How Customer Surveys Create Better Customer Service
How do you know you’re providing excellent service? Relying on your gut isn’t enough. The quality of your customer service is defined by what your customers say about it. But how do you gather that feedback and measure customer satisfaction (CSAT)?
Do your customers like you?
Why should you care about customer satisfaction?
New business from word of mouth is the cheapest and most rewarding marketing. Satisfied customers help reduce attrition, and as competition increases, remarkable customer service becomes your differentiator—a “purple cow.,” as Seth Godin puts it.
Like most things in business, you can’t improve something if you don’t measure it. Your customer experience is no different.
“What gets measured gets managed.” - Peter Drucker
The lack of focus on customer experience from most MSPs in the industry creates a huge opportunity to differentiate yourself from your competition.
"As a result of this pressure to improve the customer experience, many MSPs are devoting more resources to IT/technology roles than sales and marketing. Surprisingly, a full half of those surveyed say they don’t prioritize the customer experience when evaluating their managed-service offerings, and one-quarter don’t measure customer satisfaction at all…. How can you retain customers if you don’t even care enough to see if they’re happy with the way you’re servicing them?"
-- Channel Futures article "New ConnectWise Research Shows MSPs Are Underwater"
The Negative
According to “Understanding Customers” by Ruby Newell-Legner, businesses hear from only 4% of dissatisfied customers. If you're getting negative feedback, the reality is likely worse than you realize. Moreover, 95% of people share negative service experiences with peers. Addressing this feedback is critical for protecting your brand and improving service.
The Positive
Conversely, 86% of customers are willing to pay up to 25% more for a service they perceive positively. A Bain & Company study indicates that just a 5% increase in customer retention can yield a 95% increase in profits.
Many businesses utilize surveys to gather customer feedback, often through tools like Connectwise or Autotask. However, completion rates for email surveys average just 5%, leaving you with insufficient data to drive improvement.
Simple is better
What if a simple change to your survey process would allow you to get over 50% survey completion?
A typical customer satisfaction survey is a link that opens a webpage and asks you to complete a multiple choice survey. These are often multiple pages as well. Even if the customer is inclined to click on the link in the first place, over half of those people will bail out before completing the survey. Anything more than one click is asking too much of people.
Using a one-click survey like this one from SimpleSat dramatically increases the likelihood of the customer giving you feedback.
Simple Customer Satisfaction Rating
They don’t need to go anywhere or fill out any forms. They simply click on one of three graphics that visually describe their satisfaction with your company.
This simplicity of interaction reduces the friction between the client giving you feedback by not requiring a lot of time or effort on their part. You don’t need a paragraph of text, you don’t need to score their feedback across 6 different questions. You only need to know the percentage of people that are happy versus unhappy with the service.
Additionally, listen to our podcast episode for strategies on boosting your service offerings: ERP064 - Grow Your Cloud Offering.
Recovery
More negative feedback presents hidden opportunities; you can’t fix what you don’t know exists. SimpleSat's dashboard provides valuable insights into customer perceptions. If you receive negative feedback, promptly reach out to the customer to resolve their concerns, which can build their confidence in your service.
This helps you keep the pulse of how people perceive your service. If you get negative (or neutral) feedback, create a workflow that alerts the service manager right away. Reach out to the user and hear them out. Make all efforts to resolve their complaint. People are trained not hear back from the companies they work with, so when you respond quickly you can win their confidence.
Real-time website testimonials
Publish customer feedback to your website with one click
Once you effectively manage negative feedback, don’t overlook the positive comments.SimpleSat enables you to publish testimonials directly on your website with one click, ensuring your site always features fresh feedback.
Fresh Testimonials right to your website
Customer Experience as a superpower
Clients are unlikely to refer you based solely on great technology. What they truly care about is the value they receive and the quality of service. In the IT support industry, customer service and client satisfaction are your key differentiators. Make customer service your superpower—measure it, improve it, and earn your clients' loyalty in the process.
For more info on the simplest customer satisfaction survey system in the industry check out SimpleSat and sign up for a free trial today.
