is also where you’ll learn if people are happy or unhappy with your service.

In fact, the amount of customer feedback on social media is unprecedented. Never before have people been able to express their opinions so vocally.

Be sure to monitor your social media conversations and attend to comments immediately, especially if they’re negative.

To help you track your customer satisfaction on social media, you can use the following tools:

Google Alerts – set these, and for free Google notifies you when your brand has been mentioned online.
Mention – this tool also lets you know when your business gets mentioned online. It works much better for social media monitoring. (This tool is not free.)
Socialmention – this free tool analyzes your social mentions and shows your range of influence, your ratio of positive to negative mentions and much more.

#7: Website Analytics

Some businesses neglect their Google Analytics, which is unfortunate because it’s a treasure trove of information.

By checking your analytics, you can glean what part of your website gets the most traffic, when and how often. You can also get a good look at user behavior while visitors are on your website.

Using your analytics is a passive way to track customer satisfaction as it doesn’t directly involve their input, but it’s still a good way to gauge customer traffic on your website.

Through your analytics, you’ll find areas of your site that need improvement, and you can learn how to better guide website visitors through your sales funnel.

#8: Focus Groups

Finally, one last way to track customer satisfaction is through focus groups. These are an excellent and relaxed way to talk to your customers.

Getting a group of people together encourages interaction and discussion. They might even provide some ideas for moving forward.

To Conclude

Now that you have eight excellent ways to track customer satisfaction, it’s time to get to work. Once you’ve picked a couple strategies for learning more about your customers, put someone in charge and set the ball rolling.

When you’ve completed your customer satisfaction surveys, tally your data, and then take action.

Let your customers know what you learned and what you’re going to do about it. This lets them know you value not only their input, but their time.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: Binit Sharma