Your Roadmap to Customer Satisfaction – Every Time

The truth is that customer satisfaction (aka CSAT) is part science, part art. You’ll want to employ all of the necessary engagement measuring tools (see more below), but there are also the not-to-be-discounted factors of intuition, empathy, and people skills.

Here’s a universal roadmap when it comes to customer satisfaction:

First: Learn Where You’re Going:
You can’t find the best route if you don’t know where you’re going. And you can’t give your customers any real satisfaction if you don’t even know what they want.

But how do you find out about your customers — who they are and what they want from your company? Sometimes, surveys and trials just don’t cut it. For example, we’ve seen many customer satisfaction surveys that only allow the respondent to give black-and-white feedback, rather than enough variation in answer types to really drill down into what they might be feeling.

You also need to know what they truly prioritize; you don’t want to put all of your time into great onsite communications while neglecting the user experience of your website, for example. Sometimes — often, in fact — customers simply want to see their loyalty rewarded frequently, consistently, and reliably. Free shipping codes, membership perks (like being the first to preview new products), and exclusive discounts go a long, long way. (So does simply saying “Thanks!”)

Point-of-sale engagement can’t be underrated in this regard. Inviting customers to chat with representatives in person is invaluable — followed by the chance to engage with a real person online or on the phone. Then, you can discreetly gather feedback with almost every touchpoint — whether it’s a “why are you leaving” pop-up when they exit your website without completing a purchase or simply tracking when people return to learn who they are and what you’re doing right. The more opportunities you provide, and the more you show interest in hearing what your customer wants, the more you’ll learn. And they’ll appreciate that you care.

Second: Get to Know Your Customer(s)
You might have noticed that very important double parenthetical in this header: That’s because you want to dedicate time, early in your marketing process, to defining who your customer is — singular, when it comes to creating a customer profile that will represent your core buyers.
On the other hand, you also want to get to know your customers individually. Instead of focusing all of your attention on your investors and stakeholders, you want to be sure to keep customers on the same pedestal. Go out of your way to personalize outreach, ask for testimonials, and make it clear that they are more than a collective data set to you.

Third: Chart Your Progress (aka Track Your CSAT Success)
As we mentioned above, tracking and measurement are two of the most important facets of customer satisfaction. Just like any individual, customers en masse are prone to changing their minds on a dime for any number of reasons — ranging from an overall economic climate to a fresh-faced competitor arising in the market. Sometimes, you’ll hear it from them first — if you’re lucky. Other times, you won’t know that you’ve fallen from grace until you’re defending the quarterly reports to the Board. By then, you’ll be scratching your head as to why this happened.
That will never be the case if you’re tracking your engagement from the very start. Using tools like , you’ll be able to note right away if there are any dramatic changes, and ideally be able to derive the reason why from timing, context, or — if all else fails — it gives you time to reach out and try to learn from them for yourself, and stop the ebbing tide.

If You’d Rather Call an Uber…
So now you know the basic roadmap customer satisfaction. But sometimes, what we really need is less of a GPS, more like an Uber (so we can just kick back in the backseat and answer those emails along the way, without sacrificing any time, distance, or pertinent business priorities).
That’s where Mad 4 Marketing comes in, chauffeur cap and all: Give us a ring and we’ll be helping you implement the tools you need to systematically and securely track and improve your CSAT — plus, as our client, you’ll be seeing it in action firsthand.