How to increase CSAT? Here are solutions that increase customer satisfaction score
Every customer, in conversation with an agent, expects both effectiveness in resolving the reported issue and an individual approach, understanding, and empathy. Providing positive experiences to every customer can be difficult but not impossible. So, how to increase customer satisfaction in telephone service? Below are a few tips that can help increase customer satisfaction.
A few words about CSAT score
CSAT, in short for Customer Satisfaction, is a metric that allows determining the level of customer satisfaction with the products used or services experienced. Calculating CSAT provides the opportunity to establish the customer’s satisfaction level at specific interaction points, such as submitting a technical support request, making a purchase, or having a phone conversation with customer support. CSAT is measured based on the total number of responses and can be expressed as a percentage of satisfied customers.
Why is it worth conducting regular CSAT verification?
If you don’t measure CSAT (regardless of whether it’s NPS or CES), you won’t identify dissatisfied consumers. And if you don’t verify customer feedback are dissatisfied, you can’t identify those who are most likely to churn. You also won’t be able to determine why they are dissatisfied, which means you won’t be able to take action to address their issues and improve overall customer service across multiple channels. Over time, a lack of this knowledge can lead to a decrease in the total number of customers willing to use your services. To improve customer satisfaction, it is recommended to send a CSAT survey.
How to measure customer satisfaction?
There are several methods for gathering customer satisfaction metric, and the following metrics can be used concurrently. If you learn how to measure the answer rate, you will be able to understand how high the satisfaction with a product is.
Customer Satisfaction Survey is a conventional approach to collecting all relevant data about customer satisfaction through CSAT survey questions. Surveys involve asking customers about their level of satisfaction and may include additional follow-up questions. Asking a simple question to rate their satisfaction will not overwhelm the customer with elaborate opinions, but will definitely have impact on great score in filled out questionnaires. There are several variations of customer surveys that allow for different levels of detail in the feedback received. The principle is simple – the more detailed the survey, the fewer customers will respond to your survey, but at the same time, the CSAT results are more precise. Low CSAT score might cognately be caused by too complicated questions. Part of your customers will skip the survey upon seeing its level of complexity.
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSS) is the most common and straightforward customer satisfaction indicator that requires consumers to rate their level of satisfaction with your service, company, or product. The rating scale typically ranges from 1 to 3, 1 to 5, or 1 to 10. A larger range is not always better due to differences in satisfaction ratings. 7-point scale is also a common method to calculate a CSAT, as the customer will always turn into more negative or positive score.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures the likelihood of customers recommending your company to others. It is the most commonly used indicator for measuring customer loyalty. NPS surveys are built up with a scale of 1 to 10, customers are asked how likely they are to recommend the company, product, or service to someone else. The strength of this measurement method is that it focuses on the intention to recommend rather than emotional satisfaction, which is easier to answer. The NPS indicates whether the service or product is good enough for a customer to recommend the company to their acquaintances.
Customer Effort Score (CES) is a type of customer satisfaction survey used to measure the ease of using your company’s products and services. The CES survey asks customers to rate the ease of using the products or services on a scale from “very difficult” to “very easy.” Importantly, the level of effort a consumer has to put in can be a crucial factor in their likelihood to make future purchases or recommend the company. However, a higher CES does not clearly indicate a satisfied customer and may not provide precise information about their loyalty.
Customer Sentiment scoring is one of the most significant indicators for analysis. Customers expect immediate satisfaction from every engagement, on any channel, with minimal effort. Sentiment scoring is a proven method for measuring consumer satisfaction. When powered by artificial intelligence, it allows for quickly identifying what makes a customer’s experience positive or negative at any given moment – regardless of the channel or the total number of interactions.
How can we achieve a good customer satisfaction score?
Now that we have discussed methods for measuring the score, the next most obvious question is how to use CSAT to improve the percentage of positive responses. The more satisfied a client is, the higher their loyalty and the likelihood of recommending your company to their family and friends, ultimately leading to increasing customer retention.
Understand your customers
Understanding of your customers is a crucial starting point for any company that wants to improve the results of their CSAT surveys. Improving this CSAT metric is important for your company for many reasons, from reducing customer churn to increasing customer value and loyalty.
Understanding customer behavior will help your team provide a higher level of support and make customers feel valued, turning them into brand advocates. More and more consumers share their opinions and experiences not only with family and friends but also publish reviews on social media where anyone can check the feedback on a particular product, service, or brand. Therefore, it is important to cultivate positive customer relationships and experiences with our brand.
Knowing customers’ preferences and interests will help you connect with them and personalize their experiences, known as Customer Experience, which in turn increases satisfaction. The Contact Center is an ideal place to assess the quality of customer experience program. Well-monitored and process-driven customer satisfaction surveys can facilitate this. Methodologies such as “design thinking” can identify alternative strategies and solutions to enhance survey engagement and encourage a higher response rate.
Using a multi-channel approach to survey customers, whether through chat, phone, or SMS, can also significantly contribute to response rates. All available touchpoints in this case add value. The higher number of survey responses, the better overview on the general quality of your services is. By having multiple channels, you can also measure the average score for separate means of communication. Maintaining a high CSAT score would help you enhance the service for the channel lacking the required quality.
Paying attention to survey responses that fall on both ends of the scale can be a great way to improve the customer experience. In the case of a negative response in the survey, it is important to investigate the background of how the problem started, where its source is, and the status of the problem can reveal valuable insights into process optimization requirements, outdated scripts, or knowledge gaps among agents that may arise during training.
Align CSAT with Quality Results
The secrets to improving customer satisfaction (CSAT) in Contact Centers lie in the cards of quality assessment. Therefore, CSAT and quality results should be correlated. It is also crucial in this case to support consultants in achieving these results. For example, if customers value quick issue resolution the most, consultants should have knowledge management tools, conversation techniques, and clear instructions that enable them to perform specific tasks. In this regard, combining the best practices of agents with high CSAT scores and short handling times can be invaluable.
Are you assured that your Customer Experiance Department is operating at its highest potential? At CCIG Group we provide outsourced Contact Center that has internal Quality Control Department. This dedicated team of experts is ready to assess and optimizes its operations on daily basis. Identifying any inefficiencies or areas for improvement, provides actionable insights to enhance your customers experience.
Key areas where you can take action to improve CSAT
CSAT is definitely the most important indicator in all customer experience measurements. Contact Center departments often focus on improving these numbers, while ignoring the opportunities for improving other parameters and actions. It is important that we first address the concept where customer satisfaction begins with people, technological solutions, and processes.
People, which means taking care of motivating consultants to work with customers
Agents working in the Customer Service are on the front line of your company and act on behalf of your brand. They play a crucial role in providing the best customer experiences and satisfaction. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the right attitude of consultants towards their work is a priority.
When agents are dissatisfied or disengaged, they are unable to provide high-quality services, which leads to dissatisfied customers. Organizations should seek ways to engage and motivate their employees.
One way is to provide continuous feedback and real-time coaching so that they have systematic, data-driven training that helps them understand where they are doing well and areas that may need improvement. When agents know they will receive continuous feedback, including positive feedback, they remain loyal, motivated, and achieve better results. Clients’ satisfaction ratings are directly correlated with the effectiveness of an organization in hiring, training, and retaining qualified advisors in the contact center.
People usually work harder when they receive recognition, and if they receive it directly from the customer, it means much more. Advisors know they will never be able to satisfy everyone all the time, but the awareness that customers will be asked for their opinions can increase the likelihood of better service delivery. Feedback also facilitates the analysis of advisors’ development areas and the introduction of appropriate support and coaching to improve future Customer Experience (CX).
It is also important how the phone agent conveys information and chooses words. The words used to interact with the customer can have a greater impact on the recipient than most people realize. Sometimes simple phrases like “no problem” or “yes, but” may seem harmless at first glance, but in reality, these terms send the wrong message to the recipients.
Training agents on how to use strong words and adapt their language during conversations can directly impact customer service results and audience retention. Strong words are terms that make a positive and lasting impression on the target audience, eliciting a significant emotional response. There are many powerful words, such as “understand,” which demonstrate empathy and build relationships, and “always,” which express reliability.
Overcoming new challenges through improved forecasting and scheduling is another priority. Therefore, Workforce Management (WFM) solutions are becoming even more prominent than before. With them, contact centers can plan different scenarios, create new shift patterns, and offer agents greater schedule flexibility to overcome rotation-related issues.
Processes, which are the multichannel customer communication paths with the organization
When discussing processes, regardless of the organization and industry it operates in, communication is a key element. Customers appreciate companies that treat communication as a two-way conversation. They don’t want to do business with brands that are unavailable or unresponsive and seek dialogue instead of one-way messages that don’t give them a chance to respond.
With this in mind, create real-time dialogue capabilities by implementing responsive artificial intelligence or allowing customers to communicate with consultants. The personal nature of conversations is also important, especially when a customer has a complex issue. In such situations, individuals are directed to frontline advisors, as well as their line managers and supervisors, which can lead to faster responses, better customer experience, and improved efficiency.
To maintain customer enthusiasm in today’s changing market, organizations must engage with them in a way that suits them best. Consistency is key, and customers want the ability to communicate with your company through their chosen channel and receive the same quality across all channels – whether it’s phone, chat, SMS, social media, or any other form of communication.
To ensure that customers receive the service the customer expectations are fulfilled, companies should consider using a single cloud platform for communication or partner with a contact center that provides cloud solutions. This way, contact center advisors will have the necessary tools when they need them to fully satisfy customers and leave them with a sense that their time is valued. By having insight into the customer journey through a unified cloud communication solution, organizations can provide highly personalized customer service paths. Additionally, through real-time analytics, they can adapt to any changes to optimize experiences for both employees and customers.
Availability is crucial in customer interactions, and in this case, we are referring to an Omnichannel solution, which allows customers to use various communication channels. Omnichannel trends have been evident for several years, but during the pandemic, channel preferences have become more diversified. Allow customers to connect with you through chat, social media, messaging apps, video, voice, and email. Also, enable customers to switch channels so they can continue their conversation while on the go.
Waiting for a response to an inquiry is still one of the biggest frustrations for customers. When a customer contacts an organization or sends a message, they are often placed in a queue or forced to wait during business hours, even for a simple task. Customers lead busy lives and expect organizations to answer their questions and concerns as effectively and quickly as possible. Fortunately, AI-powered self-service makes this achievable, enabling customers to receive quick answers to simple queries without the need to wait. Using chatbots allows for 24/7 support across voice and digital channels at a fraction of the cost of staffing daytime or nighttime shifts.
We live in a data-driven world. From a business perspective, few forms of data are more valuable than the insights we can gather from our customers. Proper data collection, aggregation, analysis, and, most importantly, subsequent optimization actions are crucial. One of these actions is hyper-personalization. When brands demonstrate knowledge of individual customer preferences and act accordingly, they increase customer engagement. Recommendation models, pre-filled forms, and customized pricing are excellent examples of personalization that many CX teams use to increase customer enthusiasm. Contact centers have a significant role to play here. Omnichannel allows for recognizing and monitoring customer journeys across online and offline channels. Meanwhile, conversational AI learns from customer interactions and provides personalized services.
Accurate data can tell the story of a customer and indicate areas where companies need to improve. However, the only way to effectively utilize customer data is to ensure its good organization. Organizing customer data in a simplified, understandable, and reasonable format provides consultants and contact center leaders with immediate access to the information they need.
AI-driven sentiment analysis, along with collected data, examines the language used in each voice and text interaction in real time. This provides insights into customer sentiments towards products, services, and even the assisting consultant. These insights can then be collected to present easy-to-understand recommendations that enable brands to deliver digital excellence in any channel. With this feature, brands can quickly identify and respond to low customer moods at every touchpoint.
Call center solutions, which are tools supporting the customer journey
Call center solutions in terms of AI, contact center systems, CRM software, cloud, and their mutual integration play a greater role in improving CX and increasing good CSAT score. These solutions serve as an indicator of customer experience, allowing businesses to measure and evaluate the quality of interactions between customers and their contact center.
Good contact centers invest in better equipment that supports consultants daily in using policies, processes, and scripts developed within the organization. This improves the efficiency of consultants’ work, which translates into the quality of conversations and customer satisfaction.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools relieve advisors of repetitive tasks and help them maintain focus. These tools include AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants, sentiment analysis and customer risk assessment, predictive call routing, and knowledge management tools that provide content in a question-and-answer format.
Customers initiate interactions with the contact center for various reasons, but regardless of whether they use self-service tools or communicate with advisors, they want the same thing – collaboration to solve their problem. Contact centers can achieve this goal through humanizing customer service.
Practical customer journey solutions to increase satisfaction
The customer lifecycle begins with the use of AI-driven tools such as chatbots or Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems that collect initial customer information, such as name, issue, and account details.
The journey continues as consultants greet customers by name, repeat the details of their inquiry, and share their commitment to solving their problems. And if advisors are unavailable, there is the option of callback, changing the communication channel, or maintaining a place in the queue for assistance.
Behind the scenes, automated testing can identify issues in contact center operations, such as confusing IVR paths, poorly designed web chat paths, non-functioning callback services, or call quality problems. Teams can use this information to quickly initiate corrections that ensure excellent experiences across all channels. CSAT is not a cost, it is an investment.
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