wednesday, april 08, 2020
How do you measure customer satisfaction when you're a small business?
Managing customer returns and satisfaction may not appear to be a priority for some SME managers. Yet it's a far from insignificant aspect, and one with multiple stakes in your company's long-term success.
The process is far from easy, however, and can seem abstract and elusive to the uninitiated.
Benefits, channels, methods: all the secrets of customer satisfaction will be revealed to you as you read this article.
Customer satisfaction: how does it work?
Customer satisfaction is absolutely key to the success of any business, whatever its size. It is traditionally defined as a consumer's state of consent following the purchase of a product or service.
Implementing a customer satisfaction management process requires a company-wide action plan. It's not enough to offer your customer a cup of coffee at the end of a meeting. You need to define your objectives, the actions to be implemented, the Feedback Management software to be used...
Above all, it's important to understand that this is a long-term project, and that you shouldn't expect your sales to multiply the day after you've implemented your first actions.
What are the benefits of customer satisfaction for small businesses?
It's entirely understandable that customer satisfaction processes can take a back seat for a small business owner, with so many urgent matters to deal with on a daily basis.
What's more, customer satisfaction requires investments and resources that may not be available to a newly-formed company. Nevertheless, the benefits of these processes are manifold, and will undeniably contribute to your company's long-term success.
First of all, in B2B as in B2C, your initial investments will quickly pay for themselves. Indeed, a basic principle of customer relations is that it costs much less to return to an existing customer than to acquire new ones. Customer satisfaction management will enable you to build customer loyalty and limit the cost of acquiring new customers.
Feedback Management will also help you improve your service levels, by listening to your customers and better understanding their expectations.
Actions to take for a very small business
There are several inexpensive but effective actions available to any company. As mentioned earlier, you'll need to involve all your employees in the process, and establish a customer-centric corporate culture. Involve them in defining objectives, and gather their suggestions.
Next, customer feedback can be collected via multiple channels, so it's up to you to define which one is the most effective, depending on your activity and customer profile (e-mail, social networks, SMS...).
Next, you'll need to take care of Feedback Management: how to store the data collected, analyze it, and draw concrete conclusions from it? To do this, you can use one of the many Feedback Management services available online.
There are offers that allow you to start managing an initial survey or your online reviews at an attractive price (such as our Booster offers), enabling you to limit the time spent managing this part of your business without neglecting it.
