How improving customer satisfaction helps deliver better customer experiences

Using customer satisfaction in the contact center

Contact centers gather data on customer satisfaction to improve customer experiences by eliminating bad experiences and enhancing good ones.

Businesses measure customer satisfaction using a customer satisfaction score (CSAT score). The score indicates how satisfied a customer is with a product, service or interaction with a brand. The CSAT score is obtained by asking customers how satisfied they were with a specific event, interaction or outcome.

Tracking customer satisfaction is important for businesses to see what’s working and what’s not to ensure effective prioritization. Generally, a company with a positive CSAT score is likely to be customer-centric and care about improving customer satisfaction. Adversely, a company with no CSAT score likely hasn’t made customer satisfaction a priority.

Contact centers use CSAT scores to measure customer satisfaction

An easy way to gain customer satisfaction data is to ask the customer directly. Contact centers use various methods to gather satisfaction data to gauge their quality of service. Surveying through email, SMS or even on the phone after an interaction are common methods.

Questions can be general or tailored to pinpoint specific areas of frustration for callers. Common questions include, ‘Are you satisfied with the service?’ or ‘Are you satisfied with the wait time for this resolution?’ While general questions determine overall satisfaction, tailored questions provide a deeper level of understanding about the customer.

Obtaining satisfaction data from surveys alone is no longer the most effective method. Other approaches are being used to extract deeper meaning and understanding from customer interactions. For example, voice technology is being used to convert call data into text to feed into analytics platforms. This data extracts a deeper level of understanding about customers, beyond a simple satisfaction rating.

With 32% of customers likely to move to a competitor after just one poor experience (according to PwC), it’s important for brands to gather as much data as possible to ensure bad customer experiences are eliminated.

How to use customer satisfaction to improve customer experience

Customer satisfaction and experience go hand in hand. They are a priority for most businesses. Making sure customer service is second to none is therefore essential. It’s what sets companies apart and gives them USPs by providing engaging experiences.

Using voice technology to improve customer satisfaction

Voice technology enables companies to improve their customer service by analyzing the customer voice. Analysis of the customer voice helps companies to identify when customers are happy, sad, angry, agitated, ready to churn and all other emotions they might be feeling throughout the customer journey.

A Microsoft study revealed that 44% of customers in the US prefer to interact over the phone as their primary source of customer service channel. This is significantly higher than live chat which was the second most preferred channel with 23%. With so many calls coming through the contact center, it leaves a lot of voice data untouched due to the associated cost and complexity involved. In fact, Call Centre Helper suggest that contact centers analyze less than 3% of customer calls due to factors such as costs, time and employee effort.

If contact centers can capture and analyze the voice data from negative experiences such as when customers are ready to churn, brands can put in place measures to avoid these situations. This helps with customer retention and drives up the overall lifetime value for customers.

Voice technology delivers the potential to take the analysis of 3% of customer calls up to 100%, delivering insight at scale. By capturing and using all voice interactions and combining these with other text-based interactions, brands have access to a huge pool of information. They will understand when customers are most likely to churn, how long resolution calls take and common customer concerns etc. This information can be used to improve interactions, provide FAQs, speed-up resolution times and improve customer experience.

Conclusion: Knowing customer satisfaction can significantly improve customer experience

Measuring customer satisfaction is a great way for contact centers to determine business success from a customer’s perspective. It’s quick and easy to deploy and generates lots of information over which practices are working well and which are not. Contact centers are using voice technology to convert all call recordings into text and feeding this data into analytics platforms to extract a deeper level of understanding about customers.

By gathering data on bad customer interactions, contact centers can eliminate them from happening in the future. Voice technology enables contact centers to capture this information at scale. Analytics platforms can then be used to make sense of the data and inform brands on how to improve customer experiences.