There are dozens of factors that contribute to the success (or failure) of a business, and customer satisfaction is one of them.
Monitoring this indicator is crucial for building customer loyalty and eventually turning them into brand ambassadors.
The fact is, customer satisfaction is a broad concept, and truly understanding its meaning and purpose can be a little confusing at first.
Customer satisfaction is a fundamental aspect, as it complements indicators of loyalty, effort, and satisfaction, which together form the customer experience , the main competitive differentiator for companies going forward.
What is customer satisfaction?
Customer satisfaction goes beyond a simple concept. It's a crucial indicator that, when properly monitored, fosters loyalty and transforms customers into brand advocates. Understanding its meaning is fundamental to business success.
Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller define satisfaction as "thefeeling of pleasure or disappointment resulting from comparing the expected performance of the product with expectations." It is the customer's perception when comparing the product or service purchased with their expectations.
In other words, satisfaction is perceived by the consumer when they acquire a particular product or service and can compare it with their expectations (or with products and services that promise the same feeling).
If the experience doesn't satisfy him, he will be dissatisfied, consequently generating a bad experience when he thinks about your brand.
In various sectors of society, we still face some serious problems related to this issue of satisfaction, simply because we lack a direct channel of communication with the public.
This is quite alarming; even with advances in technology and management processes, customer satisfaction, since it began to be recognized as a competitive differentiator, is not taken seriously by most companies and organizations.
Remember this:
A dissatisfied customer can start a fire that spreads much faster than the marketing or customer service department can put out.
And for you, what matters at the end of the day?
If you answered "keeping my customers happy" or "delivering results," you're on the right track.
The truth is that the last few years have shown that the world has evolved very quickly. We've moved from the product era to the process era, and we're now entering the information age.
And finally, moving towards a historic moment where all that will matter are human relationships, in any field, including business.
Therefore, customer satisfaction is, or should be, one of the main concerns of any company. After all, a satisfied customer is the best advertisement for a brand.
Furthermore, he becomes a multiplier of your communication efforts, recommending your product or service to friends and acquaintances. But where does all this come from?
A little history about customer satisfaction
First of all, we must understand one thing: how did this term originate? Why satisfying customers become a real demand for companies, and why did they start being measured by it?
The initial study on customer evaluation and satisfaction with companies originated in the 1960s, which coincides with the period when consumer behavior began to be studied in greater depth.
This was primarily driven by the astonishing increase in consumer goods and services. As these became more widely available, quality began to decline, and more consumers experienced problems, creating a climate of general dissatisfaction at the time.
However, these were purely academic studies and could not be applied in business environments. The measurement of the Customer Satisfaction Index, as we know it today, had its origins a little before the 1980s.
In the 2000s, we experienced a change!
With the turn of the millennium and the digital revolution, new ways of collecting, analyzing, and applying data have emerged. This has expanded the possibilities and methods for measuring customer satisfaction and other important metrics.
It was in that decade, in 2007, that the National Consumer Satisfaction Index, developed by ESPM.
The index is based on the American Customer Satisfaction Index in the United States and also aims to contribute as an indicator for the Brazilian economy.
Another index that emerged in the 2000s, and which is now widely used by various types of companies, is the famous NPS (Net Promoter Score), developed by Fred Reichheld and first presented in 2003.
From there, several research metrics emerged that are being used worldwide and that help thousands of companies around the globe.
Thus, the turn of the millennium represented such significant changes for customer satisfaction that the customer has finally become the center of all relationships. And those who fail to understand its importance may soon be left out of the business game.
The trend in customer satisfaction and experience in the coming years:
- 89% of customers say that customer experience is important to their purchase decision. (Zendesk, 2022)
- 83% of customers trust recommendations from people they know: colleagues, family, friends, etc., and 66% trust other consumer opinions published online. (Nielsen, 2015)
- 70% of customers will leave a company after a single negative experience. (American Express, 2018)
- Brazilian companies lose approximately R$ 1.6 trillion per year due to customer dissatisfaction. (Study by the National Confederation of Commerce of Goods, Services and Tourism, 2021)
- 65% of Brazilians say they have stopped buying from a company because of poor customer service. (American Express survey, 2023)
The numbers don't lie. I imagine that by now it must be clear that this data is alarming. If you don't have any mechanism to gather feedback from your customers to know how to improve your business, you are wasting time and money.
Be sure to listen to and evolve your business frequently, stay competitive, and be attentive to customer needs.
Ensuring the success and satisfaction of your company's customers is no easy task, but it is a factor that can guarantee the success of your brand in this highly competitive market
How can I tell if my customer is satisfied?
#1 Be alert to capture everything
Your development and marketing teams have done a great job. You have an innovative product that people need, and at a fair price. Or at least, that's what you think.
If this is not your customer's perception, then your opinions and the quality of your product are useless.
Tip 1: Conduct research to better understand your customers and, consequently, your business before actually launching it on the market.
After the marketing department has taken charge of attracting the customer and getting your product to them, positioning and promoting it, you now need to know if the audience is satisfied with the product delivered.
Tip 2: Seek external and internal information to obtain relevant data about the market.
To achieve this, always have accessible and varied feedback channels, such as a contact phone number, emails, social media, and customer service departments. It's also important to have a qualified after-sales team whose main objective will be to verify the effect the transaction had, that is, whether customer satisfaction was achieved.
#2 Let's get to work!
There's a marketing saying that a customer who goes to a snack bar, buys a pastry, and leaves without any problems will only remember the pastry. However, a customer who goes to a snack bar, buys a pastry that isn't satisfactory, but receives a solution from the salesperson, will remember the store. Sometimes, a negative experience can be a great opportunity to imprint a positive perception in the consumer's mind.
Tip 3: Work with tools that give you this information in real time, so you can resolve customer problems as quickly as possible.
So, as we saw in the first step, your customer's perception of your product may not be the same as yours or your marketing team's. Now that we've established a series of communication channels to listen to our customers, prepare to learn some painful truths.
Tip 4: The importance of negative feedback.
Nobody likes to hear that their work is worse than they thought, but this negative feedback is even more important than praise. From criticism, your company can rethink its approach and identify invisible flaws in the process, whether in product quality, customer service , or even more subjective details like simple customer satisfaction with the experience. After all, what cannot be measured cannot be improved.
Tip 5: Keep in mind that you need to act on the information you've gathered.
After receiving and analyzing the research data, the real work begins. At this stage, it is crucial to close the loop with customers, so that they understand what led to their dissatisfaction, and so that the company can identify the reason and prevent it from happening to other customers.
Tip 6: Sometimes companies are spending a lot of money on a marketing strategy, and their customer isn't even involved in that medium.
Every day, thousands of dissatisfied customers, frustrated by defective products or unmet expectations, contact company customer service departments only to be met by uninterested and untrained representatives. Countless Facebook pages and websites like Reclame Aqui are filled with stories of people with simple problems that are ignored by companies. Therefore, always be accessible to your customers, delivering realistic solutions and deadlines.
Tip 7: Having a single, exclusive channel with the customer prevents them from damaging your online reputation with problems that can be resolved.
As a result, that customer who was so hard to win over slips through your fingers and goes to buy from the competitor, stopping along the way to tell your friends what a terrible experience they had.
Due to a simple lack of reaction, your company ended up wasting a free consultation and even turned someone who could have promoted your company into someone who will take advantage of any opportunity to "burn" your brand.
It takes 12 positive experiences to offset 1 unresolved negative experience – Glance
#3 If you don't know, ask
We've already seen how important the first two steps are. Now, the bad news: Did you know that more than 90% of dissatisfied customers don't speak up?
After a negative experience, they silently decide they will never again buy a certain product or set foot in a certain store, and the business owner will never know why.
This is the moment when feedback could serve as a basis for company improvements, and even for winning back the customer.
To overcome this problem, companies must adopt a proactive stance and conduct surveys customer satisfaction. If your company doesn't yet have this culture, it's time to change that!
Currently, the most widely used model for measuring customer satisfaction is the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), as it asks customers to rate their experiences and share open-ended feedback on specific interactions.
Widely used by customer service teams, there are three main metrics for measuring customer experience: CSAT, NPS , and CES.
All three aim to extract customer opinions through carefully designed surveys that seek to measure levels of customer satisfaction , loyalty , and effort .
Conclusion
As we've seen in this article, a company's lack of knowledge and understanding of its customers can greatly influence their ultimate satisfaction. The relationship between your brand and your products and services needs to be fully aligned with your customer's mindset.
In addition to this error, we can also say that a satisfaction survey will not yield any actionable data for your company. Not to mention that, depending on the application time or failure to verify the data, it can lead to significant losses and costs for your business.
What you need to know is that the basis of a proper satisfaction survey starts with a strategic approach that seeks to analyze a hypothesis or specific data point. Following this, a more coherent diagnosis is obtained, and decisions can be made based on it.
If you're ready to truly put customers first, look for a comprehensive tool with survey and satisfaction features that offer every possibility for a complete measurement of your customer experience.
Furthermore, it is essential to have a specialized and engaged team focused on achieving these results, with a customer-centric culture.