How to Measure Customer Satisfaction?

The majority of companies believe that they give “superior” customer service, but that is in stark contrast to the only 8% of customers who say they’ve experienced that level of satisfaction in recent interactions.

Why does customer satisfaction matter?

Improving customer retention rates should be a major goal for most types of businesses. When your company is seeing high churn rates, you’re not just losing the revenue from those customers. You’ve spent a lot of time and resources on that customer, which is why in general it’s more expensive to acquire and onboard a new customer than to build upon an existing relationship. Customer satisfaction doesn’t just help retention, it can also help you reduce customer acquisition costs. That is because word of mouth referrals are a great way to grow your customer base, at no additional cost to your business. When your customers are happy, they are more likely to recommend you to their colleagues, friends, and business partners.

Customer happiness goes beyond customer satisfaction. It is what takes your customer service from “meets expectations” to “exceeds”, or even “superior” level service.

How to measure customer satisfaction?

When you are measuring customer satisfaction, you’re able to create best practices and new standards based on what your specific customers want to see. This will vary for each type of business and your specific customer base, so it is important to learn from your own customers. That will be more helpful than any customer service guide you may find online.

The main metrics that your business should be looking at are listed below, with brief explanation. It may be helpful to do additional research on specific metrics to gain a deeper understanding, but we hope that this guide will be a good starting point.

1. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): This is a metric measured directly by asking your customers on a scale that you define (such as did not meet, meet, or exceeded expectations). To quantify CSAT, give each response a numerical value and take an average of customer responses. You can incorporate CSAT at the end of each phone call, or in an email survey following a customer service experience.
2. Net Promoter Score: This metric measures the likelihood that your customer would recommend you to a friend. This can also be asked at the end of a phone call, or in an email survey following a customer service experience.
3. Customer Effort Score (CES): This metric will look into how easy or difficult it is for a customer to use your product or service. This can be a great metric to understand if difficulty of use is leading to low retention rates. If you would like to improve your CES, it may be helpful to look at your onboarding process and resources you provide your customers to make it so they can reduce the level of effort needed to see value from your company.
4. Customer Retention Rate (CRR): This metric can help you establish a baseline to improve from. You want to be retaining as many customers as possible, and you can compare CRR rates over a period of time to see if your new customer service practices have improved customer retention.
5. First Response Time: This can be a great way for your team to understand if there are gaps in your customer service efforts. How long does it take on average for your customers to hear back from you after initiating a support request? Understanding this can help you better allocate resources.
6. Number of Upsells and Cross-sells: Both of these numbers can relate back to customer satisfaction, as a customer likely won’t increase their purchases if they aren’t satisfied with your services.

There are plenty of other metrics you could use to measure customer satisfaction, but starting with these should help give you a good picture.

Your goal should be to maximize the amount of customers who see your team as providing “superior” level customer service. Exceeding customer expectations is already difficult, but can be especially difficult if your team is equipped with the best tools. Yodel is able to help you provide a higher level of customer satisfaction with our intelligent business phone system. You can even integrate your phone into your CRM system, helping you access important customer information at ease. Get started with a free trial today, and see the difference Yodel can help you make.