As we know well, the minimum requirement for consumer loyalty is customer satisfaction, a concept that needs to be thoroughly understood and sought by companies.
Recently, Salesforce developed the three infographics shown below on customer satisfaction and how to improve it. As reported by Ritika Puri:
“Customer satisfaction is one of the toughest, most abstract concepts to capture and measure. Satisfaction is often in the eye of the beholder, and if you’re using a tool like a survey, you’re relying on self-reported data that presents only one side of the story. In addition, “success” is multi-faceted: A customer may be happy overall, but there may be some hidden deal-breakers that are hurting your retention metrics. So how do you tackle this challenge and improve your customer satisfaction scores? Measure success from a few different dimensions. In addition to understanding why your customers are happy, you should focus on specific elements that contribute to overall success.”
In the past, customer satisfaction was not a guarantee. Of course people could complain to the company or business, but they might not have always gotten through. Besides complaining to the business, people would complain to all their friends, family, and whoever else they wanted too. In today’s world, people can also complain online, which is even worse. It is worse because the complaints used to have been heard from less than 20 people, but now thousands of people can see the complaints on social media. Today, customer satisfaction is almost a guarantee because business’s do not want a bad image that can be created online. I like how this article talked about the process of customer satisfaction. At first, it does not seem like a huge procedure, but customer satisfaction actually requires a lot work. I found the article especially interesting when it talked about raising the levels of surveys or opinions to increase business ratings. Satisfaction requires help in person, on the phone, on social media, and on websites, which is essential and necessary in today’s world.
I agree that companies should conduct these measures to insure customer satisfaction considering the customers’ ability to share their thoughts online where thousands of people can read it. The companies are the middleman between their clientele and the product; so not only do customers have to be satisfied with the commodity or service they are purchasing, but the process of obtaining it should be as seamless as possible. As a consumer, compensation such as a discount towards a future purchase, due to an issue with a previous one is a considerable gesture on the company’s end and would insure my satisfaction and loyalty in the future. And as companies collect feedback and study trends, pictured in the infographic, I think customers would duly note this in their evaluations. After reading this post, it made me realize how extensive the inquiry into customer satisfaction really is.
I think that customer service is still a huge issue today despite advances in technology. Before the world of computers if you called a company’s customer service line, you would immediately talk to a person. In today’s society, almost every single time I call AT&T or Cablevision, I’m put on the phone with a robot for 20 minutes before I eventually talk to a person or hang up out of frustration. There are long periods of being on hold and the time to resolve the problem is way too long. This leaves me very unsatisfied as a customer. I think that all of these components need to be further investigated because even though all these tactics are supposed to improve customer satisfaction, they aren’t working.