Kestio

Everything your customers never told you. The keys to really listening to your customers

Do you think you can offer your customers a perfect, tailor-made service? Are you confident that they will be satisfied with their interactions with you throughout the ordering process?

You have certainly put in place good practices, you have probably been inspired by some great models to always satisfy your customers. And so, perhaps like 80% of companies, you consider that you offer a "superior or excellent" quality of service to your customers...

 

The problem is that only 8% of your customers agree! (Lee Resources study). That says it all!

There is a real gap between your vision of satisfaction and the actual perception of your customers.

How can we make sure we really satisfy them? Kestio offers you a list of four key fundamentals to master for an efficient customer experience.

 

1 - Get to know your customers

What is customer satisfaction? The customer's assessment of the service provided by the company. When the customer feels that the quality of the service offered equals or exceeds his expectations, everything is fine. Customer satisfaction is therefore determined by the customer's own expectations, and their assessment of the business performance they perceive from the service. Not all your customers have the same expectations of you, nor do they have the same view of the efforts you make on their behalf. So a relationship that is identical in every way will not be judged in the same way by any two customers.

 

Having made this preamble, we can see how essential it is to know our customers well. Not in a global way, but on the contrary in a more detailed, individualised way. Depending on who they are, what they experience and what they expect from the brand, a customer will not have the same judgment about your service. Having a "customer-centric" approach, placing customer knowledge at the heart of your efforts, is therefore essential to improve your satisfaction score.

 

Studies such as focus groups, customer surveys and feedback from employees in direct contact with your customers provide an initial view of these elements. Tools such as personas, the study of expectations, or the definition of customer paths are all useful approaches for sharing and maintaining the customer focus. Better still, having framework documents and compiling information from the field is essential for... structuring your listening approach!

 

2 - Listen to your customers!

Evaluating service quality (both real and perceived) inevitably involves... listening! Are you making efforts to structure your sales pitch? Do you have internal procedures for your dealings with customers, for your exchange points? That's good. But also think about listening to your customers. Why is this effort to listen so important? Because almost 98% of negative experiences do not result in a complaint. Customer "complaints" are therefore far from representing the level of satisfaction of all your customers. A low volume of complaints is not a sufficient indication that your customers are satisfied with your services. A restaurant that has no (or few) reviews on a customer review platform does not necessarily inspire confidence. The same goes for your company.

It is therefore important to put in place a comprehensive listening system that fits your business. You need to find the right moments, the right topics for questioning, the right media and channels. The most important thing is that the elements captured are recorded effectively so that they can be used. Just listening is not useful. The feedback must then be used to change your habits, to change behaviour, and even your products and services! These changes or considerations must also be visible to the client in order to enhance the value of their intervention.

 

3 - Put satisfaction at the heart of your efficiency

Placing customer satisfaction at the heart of your organisation and making it a factor of efficiency and team motivation is an innovative challenge for your business strategy. It is not advisable to isolate the measurement of customer satisfaction, and to make it an indicator "like any other", monitored in a too punctual way. On the contrary, it is essential to make the information gathered from customers usable and concrete. This effort of openness makes it possible to :

 

    • To steer the teams and to raise awareness of the customer culture throughout the company. The sharing of indicators, with a consequent adaptation of the remuneration system, makes it possible, for example, to involve everyone in the efforts required;
    • Drive and improve a consistent quality approach and processes through your business management. With the opening up of data, the effort is collective, and the proposed solutions are adapted and corrected thanks to customer feedback. You don't play alone, but as part of a real "team" serving the customer.
    • Optimize marketing campaigns through more precise targeting (specific e-mails to dissatisfied customers in order to win them back, promotion of satisfied customers who know your quality, etc.);
    • Develop an offer that is truly and constantly adapted to the target via increased customer knowledge. Knowing your customers better means better understanding their needs, and therefore optimising all the key indicators (conversion rate, order rate, recommendation rate, average basket).

 

4 - Use the right tools

A good monitoring customer satisfaction also requires the choice of good tools. Tools for measuring, collecting and processing information, but also for sharing data. Good dashboards, easily readable and available, will help you to make exchanges more fluid and make customer satisfaction the famous shared indicator seen by all.

 

The choice and implementation of tools is a subject in its own right that we will develop in a future dedicated article... To be continued!

 

To find out more about this subject, we invite you to discover and download our White Paper :

Customer Experience White Paper
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