6 Ways to measure customer satisfaction

I recently leased a car and a few days later I received a customer satisfaction survey via email, which I duly completed. My feedback was less than stellar. While the sales and delivery process was fine, I had to go back into the dealership TWICE to re-sign the lease agreement after they discovered errors in their contract.

A day after submitting the survey the General Manager of the dealership called me to say he was very disappointed with my feedback. He told me that his staff is incentivized based on 5-star satisfaction ratings. I was asked to rather contact them directly in future if anything ever goes wrong. This begs the question: what’s the point of the customer satisfaction survey if they only want to hear positive feedback?

ALL feedback is necessary and we’re ALL responsible for customer satisfaction.

Whether you’re in finance, billing, marketing, customer service, sales or operations, it’s essential to ensure that everyone is aligned to positively impact the customer. Even if you never come into contact with customers directly, it all bubbles to the surface.

Turn the negative into a positive

Nobody wants to hear that customers are unhappy, but in today’s world of social media, blogs and increased competition, a negative satisfaction rating can spread like wild fire. You need to know how your customers feel about you – and the sooner, the better! By dealing with negative comments efficiently you will have the opportunity to win back their trust.

6 Ways to measure customer satisfaction

1. Send out a customer survey across a range of media so that you get a good cross-section of customers


2. Make sure the questions are not loaded in favor of what you want to hear


3. Don’t offer customers a neutral option – i.e. have a rating scale of 1-4 rather than 1-5 so that people can’t sit on the fence and choose a rating of 3


4. Consider including a monthly poll on your website and in any eBills or marketing emails you send out – this increases the dialog with your customers and makes them feel like they have a voice


5. Plan to take action based on the feedback


6. Use the results to improve customer service and actively track the progress over time

A key measurement of satisfaction is “will customers proactively recommend you?”

You’re not going to please all customers all of the time, but aim to correct any areas that are performing below expectations. Send out a newsletter highlighting the results of the survey, including where you did well, but also confirming your commitment to improve in certain areas. Customers appreciate that you take their opinions seriously.

Speak to us for best practices on collecting customer satisfaction data – from full length surveys to snap polls.

Barrie Arnold
striata.com