If you want your customers to keep coming back, you must ensure they’re satisfied with your products and services. Here’s how to improve customer satisfaction.
Are your customers happy?
It’s a question that plagues nearly every business. The happiness of your customers is directly related to the success of your brand and, in the world of social media, their opinion of you is more important than ever.
This is why it’s vital to always be looking to improve your customer satisfaction. One bad review could ruin your business, so keep them at bay!
Check out our tips to improve customer satisfaction and make sure your brand is the best it can be.
Listen to Your Customers
When it comes to how to improve customer satisfaction, you have to start by listening to your customers. They often have a lot to say and are the best source to find out which improvements you should be making.
You can gain customer feedback in a variety of ways. The first is by having a designated space where they can tell you their opinions and where they think there are areas for improvement. For a small store, this could be as simple as handwritten form, whilst larger brands should have online forms or a contact that customers can go to.
You can also check out online reviews. People will say a lot about your brand online, including what they enjoyed and what could be improved.
Gather all of this information and use it to create an actionable strategy to improve your service. Make sure you let customers know you’re using their feedback to improve your business; they’ll feel more valued and instantly be happier.
Enable Multi-Channel Communications
Improving customer satisfaction today is very different from what it was just a few decades ago. Now, there’s a lot you have to focus on online, and customers need to be able to reach you from a range of devices.
To improve your customer service and satisfaction, enable omni channel communication. These are systems that let you engage with your customers and allow them to reach you across a range of channels whilst staying on-brand. Your customers can choose how they talk to you, whether that be a traditional method like print media or a newer method like online messaging, and have the same experience across all of them.
It’s important your customers can reach you on their terms. Make it easy with omni channel communications.
Decrease Your Response Rates
Did you know that 80% of modern consumers expect a response from your brand with 24 hours of contacting you?
Fast service is the key to keeping customers happy. We’re an impatient species who don’t like being told to wait! Make sure you have a team ready to respond to your customers within 24 hours, no matter why they’re contacting you.
But, don’t be too quick that your response isn’t good enough to please the customer. If their inquiry will take time, notify them of it and give them a time frame in which you’ll be in touch again.
Personalize the Experience
Customers love to feel special, so one of the easy ways to improve customer satisfaction is by simply personalizing their experience. These days there are tons of ways you can do this.
For example, if you use email marketing, use a tool like MailChimp to automatically input their names at the beginning of the email. This will help get their attention and make them feel more valued by your brand.
You can also personalize their experience by using algorithms that monitor your customers’ buying habits to suggest future purchases they might be interested in. Amazon is a great example of this done right, and they have tons of recommendations for each customer that are usually on the ball.
If you’re a smaller, local store, this tip could be as simple as learning your customers’ names. If you can greet them by name, they’ll feel much more valued by you and hopefully come back more frequently.
Don’t Forget Your Employees
Happy employees make for happy customers! It can be easy to spend all of your time focusing on your customers and forget about the happiness of your staff. But, remember, these are the people who represent your brand, and if they’re not happy they won’t do their job so well.
Take care of your staff and make sure they know they’re valued. Organize team days out, special bonuses, and give them a personalized experience just as you would your customers. It’d be terrible to know the names of your regulars but not of your staff!
By taking care of your staff, they’ll be more motivated to take care of your customers.
Stay Human
Customers want a human brand, not a robot. When communicating with them, make sure not to overuse automation.
For example, don’t have an online customer service that’s based entirely on chatbots. You could use them at the beginning of the conversation to direct your customer to the right person by identifying their inquiry but switch them to a real person as soon as possible. Templates and AI are great, but they shouldn’t make up the majority of your customer communication.
One of the biggest appeals of small businesses is their human touch. Instead of switching it out for AI, use it as a branding point.
Improve Customer Satisfaction to Ensure Success
We live in an age where customers have more control than ever before. With one bad experience, they can take to social media or online review sites and influence hundreds or thousands of other potential customers. This is why making sure you keep your customers happy and improve customer satisfaction is vital to your success and, if you don’t, it could be the reason for your downfall.
If you enjoyed this article and want to find more tips to improve your business, make sure you take a look around our website.