Market research before a product is launched is usually our first line of feedback. But once a product is on the market, there are more questions to be asked. What are your customers thinking? How do you stack up against your competition based on customer perceptions? Are you meeting customer expectations?
Keeping track of customer satisfaction scores at key touchpoints can reveal a critical piece of the customer experience puzzle. It will help you not only understand the product’s reception, but also what needs to improve.
It’s no wonder the Customer Satisfaction Survey (CSAT) has become a mainstay in every business’ customer experience and growth strategy, right alongside the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and the Customer Effort Score (CES)!
Since the customer satisfaction survey can give you insights far beyond just customer satisfaction, here are the top things businesses can learn from proactively capturing critical customer satisfaction feedback:
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1. Identify experience gaps
Your perception of customer experience and satisfaction might be significantly different from what your customers think. Customer satisfaction feedback surveys help you identify these differences so that you can rule out blind spots and implement changes that improve the overall customer experience.
2. Capture market insights
How do you match up to your competitors? You can modify a CSAT survey with open-ended follow-up questions to understand the parameters that differentiate your product (and not just from your research, but from the customer’s perspective!)
So while a market research survey is critical to identifying market sentiments beforehand, a customer satisfaction survey will help you capture critical competitor data to understand just where you stand in the market at large.
3. Understand customer preferences
Do you really know what your customers want?
There are several parameters to consider for making your product a great choice amongst its target audience. Identifying what matters most to each audience segment can allow you to focus your efforts, tailor your positioning, and build up critical strengths to make a difference.
CX platforms such as Sogolytics empower you to follow up your CSAT survey with a Key Driver Analysis question so that you can identify your key strengths and weaknesses. The Key Driver Analysis Report will reveal which aspects you should fortify and improve, delivering a better customer experience.
4. Track customer expectations
Customer expectations are constantly changing. After all, our consumer centric economy of today means that there is constant innovation in the world of customer experiences, directly raising their expectations. So, if you’re looking to ensure you match customer expectations (if not surpass them), the first thing to do is determine what these expectations are and how they’re changing.
After all, in a world where consumers have an array of choices, you aren’t competing with the customer experiences delivered by other small businesses, but with those delivered by global giants like Amazon! By tracking what your customers want, you can get a good idea of what you need to do to get started.
5. Optimize the customer journey
How happy are the customers with the journey they embarked on? Right from the initial discovery phase to conversion, do you notice any touchpoint where their satisfaction drops?
For example, if you only knew that customers were clicking on your ads and navigating from your landing page, yet somehow also had a high cart abandonment rate, you won’t instantly know where the problem lies.
In fact, it’s easy to assume there was something wrong with the cart. But perhaps the real issue was actually related to website navigation!
By ensuring customer satisfaction feedback at key milestones, you’ll be able to get a good idea of where possible concerns lie, so that you can work on optimizing the customer journey and focusing on critical obstacles before they snowball into larger concerns.
6. Improve ROI
This one is obvious. If your customers are truly happy with their experiences, recognize that you’re taking their feedback and acting on it, and know that you’ve got their back – you’re going to have customers who happily promote your brand amongst their social circles.
The results? Brand champions with a higher customer lifetime value (CLV) who are actively fetching your brand a higher revenue through their referrals – and directly contributing to the bottom line.
7. Create a stronger customer relationship
Customers are always looking to be heard. By seeking feedback and showing them that you’re acting on it, you can work on building customer trust and loyalty. After all, they want a brand they can count on.
When they note that you instantly registered their query, followed up, and followed through to a happy resolution, customers are much more likely to be loyal to your brand and promote it to their friends.
What’s more, these are the customers who become brand loyalists. After all, why test the waters with unknown brands when they see that your brand is truly making a sincere effort to meet their expectations?
In conclusion
Go beyond your best guess to ensure the numbers substantiate your strategies. This helps you eliminate biases and implement strategies that maximize impact.
By proactively seeking customer satisfaction feedback and ensuring the relevant follow up questions (when need be) are asked, you can capture insights that help you eliminate blind spots while bringing to light your hidden strengths so you can focus on building up and fortifying a customer experience that truly leaves an impression.
In a world heavily driven by customer experiences and riddled with competition, 9 out of 10 companies will compete based on CX alone. So, the first step towards ensuring you have an edge is to get to know your customers better than anyone else. Make an effort to understand what drives them, what influences them, and what matters to them.Â
Only by tracking key metrics, asking meaningful questions, and analyzing the responses that come pouring in can you assess the situation and make the right decisions. Â
And what’s more, this is all the data your customers want to share with you—you just need to give them a chance to express it!
