Imagine this: A person visits a shopping website ‘A’. ‘A’ has a great product that ticks all the right boxes for him, but he does not know it, for technical reasons. He then visits the website ‘B’. ‘B’ has a product that somewhat matches his requirements, but here too, he is not sure. Here, however, a company representative discusses his requirement, possibly over live chat. The buyer is convinced, and he buys the product from ‘B’.

Which of this website do you think should be yours? In the end, the one that sells is better.

Honestly, the ideal kind to have should be ‘C’, that has the high product quality of A and the wonderful customer support of ‘B’. But practically, if you cannot be C, you should prefer to be B, but never A. This scenario can be replaced by post-sales support, and there will be a similar story. In the words of the ‘Idea Man’, Bob Hooey, “If you are not taking care of your customer, your competitor will.”

In today’s age of cut-throat competition, Customer Satisfaction is your best bet if you want your business to thrive. Let us see what it takes to have highly satisfied customers and the key role quality support services play in it.

Read More: How to Create a Customer-Centric Strategy for Your Business

Ways to Ensure Satisfied Customers

1. The Human Approach

Often, Customer Service as a department functions like a machine. Support executives tend to handle customer queries like non-human issues. This may work as far as solving an issue is concerned. But the greatest mistake is to consider ‘customer service’ as an issue solving department.

It is, and should always be viewed as a department responsible for customer happiness. Period. Well trained service executives in technical as well as communication areas are a must in achieving customer satisfaction. A live chat support software with emphasis on customer experience is one of the best solutions.

2. Personalize Things

This is related to the first point. Keep a record of your customer’s purchase history, service related history, and everything else that matters. The more you know your customers, the better you can deal with them on a more personal level. This creates a connection with your organization resulting in a guaranteed increase in customer satisfaction. These are a few things that add the personal factor:

• Storing/remembering and using names of customers while interaction
• Rewarding loyal customers
• Sending personalized offers on birthdays and other special occasions
• Featuring loyal customers on public platforms such as social media

3. Go The Extra Mile

“There’s no traffic jam on the extra mile”, famous football player Roger Staubach has said. Providing great customer service does not mean performing the tricks everyone else does. Of course, those things are important, but think of how you can stand apart. A small investment in doing what nobody else is doing can result in impressive customer satisfaction numbers and revenue growth.

This will have to be well thought out and practically feasible. A couple of good examples are listed below:

• Processing refunds/returns by making policy exceptions as goodwill gestures
• Organizing gatherings/events with activities

Read More: 2019 TOPO Summit Recap: Customer Experience Disrupts B2B Economy

4. Quality is More Important Than Speed

Nobody is saying that speed is not important in customer service, but it certainly isn’t at the cost of quality. Customer support teams can be tempted to handle queries as fast as possible, which isn’t necessarily bad. However, a customer whose issue is solved to satisfaction, albeit slow, is happier than the one with a quick solution that he doesn’t particularly like.

5. Measure Satisfaction

There can be many answers to the question of how to make customers satisfied, but it is essential to understand what works best for you. For the same, it is important to track customer satisfaction. Using customer survey tools to help you get feedback and learn what works for customers. It hence also becomes vital to understand customer satisfaction metrics such as CSAT or others.

Final Thoughts

The age of having only a handful of competitors is gone. Those were times when customer satisfaction levels of 50% were also fine. Things are different today, and customer support demands more emphasis than most or all other departments. However, merely deciding to make the customer happier without concrete measures does not help.

Organizations should make the customer feel special by doing things that few others do. This demands to know the customer better than ever before. Live chat support software and survey software can perform as great tools in the quest to maximize satisfied customers. Assuming satisfaction levels can be dangerous, and it makes a measurement of satisfaction crucial.

The importance of customer satisfaction can never be overstated. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that organizations should aim at 100% customer satisfaction. To achieve this ambitious but necessary number, start working on the above points before it is too late!

Read More: Customer Experience 2020: Personalization is Key