How do you know your customers are happy?

Like the saying goes ‘About 20 percent of your customers produce 80 percent of your sales’, and you need to keep your customers happy!

By sending out surveys you can clearly see in marketing terms how products or services supplied by a company meet or surpass a customer’s expectations. Customer satisfaction is important because it provides you with a metric that you can use to manage and improve your business services.

‘Statistically it is 3 times more expensive to win a new customer than to service an existing one.’

With social media being such a massive part of our day to day lives, we, the consumer have a powerful voice. A good or bad experience can be ‘out there’ within seconds of a product of service. Surveys are everywhere and if you are not already, then you should be sending out regular client satisfaction surveys.

Customer satisfaction is tightly linked to revenue and repeat purchases. What often gets forgotten is how customer satisfaction negatively impacts your business. It’s one thing to lose a customer because they were unhappy. It’s another thing completely to lose 20 customers because of some bad word of mouth.

To eliminate bad word of mouth you need to measure customer satisfaction on an ongoing basis. Tracking changes in satisfaction will help you identify if customers are actually happy with your product or service.

At KMB we send out a regular customer satisfaction survey via email to our recent, existing clients. Here’s what we consider to be vital for a successful client satisfaction survey:

1. Keep it simple
When putting together your questions keep it to a minimum. People will be put off if they open an email and it is pages and pages. The key thing to remember is to have a clear indicator i.e asking customers to rate their satisfaction on a scale of 1-10. This is a good way to see if they will become repeat customers or even advocates. It’s a leading indicator of consumer repurchase intentions and loyalty. If you want to quote the indicators then use words as a pose to numbers for example: are you extremely satisfied/satisfied/neither satisfied nor dissatisfied/dissatisfied. This helps when quoting statistics on your social media and website. For example ‘90% of our customers were extremely satisfied with our service in 2014’.

2. How often
This is very dependent on the nature of your business. And if you offer products or services. A good strategy to incorporate all existing clients and work to a good structure is to send out a survey each quarter. Decide upon the questions at the start of the year to enable you to benchmark the answers and create clear results.

3. Offer an incentive.
In today’s busy world of constant emails you need a catchy subject message and a great incentive. Most survey programs offer help with your subject line. Let the recipient know their name will be entered into a prize draw. Statistics show that they are more likely to fill in your survey if they are going to get something out of it.

4. Permission to promote testimonials
When asking your customers what they think of your products and services always ask for a testimonial. Its a great way to really shout about how good your business is! Leave a free writing space box so the recipient can fill this in, his or her own words. There is no point in getting a great testimonial if you have not asked for their permission. You need to be specific in this and clearly state that you plan to use the testimonial on your social media and website. If they do not agree to have their company name or even their own name next to the testimonial you can still gain permission to use the comment.

5. Results.
You have great questions, great indicators of whether the consumer will repurchase from your organisation, the frequency is organised to get a great response, you even have the permission to shout about your wonderful business . . . all of this is pointless if you do not have a strategy in place to follow up after each survey! It is imperative after each survey any interest is immediately followed up. Your customer testimonials are put on your social media and your website. The overall feedback is used to improve and refine your services within your organisation.