BusinessHABCustomer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Techniques: Customer satisfaction is a business goal for every brand and a key to success .
So if you’re reading this article right now it means you probably agree with this statement.
While it is relatively easy to say.
It is much more difficult to maintain and actually keep your customers happy and satisfied with services or products you provide.
Customer’s Satisfaction Business Techniques
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Today, we are going to show you useful customer satisfaction tips and tricks to win your customer’s hearts and loyalty.
Once you entered the world of business.
You need to do all means in order to maintain the satisfaction of your customers.
Because they are the primary factors that will make your business a success.
Customer satisfaction is defined as the seen performance through the customers’ eyes.
When a certain company or product had satisfied both the wants and needs of the customers.
Customer’s Satisfaction Business Techniques
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They will provide a lifetime value to it.
If you are lucky to satisfy your customers.
The following are some of the rewards: repeat business, referrals and company loyalty.
For you to sort out the overall improvement or performance of your business.
The customer satisfaction measurement must be done.
This will let you know your edge among your other competitors and the things you need to improve in the business.
For you to have more knowledge on the techniques for reporting and measuring the customer satisfaction, just continue reading.
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What are the Customer Satisfaction Techniques?
When you are already on the process of implementing the customer satisfaction solution.
You need to have some things to consider for the success of the customer satisfaction solution implementation.
The satisfaction of the customers is considered to be subjective.
And it will take a little time that will require both statistical analysis and sampling to fully understand the customers.
The gap understanding between the perceived and actual performance is also a very important one.
Because this will help you accurately measure the expectations of the customers.
You also need to consider identifying the connections between the bottom-line results and satisfied customers as well.
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When we say satisfaction, it can mean the following on the part of the customers.
They are satisfied with the service or product you provide.
They are satisfied with the on-going business relationship and your products or services exceeded their expectations.
Depending on what you offer, the satisfaction can have a different meaning.
The variables used in the measurement of the customer satisfaction will vary depending on how the organization defines the term satisfaction.
Let us cite as an example the manufacturing industry.
Customer’s Satisfaction Business Techniques
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Here, two of the most important aspects are specification.
And time so these variables must be used in measuring the level of satisfaction of the suppliers.
When it comes to customer satisfaction, the variables that you must use are first call resolution and the time to answer.
By applying this technique, a certain company will be able to identify numerous opportunities for both service and product innovation.
That will serve as basis for reward systems and performance appraisals.
In addition, this can also serve as the standard for the surveying program for customer satisfaction that can greatly ensure the improvement efforts.
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1.Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Give more, get more
You only have one chance to make a positive impression.
So get it right! If you make a terrific first impression, they will surely come back.
Therefore, present more than what they are expecting, for instance, deliver extra toiletries, clean the rooms daily, give extra pillows and blankets and provide a good Wi-Fi service.
Moreover, you need to make sure to have quality foods, such as good coffee and tea — they are a plus on your guest’s satisfaction! The main point is to anticipate their needs and wishes.
Obviously, you cannot please everyone, so the priority should be knowing your ideal customers and aim to attract them.
Customer’s Satisfaction Business Techniques
Hearing is not enough. You need to listen.
Stop treating feedback as your curse – take it as a blessing.
Listening to your customers and meeting their needs is essential and can be really beneficial for your brand.
How else can you know what they want than from their feedback?
But listening is not enough if you don’t respond to your clients.
It is crucial to gather and process customer feedback to implement the requested changes and develop your company.
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2.Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Be responsive.
Response time is crucial in many industries.
Don’t even try to disagree – no one wants and likes waiting for an answer.
Put some focus on how prompt the answers are, not only on their quality.
If they are not quick enough, work on it or even consider hiring another person to help you to keep customers happy.
The faster you reply the better job you do for your brand.
Time matters pretty much everywhere but in this particular case – even more.
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3.Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Be a human, not a machine.
In an era of marketing automation, any kind of personalization is warm welcomed.
While answering your customers’ questions or solving their complaints, try to show some human face instead of using boring templates.
Speak their language and try not to refer to company’s FAQ or, what’s worse, to company policy which is very often not the easiest one to understand.
4. Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques:Get to know your customers.
It’s worth knowing a bit more about your customers.
Not only in terms of CRM and tracking their activities but also about their personal side.
You can surprise them with customized note or product for some special occasions.
This way you will not only affect their customer experience and loyalty in a positive way.
So much that they can become natural brand ambassadors.
But also an overall review of your brand.
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5.Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: A Happy employee is a happy customer.
In all this rush for happy customers don’t forget about your employees who provide (an excellent, we hope) customer service.
If they are satisfied with what they do.
They show some love and make people love your brand too.
So, while you’re keeping an eye on providing the best quality of services to your customers.
Take care of people who provide it as well.
Customer’s Satisfaction Business Techniques
6. An issue is important, but a customer is more important.
Never let an issue or problem overtake your customer and its needs as for its importance.
If something got broken, don’t blame your customer.
Or don’t imply that they use your products in a wrong way.
Try to make their needs and remember that in business it’s a customer who is the most important (and always right, too).
It is always worth going an extra mile for customers.
And leave them not only satisfied with a solution but delighted by customer service they experienced.
7. Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Build your brand awareness.
Great customer service should go in pair with great, high-quality communication.
That puts you in a position of an expert in the industry.
Added value in the content you share, in a form of e.g. knowledge base articles, tips, tricks, services updates and special offers can keep your customers satisfied, happy and most of all loyal.
8.Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Keep organized.
To make your customers fully satisfied, each and every part of your company should collaborate with one another.
Keeping your customers happy depends not only on the quality of your customer service crew.
But also other departments such as those responsible for production.
You need to ask yourself, “would they handle a particular number of orders?” or “are they really delivering the best quality?”.
Only when all the gears in your company are well oiled and tightly connected you can expect the best results.
9. Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques:Measure and improve.
There’s not a single thing in the world that couldn’t have been done better.
The same rule applies to customer service.
Setting up some business goals, linked with customer service.
As well as KPI, would help you keep on track all efforts for making customer satisfaction grow.
There is no place for sentiment here as long as it is not an overall customers sentiment that could be measured e.g. by using surveys.
10. Make this journey comfortable for both.
If your customer comes with an issue on Facebook, try not to direct them and force to make a phone call or write an e-mail.
They reached you on social media.
Because it is the most comfortable way for them to communicate.
them some choices instead of one solution.
Give them some information when the problem could be solved instead of keeping them in suspense.
Offer them services that you would demand from others.
11. Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Customer loyalty is priceless
As said by Jeffrey Gitomer, customer satisfaction is worthless, customer loyalty is priceless.
Your main goal and focus should be on creating loyal customers.
Who are not easily influenced by your competitors.
Simple things can be done to build customer loyalty and consequently, increasing customer satisfaction.
For instance, remembering special occasions such as birthdays or giving personalized promotions and discounts. Personalized treatment is the best way to build-up your customer’s loyalty.
12. Use negative reviews to your advantage
The hospitality industry can be a tough one regarding requests and complaints from guests.
Because they come from the most various places: email, phone, in person.
It is often difficult to manage all of them, let alone address them quickly.
But, most times, providing a fast response makes the difference between gaining or losing a potential customer.
13. Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Ask them whether in print, in person or over the phone
Nothing is better than asking customers exactly what they want and how they want it.
Ask them what they don’t want, too.
Use feedback sheets, mail-back forms, comment cards, telephone scripts and more
14. Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Conduct focus groups.
Bring a group of customers together for an open-ended chat session.
Set them at ease and get them talking about what they really like.
Don’t like and wish they could get from your business.
Don’t defend, justify or argue.
Just ask questions and take good notes.
Follow up with a sincere ‘Thank you.
15. Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Study complaints and compliments.
Every message from a customer presents an opportunity to improve customer satisfaction.
Compliments show you what to reinforce.
While complaints point to new ideas and action steps for improvement.
16. Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Set up a customer hotline.
Some customers will tell you what they think, but they want an ‘anonymous’ way to do it.
Fine! Set up a special voice recording ‘hotline’ for customers only.
And don’t worry about receiving any strange messages.
Just sort through them for the gems that will give you specific information about way to improve customer satisfaction.
17. Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Hire a Mystery Shopper.
Have someone you trust mingle with your customers and strike up conversation to find out what they do and do not like.
18. Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Become a customer of your best competitors.
Use their products and services regularly, compare them to your own.
Ask their Customer Service Center to describe available services in detail.
Then copy the best and do better than the rest.
19. Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Visit your customer’s site.
Go your customer’s physical location to see exactly how they put your products and services to use.
See with your own eyes what works and what doesn’t, what gets used all the time and what gets left behind.
20. Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Go online to seek more feedbac.
Find an Internet users group related to your industry or topic.
Then read the postings for new ideas and information.
Actively participate in the discussions and follow up by e-mail to gain even deeper input and understanding
What is your favorite technique to improve customer satisfaction?
21.Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Offer VIP treatment
Why does American Express refer to its customers as “members”?
Well, there’s a lot of power in labeling customers as anything “special” or “VIP”.
It’s human nature to enjoy feeling part of something exclusive.
Or to feel like you’re getting a better deal or service than others.
From loyalty programmed to the kind of customer service you offer.
There are plenty of ways to make your customers feel special.
Simply acknowledging that they’re a highly valued.
Loyal customer when they call can be effective.
If your contact centre technology allows you to route based on CRM data.
You already have the tools to prioritise VIP customers.
22. Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Go the Extra Mile.
Always give people more than they expect to get” is a simple.
But powerful quote by Nelson Boswell, which could be easily applied to any area of life.
The key here is in the surprise element of getting more than you expected.
For instance, imagine you expected to receive a free mug.
But were actually given a free mug and a 20% discount voucher.
Then imagine you expected to get the voucher and the mug from the beginning.
The second scenario just isn’t as exciting.
Because you got what you were expecting.
Happy customers are those that got more than they expected – in terms of product or service.
23. Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Review Your Social Customer Service Tim Pickard
Social customer service may not account for a big proportion of customer service interactions.
But failure to respond via social channels can lead to a 15% increase in the churn rate.
Social networks can have a significant impact on how customers see your brand.
Shoppers not only have heightened expectations when it comes to social media service.
But if you get it wrong, your mistakes are out there for all to see.
24. Spread the “FAN” Acronym to Promote Good Service
Turn customers into fans by having advisors follow this FAN acronym:
Use your questioning expertise to understand the root cause of the problem. Nice touch.
This is where we surprise and delight our customers.
A follow-up call is nice and thorough, and if it’s tailored to the customer it can be really special.
But is there something else we can do to really wow them?
Action= Identify the right course of action, agree this with the customer and ensure it happens.
25. Adopt “Friday Morning” Training Sessions
Adding a ‘power hour’ of specific training to an advisor’s weekly routines.
Can be extremely helpful in continuously reinforcing your customer-centric business model.
These training sessions might involve analysing an advisor’s favourite call of the week… or their most disastrous.
Supporting and polishing up their frontline advisor skills.
Such as use of emotions, empathy, openness, listening and influencing – are all critical factors in helping boost customer satisfaction.
Instead of being the initiator for which skills these sessions should focus on.
Why not allow advisors to set the agenda for their own training and development?
Giving the team the ability to recognise which skills need improving may also encourage a sense of responsibility and trust.
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Customer’s Satisfaction Business Techniques
26. Learn from Your Dissatisfied Customers
Your dissatisfied customers will be the ones that deliver the most insight about your business and customer service techniques. Listen to them
This may be through customer focus groups, immersion sessions, call monitoring or the use of interaction analytics
By acting on the feedback or data that has now been collected.
Companies can proactively resolve issues.
Take corrective actions throughout the customer journey.
Before the issue repeats itself or escalates.
This can boost customer satisfaction as well as retention.
27. Provide a ‘Personal Touch’ for Customers
Unfortunately, there are bound to be many communications with customers that do not end positively.
Or do not go the way you would have liked them to have gone.
For those communications, why not isolate them through ‘tell-tale.
Indicators such as those which do not fall under the first call resolution category.
Or those which had a high average handling time.
Once you have isolated these tell-tale communications.
Show your customers that you really care by sending them a personalised email.
This email could ask them if you can do any more to help.
Or if they think the company’s communication could be improved.
And it could perhaps offer the caller a voucher.
Or some type of compensation to make up for their misdealings
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28. Boost Advisor Morale Through Motivational Games
Introducing the idea of gratification into the contact centre.
Can help keep motivation high and boost engagement.
In order to maintain quality customer service representatives.
And consistently drive high levels of customer care.
Gamification features are also available within many workforce management systems.
Some of the features of these include awarding points for a seamless timecard.
Approval of timecards, perfect attendance, overtime-related bonuses, etc.
Different points values can be assigned depending on each action.
Some examples of games/competitions can include a first call resolution ‘crown.
Which employees could compete for weekly.
Another might be a daily contest for the best customer feedback scores.
The end prize for these may be a half day off work or a bottle of champagne!
29. Do Each of the Three Following Best Practices
i Identify problems that originate outside of the contact centre.
While informing non-customer-facing departments of the impact they have on the Customer Experience (CX).
Failure demand can sometimes make up over 50% of contacts.
ii. Ensure all customer touchpoints are covered in your Voice of the Customer (VoC) programme, identifying where to focus most efforts initially.
iii. Make Customer Experience (CX) and the Voice of the Customer (VoC) outputs highly visible in the contact centre, via lots of communications, celebrating success, etc.
30. Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: See What’s Going on in Digital
60% of customers go online before engaging with a contact centre.
So it makes sense to close the gap by finding out what it was online.
That caused them to reach out to your contact centre.
Your online team will want to know why customer demand was leaked into the contact centre from the website.
while the contact centre will benefit when the online experience is optimised.
So, consider improving the links between those who work on the company website and the contact centre team.
Look at What’s Happening Outside of the Contact Centre
Start applying analysis to all the calls coming into your contact centre, using tools such as Rapport, so you can work quickly to eliminate customer journey bottlenecks.
By doing this you can highlight and ultimately eliminate the many repeat calls.
Failure demand, incorrect messages and out-of-hours contacts that can do so much to damage brand experience.
Customer’s Satisfaction Business Techniques
31. Don’t Use Average Handling Time as an Advisor Target
Simply refocusing on the right metrics can make a significant difference.
Perhaps moving away from time-based metrics to those that have greater insight into service quality, such as First Contact Resolution (FCR).
If you are still targeting your advisors on traditional metrics.
Such as Average Handling Time (AHT) then it’s hard for them to concentrate on delivering excellent customer service.
32. Set This One-Month Coaching Competition
Use Voice of the Customer (VoC) insight to identify the bottom five performing advisors in each team and focus on factors that advisors can control such as knowledge and soft skills.
Then, set a one-month coaching competition for all managers to work with the selected underperforming agents to try to get the best possible aggregate improvement.
The manager with the biggest team swing in Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores wins a prize, and the agent with the biggest improvement also wins a prize.Customer’s Satisfaction Business Techniques
33. Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Review Your Scripts
Sometimes an advisor’s strict adherence to a script can bypass common sense and cause anything but customer delight.
So, give advisors the freedom to act with common sense.
And not stick rigidly to a script regardless of the circumstances, to deliver quick wins with customer satisfaction.
For example, if a customer who has not had their problem resolved is asked:
Is there anything else I can help you with today’, it is likely to be met with a negative response.
Unsurprisingly, this lack of common sense is likely to increase dissatisfaction as the customer hasn’t been helped yet.
Measuring customer emotion at these points, either through interaction analytics or calculating a Net Emotional Value (NEV), will give you insight as to whether your script needs a rethink.
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34. Identify Drivers of Customer Effort and Repeat Contact Reasons
Around 30% of all customers report spending a high level of effort to resolve their problem.
Often, by the time a consumer makes a call to an advisor.
They are already frustrated and ready to take out their anger on the next person they talk to.
Switching from the web to the phone, having to re-explain an issue.
And having to contact a company repeatedly are three of the biggest causes of customer effort.
Most of these efforts can be avoided if your contact centre is designed to resolve queries first time.
And remember, your advisors are often the best equipped to tell you where the areas of high customer effort really are.
35. Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Develop a Self-Service Strategy
The majority of customers, across most demographics, prefer self-service for simple interactions.
Research from SITA showed that almost every flight is now booked using self-service technology.
75% of people use a website, while only 4% say they will seek out a human.
Yet recent research commissioned by West shows that just 21% of contact centres offer self-service.
So, make the next six weeks count by getting buy-in for a self-service strategy.
Look into deploying successful self-service tools.
So advisors are able to spend more time on dedicated and complex queries as the contact centre load is reduced.
36. . Look out for Business Processes That Drive Dissatisfaction
For just six weeks, stop using the random approach to coaching across a broad spectrum of interactions and target interactions that only contain difficult customer behaviour.
Look for negative sentiment by asking advisors for examples in quality monitoring.
Or using speech analytics tools and mark those interactions for supervisor and agents.
During this time, focus less on advisor performance and skill, and alternatively.
Ask your advisors to personally identify the negative internal business processes in those calls that drive dissatisfaction.
Next, short-list the top ten drivers and clearly communicate them to the contact centre and the business owner (i.e. marketing, billing, website, pricing).
36. Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Reduce Background Noise
For advisors, the ability to effectively manage relationships with minimal disruption is conducive to improvements in output and morale.
Noise-cancellation headsets can promote productivity.
Efficiency and confidentiality by blocking out background noise and making call quality crisper and cleaner.
This helps to reduce unwanted repetition and leads to higher quality conversations and quicker resolution times for customers.
Also, think about a flexible headset solution that allows the team to take calls on the move.
This makes it easy for advisors to retrieve important documents or speak to a colleague at the other end of the office to help solve a customer query.
37. Customer Satisfaction Business Techniques: Consider These Four Actions
i. Remember the customer journey from beginning to end and check processes, perhaps through mystery shopping.
ii. Understand why customers are contacting you in the first place – it is surprising how few organisations actually do this – and look for repeat-contact reasons.
iii. Publish answers to the most frequently asked questions on your company website or make it easy for customers to help themselves, including webchat for more straightforward queries.
iv. Start contacting customers before they have a chance to complain or, even better, before they are aware they have a problem.
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37. Build a Knowledge Base by Collecting Customer Feedback
Capturing customer feedback in real time, whether through real-time speech analytics (RTSA).
Or end-of-call surveys, allows businesses to use the knowledge gained to shape their future customer service approach.
Building up a knowledge base enables businesses to find out not just who that customer is.
But other details like where they live, what card they pay with and what they have previously bought.
Customer’s Satisfaction Business Techniques
39. Leverage Social Customer Service
Remember, one of the most effective and cheapest resources any organization can make use of to deliver enhanced customer service is its existing customers.
By creating a platform and a process to make it easy for people to share experiences.
Feedback, expertise and knowledge in a social forum.
Businesses can help quickly resolve queries, drive up satisfaction levels and reduce churn.
It is a great way of ensuring customers can get what they want in the fastest and most effort-free way possible.
Businesses can drive up the effectiveness of this approach.
By rewarding super users and customers who share intelligence to help the broader community.
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Can you think of any more practical tips to boost customer satisfaction Customer’s Satisfaction Business Techniques
Summary
There are many more factors you can take into consideration while thinking about your customer service.
And increasing customer satisfaction in your brand. We recommend following our hints to make things easier, but don’t limit yourself. You can master your brand’s customer service – and you should never stop if you want to achieve a real success, and be the exemplary love brand.
BusinessHAB