5 Persistent Customer Satisfaction Myths and How to Bust Them
Avoid these 5 customer satisfaction myths to unlock deeper insights from your data, driving revenue and success. Successful companies know that customer satisfaction is important, and they measure it often.
However, if you believe any of these five persistent myths about customer satisfaction, you might not be getting enough insight from your customer experience data. You need to challenge these myths to create more engaged customers, who will in turn create revenue and success for your business.
Myth #1: My Customer is Satisfied and That is All I Need to Know
A mistake many companies make is linking customer satisfaction directly to loyalty. They assume that satisfied customers are loyal customers, and vice versa.
The truth is that customer satisfaction is not a direct line to loyalty. Though loyal customers are in many cases also satisfied, there are many other reasons why they are loyal. Some of those reasons include values, brand, product and the customer’s feelings of engagement with the brand.
Customer satisfaction data is valuable, but you have to dig deeper – you have to know more. For customer satisfaction to be helpful in making decisions or guiding your strategy, you have to know why they are satisfied or dissatisfied. Find the trends to get true insight.
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Myth #2: Customer Satisfaction is Purely Dependent on Employees Who Have Customer-Facing Roles
Customer satisfaction will suffer if it isn’t on the agenda for the whole company. Though customer-facing roles are usually in the line of fire when customer satisfaction drops, everyone is responsible for how customers feel about the company and the products.
If a back-end process fails, if a product is not what it’s supposed to be or if communication fails, customer-facing employees can help address that with the customer, but alone they cannot correct the root cause that produced that dissatisfaction.
Make customer insight available throughout the organization. Clearly communicate actions and measurements to create an organizational culture that supports a positive customer experience.
Myth #3: Performing a Customer Satisfaction Survey Once a Year is Enough
If you’re only measuring customer satisfaction once a year, your company will always be lagging behind. Data from eight months ago might be radically different from what you would discover in a survey today.
Only continuous measurement gives you the real-time customer pulse and enables your company’s agility to react against deviations. Only continuous measurement will ensure that you are getting real, useful data and insights, not just averaged numbers.
Myth #4: Price and Customer Service Are the Only Factors That Matters to Customers
The customer experience is multi-faceted and driven by many more elements than price and customer service. While price may have a clear effect on a customer’s initial decision to purchase your company’s product, every interaction the customer has with your brand affects their satisfaction.
From the initial contact with a company sales representative, through the buying process and onward through the ongoing engagement the customer has with your brand, every touch-point is important to customer experience. Therefore every department and every employee is important to customer satisfaction as well.
Myth #5: Customer Complaints Mean Customer Dissatisfaction
One of the benefits of conducting customer satisfaction surveys regularly and frequently is you get to hear what your customers really think of your company and products – and sometimes that will come in the form of complaints. Believe it or not, that can be a good thing.
Listening to and pulling insight from customer complaints is a valuable opportunity to learn about what you can do better. Then you can improve products and processes to improve all of your customers’ experiences.
Measuring customer complaints also gives you a reference point to measure how those complaints are handled internally. Results from that data can improve your customer service team’s performance overall.
A Final Analysis
Customer experience is directly linked to whole-company performance – it’s not just the responsibility of customer-facing employees. Engaged employees, good leadership and operational performance keyed into real-time customer satisfaction data, create engaged customers. And engaged customers create revenue and success in business.
To turn customer satisfaction data into customer insight, you must continuously measure, analyze, visualize and share. Through this you can make the cultural change within your company that creates true customer loyalty and avoid customer satisfaction myths.
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