If you are involved in the running of any business, something you always want to know about is how satisfied customers are with your brand and service. Here’s how you can measure your Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), along with some tips for improving the score too.

You may or may not have come across the idea of CSAT before. But if you run your own business, or are responsible for gaining new customers or customer retention for another company, this is something you need to know about. Simply put, CSAT is a key performance indicator (KPI). And while you will have many KPIs as a business, this one is all about measuring customer satisfaction, either with regards to a specific interaction with your company, or with your brand as a whole.

How Do You Calculate Your CSAT Score?

There are three main steps towards calculating your brand’s CSAT score.

Firstly, you need to ask customers a simple question about their satisfaction levels after they have had a specific interaction with your business. Usually this is best done as a scale question, where customers are asked to rate their satisfaction from 1 to 5 ;1 being very unsatisfied, and 5 being very satisfied.

Secondly, you need to put their responses into categories. Since you’re looking for satisfaction levels, you’re interested in the responses you have that say 4 (satisfied) or 5 (very satisfied). Add together the total number of responses that fall into these two categories, and this forms your total number of customers from the sample who are satisfied with the service or brand.

Finally, you’ll need to divide the total number of satisfied customers by the total number of survey responses you have gained. Multiply the result by 100, and this will give you a figure that is your overall percentage of satisfied customers.

How Can You Improve Your Customer Satisfaction Level?

So what happens if you’re not happy with the percentage of satisfied customers you discover you have? For many businesses, focusing on four key areas tends to make a big difference to customer satisfaction levels.

The first thing you need to look at is how long customers are being kept on hold when they phone you. Evidence shows that any longer than three minutes has a direct impact on customer satisfaction levels. Solve this with technology – software such as GetVOIP can give your business extra services such as call routing, whereby customers speak to the most qualified call agent from the start.

Also look at which services you might be able to automate in your business. Artificial intelligence (AI) is now becoming mainstream in many businesses, which makes processes more efficient. AI chatbots are one example of how automation can take the burden off customer services, while improving customer satisfaction at the same time.

The third area to review is your marketing efforts. Blanket approaches to marketing rarely work anymore and also decrease customer satisfaction levels, because customers are not made to feel like individuals. Invest in a more personalized marketing strategy, which could include things such as personal product recommendations, and special offers that relate to the individual’s circumstances or buying habits.

And finally, start providing omnichannel support to your customers if you aren’t already doing so. This is all about using a variety of different channels for customers to manage their brand journey with you, with all their background and preferences saved so they don’t feel like they are wasting time giving you the same information multiple times.

By working out how satisfied your customers really are, and by implementing some of these key changes to your business processes, there’s no reason why your customer satisfaction ratings won’t go from strength to strength.

Learn more about how to improve your customer satisfaction score in GetVoIPs infographic below.