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Likes and Dislikes: Metrics for Measuring Customer Satisfaction

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Understanding how to measure and leverage customer satisfaction metrics in a digital age

Customer satisfaction can be a tricky trait to measure, especially with satisfaction being so subjective. While an individual customer may consider a service, a product, or technical support satisfactory, another may not. Sometimes the disconnect is a matter of opinion. Maybe Customer A enjoyed a call center staff member’s upbeat attitude while Customer B felt the same attitude was annoying. Other times, your customer service functions themselves really could be suffering.

Nailing down just what it is that satisfies customers can be frustrating. Customer expectations of service satisfaction can depend on any number of factors, and it can take some digging to understand any individual’s opinion of your customer service offerings.

Overall Satisfaction

Simply put, how satisfied are customers with your service, and are their expectations being met? Asking callers to answer a few short questions about their most recent interaction is common practice. In fact, some company call centers are even fueled by person-to-person service (like car repair or telecommunications work) followed up with a callback from the company.

There are countless methods that measure overall customer satisfaction, and plenty have been proven to return actionable data. Try an evaluation tool like the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and then continue to build a customer satisfaction assessment strategy. What you really want to understand is motivations that drive customer responses.

  • Emotional expectations: Emotional reactions resulting from a call center interaction can heavily influence repeat business. Emotional satisfaction usually boils down to whether or not a customer felt that her expectations were met, often in a timely and stress-free manner.
  • Behavioral follow-ups: Measuring brand loyalty hinges on whether an individual is likely to recommend your service to someone else. “Would you recommend X to friends and family?” is a reliable question to use for gauging customer loyalty. Following up with specific likes and dislikes can be enlightening. Customer loyalty works wonders for word-of-mouth referrals, and up to 55% of consumers will recommend a company based on customer service.
  • Specific attribute satisfaction: A few questions in a customer satisfaction survey or call center script regarding specific attributes of a service help you dig a little deeper. Taste and freshness are musts for foodservice. Speed and proficiency are factors in car repair. There will always be specific attributes within each industry that customers use to judge service and satisfaction.

In an increasingly automated consumer landscape, customer service satisfaction still relies on a personalized touch. People want to feel valued, and it’s difficult to deliver quality customer service without being empathetic to a consumer’s needs. More often than we’d like to admit, customer service strategies can lean on internal metrics like revenue potential and sales volume. While these are important, most customers aren’t concerned with your bottom dollar if they’re contacting your call center with a complaint.

Basic Customer Service Satisfaction Questions

Whether an outdated call center script needs an update or you’re looking for a place to start a new customer service strategy, you can improve customer service by asking customers a few basic questions:

  • “Overall, how satisfied are you with [service or business]?”
  • “How would you rate the support your received?”
  • “Were your expectations met?”
  • “Would you recommend [service or business] to friends and family?”
  • “Why or why not?”
  • “How satisfied are you with the [speed, freshness, professionalism, etc.] of [service or business]?”
  • “How important is [speed, freshness, professionalism, etc.] when you’re shopping for [service or business]?”
  • How likely are you to return to [business] for your service needs?”

The list could go on, but determining which factors influence your customers is what good customer service is all about. Remember, 76% of consumers see customer service as a measurement for how much they’re valued by a particular business or brand. Elevate your customer service experience by meeting expectations every time someone in your call center picks up the phone.

What do your customers expect from your contact center? Do you want to learn more tips for measuring customer satisfaction metrics? Check out our free whitepaper!

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