In our previous post, we discussed customer satisfaction and its importance. In this post, we will discuss on the various strategies to improve customer satisfaction and retention. There are so many ways to ensure that your customers are happy and they remain loyal to your brand. To establish and improve customer satisfaction, you need to first establish your goals. These goals need to be SMART.

It is hard to dictate what your goals should be. Each brand, industry or business differs. The universal rules for your goals, however, include:

1. Keep the list simple
2. Use the SMART system
3. Set a maximum of 3 goals at a time, lest they compete with each other

How to measure customer satisfaction

It is great to be an advocate for customer satisfaction for your brand. How do you make it work in the real world? What are the strategies to improve customer satisfaction? The acronym, OCCAM, provides you with the simplest approach to tackling this exercise.

1. Outline goals and plan: Why are you doing this? What do you hope to accomplish? What do you want to get out of this?
2. Create customer survey: Surveys with a single question and a multiple-choice answer are typically best, but don’t be afraid of longer ones with open-ended questions. They require more effort in both creation and analysis, but they also provide deeper and more varied understanding. You get what you put in.
3. Choose trigger or timing: Next, determine who will receive your survey, and when. Immediately after a purchase? At the end of an online chat? A week after a complaint was lodged? Look to your goals from the first step for guidance here, as the who and when is determined by what you’re trying to accomplish.
4. Analyze the data: The cardinal sin of data collection is doing nothing with it. Once you have the data, make sure you analyze and use it to make improvements. Otherwise, you’ve wasted everyone’s time and effort. Conduct your customer satisfaction surveys with RightSurvey for real time and automated analysis
5. Make adjustments: Once you have some insight, use it. Make adjustments. Unclog bottlenecks. Remove friction. Make it easy and convenient for your customers to get what they want and do what they need to do.

Excellent strategies to improve customer satisfaction

Let’s discuss some of the best strategies for better customer satisfaction and retention.

1. NPS: This is one of if not the most popular strategies for gauging customer satisfaction with and loyalty to a particular brand. It’s simple, easy to calculate, and boasts some excellent completion rates because it takes just a few seconds to complete. Get more details on NPS from our previous blog post
2. Social Media Monitoring: Listen. Respond. React. Social media monitoring has become a keystone of digital existence. And there’s a long list of top quality tools and services that do it for you (more on that below). Select one, set a few keywords and phrases, and start listening. The faster you “hear” that someone had a bad experience, the faster you can reach out and try to fix it. Likewise, the faster you “hear” someone had a great experience, the faster you can reach out and thank them, possibly offering some special reward or discount for their patronage.
3. Ask for Feedback: The simplest way to improve customer satisfaction and retention is to ask for feedback. Consumers are ready, willing, and able to provide feedback and reviews…if you ask them. Far too many businesses don’t bother. What better way to find out exactly how they feel about everything and anything than asking them directly?
4. Provide Solutions: Asking for feedback is one thing. But how do you use that to improve customer satisfaction? You provide solutions. If they’re unsatisfied with some aspect of your product or service, it’s easy to offer excuses and get defensive. That benefits no one. You need to provide solutions to their complaints. Shipping takes too long? Offer an express option. Customer service not available at midnight on a Tuesday? Launch a chatbot (RightBot) or self-serve help center. Their problems + your solutions = better satisfaction and retention.

How do you deal with difficult customers?

You cannot make everyone happy. There are difficult customers that can never be satisfied. When you come across some of these people- in person or digitally- here are some tips on how to deal with them.

1. Listen without interrupting.
2. Apologize with empathy.
3. Ask questions for clarification as necessary.
4. Offer solutions.
5. Remain calm.
6. Follow-up later to determine if it was resolved to their complete satisfaction.

You can check out our free Covid 19 solutions to improve your #customer experience. Click the button below to stay updated with our latest news