Module 1 - The importance of measuring
customer satisfaction
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The Call Center Learning Center is excited to a new tutorial series
on measuring customer satisfaction. This tutorial series
pulls from Prosci's research-based toolkits and best practices reports.
This module explains why customer satisfaction surveys are a sound
business strategy. Module 2 will provide guidelines for how to
accurately measure customer satisfaction. Module 3 will explain
how to report customer satisfaction survey results. Module 4 will focus on setting and achieving customer satisfaction goals.
Are you currently measuring customer
satisfaction in your call center? If not, this tutorial
will help you build a case for why you should collect this
crucial data. If so, are you realizing all of the possible
benefits from the collected data? This tutorial provides
important information regarding
customer satisfaction metrics, including:
- Business reasons for measuring
- Benefits you should be realizing from customer
satisfaction data
- Risks from not acting on customer satisfaction survey
results
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Interested in learning more about measuring
customer satisfaction?
The Call Center Learning Center will be conducting a FREE
webinar on this topic on Wednesday, May 25.
Registration for this
webinar
is now available. |
Why to conduct customer satisfaction surveys
Nearly 55% of the participants in
the Prosci's latest best practices study named customer service as their
primary function (see Figure 1).
This is an increase from 45% in the 2001 study and proves that more and more
call centers are beginning to view customer service as a critical component for business success.
Figure 1 - Primary functions of call center study
participants
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Measuring and analyzing customer satisfaction has become an essential
component in providing excellent customer service. With more and
more emphasis being placed on managing customer relationships,
conducting customer satisfaction surveys are most definitely a
sound business strategy.
Here's why:
- It is expensive to win new customers, and
customer retention is critical for business success.
- It is less expensive to sell additional products
and services to existing, satisfied customers.
Listening to what is important to this segment is essential.
- Problems encountered by customers negatively impact their
loyalty. If they are
disappointed with the service, they may start looking for
alternatives.
- The customer contact center has significant impact on
customer loyalty, and in many businesses the call center has
more contact with the customer than any other part of the
business.
- Most customers will not take the initiative to complain.
Instead, they will not tell you, they will tell their friends and
co-workers how good or bad your service was.
- Word-of-mouth is the best and least expensive form of
advertising and customers are much more likely to tell others
about negative experiences than positive experiences.
Outcomes of measuring customer satisfaction
Measuring customer satisfaction provides you with
valuable
information from the one group most critical to your business success -
your customers. If customer satisfaction surveys are conducted
accurately, you should be able to discover the following
key insights:
- Specific areas where customer service
improvements
are necessary
- Expectations of your
customers regarding customer service
- Specific reasons for customer dissatisfaction
- How to improve retention of existing customers
- How to make customers feel valued
- Missed opportunities to demonstrate your capacity
to solve problems and win back customers' confidence
- How to improve your competitive position in the
marketplace
- Where to spend your improvement dollars to
promote customer satisfaction and customer loyalty
- How to generate additional revenue through
cross-selling and upselling
Costs of NOT using customer satisfaction data to make call center
improvements
Even though your call center may be collecting customer satisfaction
data, are you acting on the results to make
necessary improvements to your customer service? There
are several risks and costs associated with not using this data
effectively, including the following:
- Loss of customers
- Stress on agents taking
complaints
- Escalations to higher-cost
resources
- Repeat calls from
customers calling back for corrections and clarifications
- Rework to correct errors
- Lower overall
productivity
The key message is to listen to your
customers. Your call center's success depends on their
feedback and satisfaction.
More to come
Now that we have established the importance of measuring customer
satisfaction, the remaining tutorials in this series will explain how to
conduct the measurement, how to set goals for this metric and how to
improve your performance in customer satisfaction.
To get started immediately on effectively measuring customer
satisfaction in your call center, The Call Center Measurement
Toolkit provides valuable guidelines for measuring and improving
customer satisfaction. If you have specific questions, please
contact a Prosci analyst for more information.
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