Uncomplicate – How to make the most of your CSAT surveys
Uncomplicate by Freshworks brings you crisp and insightful videos which will focus on answering one tactical question around sales & marketing, support & collaboration, employee engagement, and growth.
Any organization that values customer experience will be in the practice of sending out CSAT surveys. But what do we do with this feedback that we periodically collect? In today’s Uncomplicate, we spoke with Dave O’Reardon, CEO of CIO Pulse, about five actionable tips that can channelize the feedback from customers in ways that can help improve the overall efficiency of customer facing teams.
Organizations have the opportunity to make use of their transactional feedback from surveys that go out when a ticket is closed, to improve various areas of operation.
Don’t just measure
The metric that you get from a customer satisfaction survey will tell you if you are getting better or worse at something, but won’t tell you what you are doing wrong. “When you do measure, make sure you measure at different levels. You can measure down to individual team member, overall teams, even at different departmental levels,” says Dave. By measuring different customer segments, you will get that granularity that lets you know which part of the business is happier, and which part needs your attention.
Service recovery paradox
If borne in mind while dealing with customer feedback, this is a simple concept that is very useful. Simply put, customers will think more highly of a company and be inherently happier with the service, after the company has corrected a problem. “Ensure that you always contact customers who have expressed dissatisfaction with your services. Bad feedback is a chance to turn that unhappy customer into a fan,”says Dave. And like he rightly says, the worst thing to do when you get feedback that someone is unhappy, is to ignore them. Call them, apologize, try to fix it, let them know that their feedback meant something to you.
Coach your staff
This segues into the next crucial point, which is to also use that feedback, as material to train your customer facing employees. “What better feedback can there be for coaching them, than the free consulting they get from customers themselves?” Dave asks. Not only will they know which areas to work on, you can also use the positive feedback as incentivization to motivate your team. “At CIO Pulse, everytime we get feedback from happy customers, we print it out on little cards and put it up on a wall dedicated for this.” Seeing this wall plastered with over a hundred cards is huge motivation for the whole team.
Areas of improvement
A very important thing to remember, is to not shy away from the negative points in the feedback you receive. Look at what you can improve, that’s where the gold is. Use your customer feedback to drive your service the right way.
Be responsive
Yes, you must reach out to customers who are unhappy. But also try to device a system that allows you to communicate with the more responsive surveys. When you communicate with your customers based on what they have said in the surveys, they will not only respect you, they will also feel respected and valued, and feel more in touch with your business. If there is no acknowledgement from you, they will naturally stop responding to your surveys over time. “It’s simple. Read it. Act on it. Communicate.”
Dave certainly hits the nail on the head with his closing statement, and we definitely gained a lot of insights on how we can use our customer surveys more efficiently. How do you go about using the feedback gathered from your customers? Let us know in the comments below!
