(ThySistas.com) As a small business owner, you are likely to carry out a whole lot of work before you even come into contact with any customers. You have to develop a product, manufacture it, and settle on whether to operate from a traditional brick and mortar store, whether to sell online, or whether to sell through both. But as soon as you launch your products and place them on the market, you really do need to start focusing on customers and customer satisfaction. After all, these are the individuals who are going to generate sales and consequently generate profit. Now, there are various steps that you can take to figure out whether your customers are satisfied or not and steps that you can take to promote satisfaction or maintain satisfaction. Read on for everything you need to know on the subject!
The Importance of CSAT
Customer satisfaction is extremely important for a variety of reasons. Here are just a few to consider.
- Happy customers are more likely to actually purchase products from you. If they feel satisfied with the service that they have received in the lead up to the sale, they are much more likely to follow it through.
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Happy customers are also much more likely to return. If they know that they received good quality products and service in the past, they are likely to shop with you again rather than heading to a competitor for goods in the future.
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Happy customers leave good reviews and can recommend your brand to their friends, family, and other acquaintances. Word of mouth advertising is invaluable and doesn’t cost you a penny!
What Can Promote Customer Satisfaction?
In Store
- Greeting – You should ensure that anyone stepping through your store’s doors is greeted. This makes them feel comfortable and puts them in a positive mindset before they start browsing your stock. If your store is relatively small, you may get to know regulars on a named basis, so make sure to use their name when greeting them!
- Help – offer to help customers find something that they are looking for, but make sure that you don’t overwhelm them. Some people prefer to be aided while others prefer to browse alone. Individuals who want help will take you up on it while those who prefer to be left will generally politely decline.
Online
- Accessibility – your website design should ensure that users can access and locate different pages and information as and when they want to. You should employ a web designer to take care of navigation and to ensure there isn’t too much clutter on your page.
- Contact Details – while you can have an FAQ page, you need to ensure that customers can ask further questions or request more information. Have links to contact information, including a phone number, an email address, and social media links. If you want to go all out, you could even add an instant messaging feature to your website.
Measuring CSAT
CSAT stands for “customer satisfaction”. A CSAT score can be determined by employing variety of different methodologies. Here are just a few to consider.
- Surveys – surveys can be used to ask direct questions of your customers. You can distribute these surveys in various different ways – on paper in store or via email. Make use of specialist customer survey software for the best results.Try to keep surveys and questionnaires short and sweet, as customers are likely to avoid filling long surveys in.
- Machines – you may have seen machines in various commercial premises that have a row of buttons that people can press to express their experience. There will generally be a bright green button for great experience, an orange button for satisfactory experience, and a red button for a negative experience. While feedback will be relatively vague, it will help to alert you to sudden drops in satisfaction. You can then focus on finding the cause of this and rectifying the situation as quickly as possible. The speed and convenience of this form of feedback means that most customers will engage with it.
Making Sure to Act On Feedback
Remember that you need to do more than simply generate feedback. You need to act on any feedback that you’ve been given to actively improve all of your customers’ experience with you in the future. Wrongs should be put to rights and if customers notice that you really are listening to what they have to say, they will feel more appreciated and offer other insightful suggestions too!
As you can see, you are going to have to focus on various different areas if you want to determine whether your customers are satisfied, and you are also going to have to take active steps to maximise satisfaction associated with your business. However, the time and effort that you have to invest in this area will be more than worth the effort, both in terms of boosting your company’s expectations and maximising profit too!
Staff Writer; Lisa Brown