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Customer Satisfaction is no longer a buzzword. The modern customer is highly informed with a variety of options available, and customer experience is often the differentiator. Collecting and leveraging data to understand consumers and incorporate their feedback enables brands to delight them at every stage of the customer journey, which can pay off immensely.
According to an Oracle Report, 86% of consumers will pay more for a better customer experience. Still, only 1% of consumers feel that their expectations for a good customer experience are always met. Quite the contradiction, right? It is possible to match up to customer expectations, but first, you have to know what those expectations are. The best way of finding out is by simply asking.
The Importance of Tracking Customer Satisfaction
Customer opinions and feedback are two essential factors that validate important decisions within a business, often determining its sustainability and growth. Those opinions shape the customer lifecycle.
If you don’t know what your customers think, you have a lesser chance of retaining them, delighting them, and enticing them to make future purchases.
Customer retention is vital. Current customers are your most significant potential buyers and the best thing for your ROI, and retaining existing customers is much cheaper than acquiring new ones. According to a Bain & Company study, increasing customer loyalty by just 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95%, and loyal customers are worth up to 10 times the amount of their first purchase.
How Customer Satisfaction Surveys can Help Improve Customer Experience
So, do you know what your customers expect from you, and if you are meeting those expectations? How do you know if the customer is satisfied or dissatisfied?
This is where customer satisfaction surveys come in. Customer satisfaction surveys provide data businesses can use to take informed actions to significantly improve customer experience and all the metrics that come with it. They help turn negative customer experiences around and improve product and service offerings to delight even more customers — hence better loyalty and retention, higher sales, and less churn overall! Here are some key roles customer satisfaction surveys can play:
Valuable Feedback Channel
A well-done customer satisfaction survey provides your company with valuable feedback on matters that are important to your customer, such as how well your products meet customers’ needs or how satisfied they are with your Modus Operandi. The type of feedback that points to problems you were not aware of is a significant contributor to the alignment of your entire business.
Voice of the Customer
Oftentimes, all a customer wants is a listening ear. Once you show that their feedback matters to your business, then you have already taken a step towards making them part of your core. A customer satisfaction survey achieves precisely that – providing a channel for customers to express their views.
Customer-Focused Employee Mindset
If your business truly puts the customer first (and not just a cliché), then all your employees need to be informed about customers’ expectations of the company. By showing employees the results of a customer satisfaction survey, you get them on board with the customer. It helps to try to include all departments in the surveys and share the results with everyone.
Strategy Building
Knowing how important customer satisfaction is, customer-oriented brands can leverage customer experience surveys to make important improvements to their business processes. Analyzing the responses highlights your company’s strengths and weaknesses from the customers’ perspective, thereby guiding the entire strategy formulation to address any issues.
Progress
A single satisfaction survey can provide a snapshot of customers’ views at a given point in time. Conducting the same survey several times over a period of time can show the results of any improvement programs you have undertaken, enabling continuous growth.
GeoPoll Customer Satisfaction surveys
GeoPoll conducts thousands of customer satisfaction surveys every year, primarily through the mobile phone. Using GeoPoll’s real-time mobile surveying platform, you can easily track customer experience on a regular basis, collect data via trigger polls on product packaging, in-store by sending surveys to an existing customer database, or by identifying your customers through targeting of GeoPoll’s own respondent panel. Collect data daily, weekly, or monthly to quickly identify changes and take action to maintain a high customer satisfaction rating.
Learn more about our process, or talk to GeoPoll about your customer experience goals.