Businesses in-the-know are placing emphasis (and investment) on making sure their customers are happy because they understand the impact customer satisfaction has on the bottom line.

Why Customer Satisfaction Matters:

• Hubspot reports 80% of customers will switch companies after one poor service experience.
• Microsoft reports 54% of consumers have higher customer service expectations than they did one year ago.
• Statista reported that 64% of American consumers reached out for some form of customer service from businesses.

Define and monitor Customer Satisfaction:

• Define what customer satisfaction looks like for your business. Before you can truly measure any aspect of your business, you have to define what success looks like. Positive customer service is made up of more than just being friendly to customers. To further complicate the challenge of keeping customers happy and then measuring that customer satisfaction, success changes by product, by industry and by perceived value.

Accurately measuring customer satisfaction requires an honest assessment of what your customers want. Customer satisfaction may be equated to proactive communication, speed of delivery, good value or all the above. Understanding what metrics you are measuring will be the foundation for a successful customer satisfaction measurement initiative.

• Develop multiple initiatives to gather data. Now that you’ve developed a criteria of what your customers want, your next step is to create a game plan to see how well you’re giving them what they want. There are many tools at your business’s disposal on both traditional and digital platforms.

Here are some metrics that can be analyzed to measure customer satisfaction include:

• Repeat purchases and renewals – If your customers should be coming back to buy your product or service again, and they aren’t, you may have a customer satisfaction issue on your hands. On the contrary, if your repeat purchases are trending upwards, your customers can’t get enough of your business offerings. This is an important metric to notate continuously, as a drop-off can indicate a problem or change in the marketplace has arisen. Spring-Green is able to measure the business’s loyalty through powerful business intelligence dashboards. These dashboards help the franchise owners make actionable decisions based on data.
• Referral activity – Referrals can be the deepest form of compliment, and a great marker of how well you are satisfying your customer base. By creating a baseline referral metric and then measuring that number over time, you’ll gain insight into how happy your customers are with your product or service. (As an added bonus, your added attention to this segment might bring in new customers!)
• Positive (or negative) reviews – Online reviews are more important than ever before as consumers are more likely to use this as a guide. In addition to helping customers make decisions, online reviews are also an important criteria for businesses looking to win at the SEO game. These small but powerful tidbits of feedback can be used as a core part of your customer satisfaction measurement campaign. Quantifying the number of stars given as well as looking for trends in written reviews can help you identify your performance in regards to customer satisfaction. The Spring-Green digital marketing team supports their franchise owners by monitoring their online reputation by responding to reviews and providing updates on what their customers are saying in real time. Your online profile is becoming more and more important as your prospects are looking online for testimonials about your business.
• Social media engagement – Social media is the newest outlet for customers to connect with businesses directly regarding customer service-related queries. Social media shares and brand mentions are another measurable criteria that can be quantified to understand your customers’ level of satisfaction. In addition, many customers turn to social media when other channels of customer service fail. By using Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to monitor customer engagement you may gain insight into problems that need to be fixed or positive areas to expand on. For busy franchise owners social media engagement may seem like a daunting task. The Spring-Green support center offers help to its franchise owners by monitoring their social media pages interactions so that they can focus on the daily tasks at hand.
• Survey results – Of course, one of the key aspects of any customer satisfaction measurement efforts is surveys. Customer surveys can come in a multitude of formats and attempt to get at a wide variety of information. Spring-Green surveys their customers multiple times a year to ensure the franchise owners have a strong pulse on their customer satisfaction and to understand their customer expectations.

Your customer survey objectives might include:

Insight into the buying experience – How easy was it to schedule service? Were you able to understand the pricing? Was all the information you needed to make a buying decision readily available?

Satisfaction with the product or service after purchase – Did the product or service meet your expectations? Would you purchase the product or use the service again? Were you confident in the professionals you met?

Understanding of value perception – Did you feel the price matched the quality? Did you feel like you got a good deal?

Customer service and brand affiliation objectives – Did the people you interacted with care about your needs? Do you have trust in the business and its reputation?

Common Ways To View Customer Satisfaction

• Customer Effort Score (CES) – The CES is a customer satisfaction survey tool used to measure the customer experience. The customer experience or CX is a trending metric and a gauge of how easy the buying process was for your customer.
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) – This is one of the most popular customer service measurement methodologies. The CSAT measures customer satisfaction with a business, purchase, or any interaction with the business. The question is asked, “How satisfied were you with your experience?” The answer asks customers to rate their answer on a sliding scale like 1 – 3, 1 – 5, or 1 – 10.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS) – The NPS is a customer satisfaction benchmark that measures how likely your customers are to recommend you to someone else. (Are they a promoter of your brand?) This benchmark can help companies assess and improve customer loyalty. NPS measures a customer’s overall feeling about a brand versus their perception of one isolated interaction. Spring-Green utilizes this question on all of their surveys.

Now that you’ve defined and developed your customer satisfaction measurement plan, your next (and arguably most important) task is to assess the information you’ve collected and use it to put more effort toward the things that are increasing customer satisfaction levels and improving upon things that are causing a decline. Access to the data will be essential. As a Spring-Green franchise owner, you’ll have access to the most advanced data collection and monitoring technology in the lawn care industry. From tablet based lawn assessment to Microsoft BI dashboards to view the data Spring-Green franchise owners make customer service a part of their process.

Spring-Green is the leading name in neighborhood lawn care since 1977. When you are ready to explore a franchise opportunity with a business that understands what it takes to navigate the importance of customer satisfaction, visit our site.