Excellent Customer Service Has Become Imperative to Business Success
As technology has evolved over the years, a shift in the overall business landscape has occurred.
While in the past, companies held the majority of the power by presenting customers with relatively limited options for products and solutions, today the consumers are the ones dictating the directions in which companies are growing in terms of their product or service offerings.
Consumers have never had more options to choose from in terms of which companies they give their patronage to. If a customer has a bad experience, not only are you likely to lose that customer, but you also run the risk of their negative opinion spreading on the internet and ultimately tarnishing your brand reputation.
Thanks to social media in particular, today’s consumers demand that companies leave them more satisfied than ever before by providing excellent customer service.
Opinions and sentiments held by customers have never been more impactful to the success or failure of a business. It’s never been easier for a dissatisfied customer to shout their opinion from a theoretical mountaintop in the form of a viral social media post.
Due to these shifts in consumer demands, providing excellent customer service must be a top priority for enterprises of all sizes, in all industries.
Measuring Customer Satisfaction
With excellent customer service being a top priority, it’s essential to measure progress closely and routinely by evaluating rates of customer satisfaction.
Related: Best Practices for Measuring Customer Satisfaction
Alchemer has published lots of great content to help you learn and maintain best practices for measuring customer satisfaction with surveys. If you feel that you could benefit from a refresher on how to effectively measure and improve customer satisfaction over time, be sure to check out the following resources:
- How to Use Customer Satisfaction Surveys the Right Way
- Sample Questions: Customer Satisfaction Surveys
- Increase Your Customer Satisfaction Survey Response Rate
- Turning Customer Satisfaction Survey Results into Action
- Customer Satisfaction Surveys: Always a Good Thing?
In addition to standard customer satisfaction surveys, Net Promoter Scores (NPS) can be leveraged to measure and boost customer satisfaction and loyalty. By routinely distributing NPS surveys, you can establish benchmarks in terms of how satisfied your customers are.
NPS surveys also shed light on the areas of your business that are leaving customers dissatisfied. By highlighting these areas, you can then allocate the appropriate attention and resources to fix any issues that may be hurting your brand reputation.
Setting Goals to Achieve Excellent Customer Service
It shouldn’t be expected that each and every business will provide excellent customer service from the get-go. However, any business that wants to survive in the long-term must effectively measure and improve customer service efforts on a consistent and routine basis.
This process begins with setting goals. Send out a survey to your current customers asking what they think of your customer service. Do your best to ask questions that will allow you to learn not only what needs improvement but also how things could be improved.
Once you’ve established a baseline understanding of how your typical customer feels about your customer service, it’s time to set tangible, measurable, and realistic goals.
The timeline for these goals can be determined by your internal team; however, it is a good idea to set monthly, quarterly, and annual goals.
Setting both short-term and long-term goals enables you to constantly keep excellent customer service top of mind as a high priority initiative for your organization. By consistently checking in on NPS scores and other customer satisfaction metrics, you’ll begin to be able to paint a picture of how customers feel about their interactions with you, and whether or not those customers are satisfied month over month, quarter over quarter, and year over year.
By striving to provide your customers with excellent customer service, you’ll be setting your business up for long-term success.
