How Does Customer Satisfaction Impact Your Business?

Most business owners understand that happy, satisfied customers are important to keep the business running – but they still underestimate just how important this is. If your customers are chronically unsatisfied, or if there are invisible issues affecting every customer’s experience, your business will gradually collapse.

Defining Customer Satisfaction

First, what is customer satisfaction?

You probably have an intuitive grasp of the basics already, but it’s helpful to specifically define what customer satisfaction is. A customer’s level of satisfaction refers to how happy and content they are with the services you’ve provided. If you meet or exceed expectations and you deliver a great overall experience, customers will likely be satisfied.

There are many ways to measure and evaluate customer satisfaction, but the most straightforward is a Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score. Using surveys, you can ask customers directly for their satisfaction levels and come up with a quantifiable score for the overall satisfaction your business creates.

The Impact of Customer Satisfaction

Let’s take a look at some of the ways that customer satisfaction impacts your business:

• Future purchases. Satisfied customers are much more likely to return to your business in the future. They may also be more likely to spend more money at your business when they make purchases. This should make intuitive sense; a customer who has a good experience with you will want to replicate that experience again. If you manage to keep a customer for several years, this can add thousands of dollars of additional revenue you would have otherwise lost.
• Retention and cancellations. If your company offers a subscription model, or if you otherwise depend on passive income from your customers, you should know customer satisfaction impacts the cancellation rates of those customers. Satisfied customers lead to higher customer retention, which in turn leads to more consistent and reliable revenue.
• Reviews and ratings. When customers are satisfied, they’re much more likely to leave good reviews and high ratings for your products and services. Conversely, unsatisfied customers are more likely to leave bad reviews and low ratings. As you know, readings in reviews have a major impact on buying decisions from old and new customers alike, and can even impact your business’s visibility in search engines.
• Referrals and recommendations. Customers that are merely content with your services aren’t likely to recommend your brand to other people. But if they have an exceptional experience, or if they have a long history of beneficial interactions with your brand, they’ll happily give you a referral. In other words, satisfied customers lead new customers to your brand.
• Customer attitudes and interactions. Don’t forget that satisfied customers are also easier to deal with, both for you and your customer service representatives. They’ll have a happier disposition and will be more willing to find compromises to solve problems. Even when issues do arise, they’ll take those issues in stride.

Important Strategies to Boost Customer Satisfaction

The good news is, there are many easy strategies that you can use to boost customer satisfaction in your business:

• Measure and analyze customer satisfaction regularly. You can’t assume customers are satisfied based purely on your surface level interactions with them. Instead, it’s important to measure and analyze customer satisfaction directly and regularly. Take note of satisfaction issues and address them as soon as possible.
• Provide the best quality products and services you can. This should go without saying, but your business needs to provide the best quality products and services it can. The better your offers, the happier your customers will be.
• Train your staff members thoroughly. Don’t assume that your staff members know how to treat customers. Provide them with thorough education and training so they can provide the best possible experience for your customers.
• Provide proactive customer service. Don’t wait for customers to reach out to you. Reach out to them periodically to see how they’re doing and ask if they need any assistance. It will give them more faith in your company and make them feel seen and heard.
• Address concerns and complaints resolutely. If and when customers have issues with your company or your products, address their concerns and complaints totally. Provide a sincere apology and try to make up for the bad experience if you can.
• Show customer appreciation. Customer appreciation comes in many forms, and it’s almost always well received. Even a simple gesture, like a thank you note, can make customers feel closer to your brand.

Don’t underestimate the power of customer satisfaction. Even a handful of simple strategies to measure customer satisfaction and improve it can drastically change the course of your business’s future. Pay attention to your customers’ attitudes and how they change over time; every dollar you invest in this area will be worth it.