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Also – if you have any questions at all, just email me, or call me on 0800 565543 (in business hour please)

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Do you know your critical numbers?

In this article – We discuss the factors that influence customer satisfaction, and how to ascertain the critical ‘numbers to manage’ for your business.

It’s important to understand what factors have an effect on your customer’s overall satisfaction – that sounds a little obvious, but have you put effort into establishing what the critical numbers are for you?

There are a huge number of potential variables that will have an impact on customer satisfaction, but not all of these will apply to you – so how do you find out which ones count, and which are a ‘red herring’?

Firstly, you’re going to have to get some facts – I’m a fan of Zendesk for customer support, and find this a great place to get my customer satisfaction data.  But there’s more than one way to gather your data, so figure out what is right for you and get started – but let’s cover some possible numbers…

Depending on your type of business, the numbers that count are going to be different… here’s a decent list to get you thinking.

Time Based Factors

  • Phone Pickup time
  • Enquiry to Quote time
  • Returning call time
  • Punctuality
  • Time to completion
  • Delivery time
Service/Delivery

  • Simple: Are customers getting confused?
  • Are communications clear and relevent?
  • What is the customer experience?
  • No Hassles: Handling of complaints
  • Cleanup/Presentation
Value for Money

  • The right product for their needs?
  • More than expected?
  • Under promise – Over-deliver
  • Feeling valued and cared for
  • Something for next time?

What now?

You’ll need to establish what really counts for your clients.  If you don’t have an ‘analysis ready’ source of CSAT data, you will need to start gathering this.  There are a number of free sources for small scale surveys, Survicate is one of these that we’ve been using.

Currently we’re sending an email to every new customer, ten days after their first purchase – asking them “How did we do?”.  I love reading all the comments and that is where I see what my customers love (and don’t love) about us… these are part of our critical numbers.

Our example

As you can see from the example below – our feedback clearly shows that our numbers have to revolve around speed and ease – 95% of orders despatched SAME DAY (with a phone call if they don’t), and clear email communication.  We’re doing a pretty reasonable job – but we’ve got things to improve.

 

It’s up to you!

Time for you to get out there an find out your critical numbers and start measuring them!
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Focusing on Customer Satisfaction

No matter what business you are in, if you have customers, you need to be measuring customer satisfaction!  It can’t be stressed enough that customer satisfaction is closely linked to business profitability.  Happy customers buy more, happy customers come back, happy customers refer their friends and colleagues.

How do you measure it?

Measuring customer satisfaction (or CSAT) can be very simple – you don’t need to subscribe to a fancy survey service, or create a post-transaction marketing campaign; it can be as simple as asking 10 customers a month, “Hey, how are we looking after you?”, and of course recording the results in a form you can track.  Split them into, “very happy, happy, neutral, unhappy” based on their comments. But please, just measure it, somehow.

Word analysis

If you already have a source of regular customer comments or feedback, depending where these are stored, you may be able to try ‘word analysis’. In it’s most basic form, this includes searching for words that indicate a customers mood. Things like “Awesome”, “Amazing”, “Thank you!”.

A very cheap hack for this – if you are only seeing these via email in Outlook, is to set up a rule to copy any incoming email with the selected words, to a specific folder – then you can go back and review these later.  See sample rule below.

Of course you can get more complex with extra filters, but that’s up to you.

Another advantage is that you can run this on emails already in your inbox… so you can get some historical metrics right now!  Segment it by month and voila! You could now have a CSAT metric for the last 12 months, and a method of measuring it!

Let us know how you get on!

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Why do businesses give confectionery to their customers?

Ever wondered why so many businesses give confectionery to their customers?

There is of course a very simple reason for this – it works.

 

But beyond that; how can a low valued item have such a disproportionately positive effect on customer satisfaction and loyalty?

The answer to this is also simple and relates to why people buy confectionery.

Confectionery is almost invariably an ’emotional’ purchase – we don’t buy because we need it but because we simply want it!  Have you ever bought lollies or chocolate for the ‘comfort’ value?

Confectionery is an emotional product

Much of the reason goes back to the things that delighted us in our childhood – the sights and smells and of course the tantalising tastes! We remember these things with a deep emotional connection… they conjure up feelings of joy, happiness and delight

It goes deeper than this too. In childhood and adulthood the emotions around confectionery are constantly reinforced: birthdays, lolly-scrambles, parties, Christmas, Easter eggs… It’s no surprise that Candy Buffets are so popular for weddings!

Could creating an emotional connection with your customers have a positive effect on your business?

Think of the emotions intrinsically connected with confectionery… delight, joy, happiness, excitement… also comfort, and reassurance.  Are these the kind of emotions you would like to be associated with dealing with you? Imagine if every customer left feeling just a few more of these feelings – would that impact your business? Of course it would!

Condensed from LinkedIn original – Author: Andrew Mills,  LolliesNZ