3 Key methods to Measure Customer Satisfaction

One of the primary reasons to measure the customer satisfactions is to evaluate the performance of a contact center, and sometimes of the contact center services company as a whole. Such an evaluation is vital in identifying whether the customer service personnel are able to meet the expectations of the company’s target audience. The results can be quite helpful for managers which can serve as performance indicators. Depending on it, required measures such as process optimization, and/or skill enhancement, can be duly taken by the management.

There are various methods to find out how satisfied the customers are after having experienced the service. While CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) and NPS (Net Promoter Score) are the most commonly used methods, some of the modern contact centers service are also using Social Media Monitoring and Customer Effort Score apart from other types of surveys.

CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score)

The average score of most first-rate support teams is expected to be around 4-4.5. While scores below 3.5 usually indicate inefficiency, anything above 4.5 of course depicts an exceptional effort. While businesses can request a rating for almost every interaction between a customer service rep and the customer, it might be for few selected interactions as well. As this is dependent on the call volumes, rating every interaction across all channels might not be feasible in some cases.

One of the most common questions that are used to determine the CSAT score is the one that asks the customers to rate their satisfaction on the scale of 1 to 5 based on the service they received. This sometimes can be tricky as answers from the customers could be influenced by cultural and geographic differences. For instance, people from some cultures are too polite to term a service using the words such as ‘terrible’ or ‘awful’. Instead, they could choose the words such as unsatisfactory. On the other hand, they might even respond to an exceptional service as ‘fine’. In spite of such ambiguity, CSAT is effectively measured and used by many firms. Discussed below are some of the ideal ways to measure it.

First Call Resolution is one of the smart ways a contact center can maximize the customer satisfaction rate. This is because, if the customer’s issue is handled diligently to come up with a favorable solution in the first attempt itself, chances are that he or she would be much more satisfied. On the contrary, a resolution provided after making customer crib about it for long, can only reduce the satisfaction level.

Analyzing the customer interactions on the firm’s social pages is another ideal way to track the CSAT score. If the conversations or feedback are generally negative and full of complaints rather than admiration notes, it’s not so difficult to determine that the CSAT score is below average.

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NPS (Net Promoter Score)

The Net Promoter score is aimed at going a step further than asking customers whether they are satisfied. It usually queries the likelihood of them referring the company and its offerings to others. In this way, it can smartly dodge the emotional question about their satisfaction, which customers might sometimes find hard to express. Also, if a customer is satisfied by the service, he or she is more likely to recommend the service to others, so the question about satisfaction gets answered explicitly.

NPS is usually calculated on the scale of 1- 10, while the responses are categorized into groups. Customers who respond with 9 and 10 rating points are termed as promoters, and those who respond with 6 rating points or lesser are described as detractors. This is as per the historic observations that only those respondents who give a rating of 9 or 10 are most likely to refer the service to others. Customers giving a rating that is less than 9 and above 6, are usually not highly convinced about the service they have received and may not bother to recommend it. Furthermore, it has also been identified that people giving out 6 or lesser rating are more likely to ask others to avoid the company and its products rather than recommending it, and hence, the word detractors is used for them.

The data for the NPS can be gathered from email and/or in-app surveys. Also, there are various other networking sites that can help firms to identify their position in comparison to the average NPS of their industry.

CES (Customer Effort Score)

This is another interesting method, which aims to measure not just the customer satisfaction but the overall experience derived by the customer from beginning to the end. The question that customers are posed with is about the effort they had to spend on getting their issues solved. The scale used in this metric is usually from 1-7, while some firms might also use 1-10. However, unlike the previous methods, the lower the rating, the better has been the experience. This is because 1 stands for very low effort, while 7 signifies very high effort. This simply means that customers who have to put in the maximum effort are obviously not satisfied with the service. Hence, the aim is to achieve the lowest possible score, which is then converted into a percentage. This percentage score can also depict the customer experience rating as well as the loyalty score.

This metric is based on the conception that customers who receive excellent service might not often express it. Conversely, customers who receive bad service or have to put in a lot of effort to get their issues resolved are more vocal about their experience. This gives the contact centers a much better view of the overall performance as the areas of concern can be more easily identified.

Key Takeaways

In order to calculate the customer satisfaction, businesses need different measurements.
There are several metrics that can be used to evaluate the performance of a contact center, and the three most commonly used ones have their own significance.