10 easy and actionable tips for increasing customer satisfaction

1. Embed the value of customer satisfaction into the company culture.

Company culture is a strong element in how employees, regardless of rank, work and provide excellent service. Great customer service is not only visible with customer interaction, but also with how employees engage with each other. A service-oriented culture that provides quality work and ensures positive customer experience will make it easier for frontliners to constantly make customers happy. To enable such a culture, constantly include the value for great customer service, both internally and externally, in various forms of communication such as company meetings, interviews, onboarding, and employee feedback.

2. Manage and follow through on customer expectations.

Manage customer expectations by knowing the product or service you CAN deliver and communicate this clearly to them. You can provide value-added service and special offers but only if you have the capacity. Otherwise, know your limitations and avoid the risk of over-promising and under-delivering. Better yet, take the opposite approach – under-promise and over-deliver. Walk your customers through what they can expect throughout the whole customer journey, including value-added service and any limitations.

3. Aim to provide a product or service that will involve low effort and commitment from customers.

Have you ever experienced wanting to use a product or service but not completing the purchase because there were too many things to do before getting your money’s worth? A common scenario is wanting to use an online tool or buying a product that requires several clicks or answering forms before you can actually make a purchase.

Including too many steps for customers discourages them from using an offering. By reducing the steps and effort required of customers, you will make it easier for them to complete the process and thus facilitate conversion. Remember, less effort in making a purchase leads to a great customer experience, increases customer retention, strengthens customer loyalty, and improves customer satisfaction.

Provide a comprehensive FAQ and accessible customer support like a live chat so that a customer feels like they’ve received great customer service.

5. Make every customer feel like they were a VIP

Aim to give the best VIP-like service for every customer. Think of how you and your team would like to be treated and use that as the basis for providing excellent treatment every time. It can be as simple as thanking them both in person and via receipts or invoices. Go out of your way to extend assistance. Keep your promises – truth in advertising! (See item #2.) Interact with customers with the view of building a long-term relationship.

6. Measure customer satisfaction

Improving your customer satisfaction requires measuring it. By establishing baseline figures, you can aim to provide better products or services at every stage. Some companies measure customer satisfaction through the Net Promoter Score (NPS). A trademark of Bain and Company, the Net Promoter Score is considered the gold standard of quantitatively measuring customer experience and is used by millions of companies. NPS helps organizations track customer feedback and identify areas for improvement. NPS is measured through customer satisfaction surveys and is calculated with scores ranging from -100 to +100. The higher the score, the higher the likelihood that your customers are recommending you to others leading to a greater word-of-mouth footprint.

7. Keep tabs on what your customers say on social media

Monitor customer reviews on social media. Are they mostly positive or negative? Either way, use these reviews as qualitative feedback and a great basis for improving your customer service. Social media is such a rich resource for getting organic feedback from customers, stimulating word-of-mouth, or providing customer support. The key is to respond promptly to questions or requests for assistance and constantly provide relevant content. You can also hold tutorials and recorded how-to’s and live Q&A sessions, as well as use online tools to record brand mentions.

8. Train your frontline staff

Engage your customer support representatives and everyone else who faces your customers with regular training and upskilling. Demonstrate what excellent customer support looks like and how to improve customer satisfaction through strong service orientation. Empower your frontline staff to take responsibility and accountability, as well as make decisions when necessary. Provide enough flexibility to allow your customer service team to provide solutions on a specific scenario, guided by clear company guidelines and culture. Edubrite provides sales and support enablement that allows your sales and support organizations to meet their goals in a predictable and repeatable manner. This platform will prepare your entire Sales organization for success and not just depend on a handful of superheroes to hit the sales quota for the entire team. Similarly for customer success organizations, your entire team of support agents can be trained and prepared to bring success to your business and satisfaction to happy customers.

9. Use foresight to solve problems

One key way to increase customer satisfaction is to spot problems before they even arise. If an issue keeps coming up, maybe there’s something wrong in the system, product or service. The goal, then, is not just to solve the issue everytime it arises, but to nip it in the bud.

An excellent customer support team will dive deeper into recurrent problems, try to spot foreseeable ones, and aim to resolve them before more customers are affected.

For customers who have already experienced issues, walk them through the solutions and provide self-help resources. Be transparent with the limitations of your offerings and reassure them of your presence and availability throughout the process of fixing a problem. Doing so will ensure customer retention and prevent recurrent requests for assistance.

10. Boost employee satisfaction

Satisfied employees are happy front-liners. When your employees love your company, they are likely to reflect this in the way they work and engage with customers. According to studies, employees who feel appreciated perform better in their day-to-day job. Employee satisfaction is highly linked to customer satisfaction, so make sure your company sets up a system for providing constant reassurance and appreciation for its employees.