Customer Service

Measuring customer satisfaction in outsourced service: Beyond surveys and metrics

Customer satisfaction is the key to lasting brand value and 70% of companies in research believe that it is cheaper to retain a customer than to acquire one. However, customer satisfaction depends on several aspects that keep changing and may appear erratic.

Listening to your customers at several points must be a well-defined strategy which helps you measure their level of satisfaction. This helps your team provide a seamless and top-notch customer experience.

This article explains why you should measure customer satisfaction and the 7 metrics you can use to do so.

Why should you measure customer satisfaction?

According to a study, companies that increase customer satisfaction by 20% will see a 10-15% rise in revenue. Measuring customer satisfaction should be an essential part of your business process for the following reasons –

1. Measure the customers’ loyalty and the likelihood of them being repeat buyers of your products or services.
2. Know how many your brand’s ambassadors are and are willing to use word-of-mouth publicity, which is a no-cost marketing strategy.
3. Get a better understanding of customer expectations, and predict their next move even before it happens.
4. Use the customer feedback to make constructive business plans that flourish.

7 Ways to measure customer satisfaction

So, how do we measure customer satisfaction in numbers? From online surveys to net promoter scores to customer effort scores, you can measure and track customer satisfaction.

Online survey

According to a study, 87% of customers would happily provide their suggestions and feedback on a product or service. Ensure that the survey takes no more than 3 minutes and is personalised. The benefits of online surveys are –

1. Internal surveys have a 30 – 40% response rate, and external ones have a 10 – 15% response rate. Well-designed surveys have up to 85% response rates.
2. Online surveys are short and easy, and quick to fill up which makes them attractive for your customers.
3. They are far cheaper than traditional methods of gathering customer feedback.
4. Get real-time results and analyse them for quick insight into the customers’ satisfaction level.

Social media engagement

Social media is a gold mine to harness customer feedback from product and service reviews, Facebook discussions, X (formerly Twitter) comments, etc. Auto-responders and chatbots help you engage with the online community quickly before a human agent can step in.

Ensure personalised responses, be it the tone or the solution you provide for any complaint. Tools with dashboards that monitor all the social media channels of an organisation on a single interface are key to measuring customer satisfaction.

Churn rate

This metric helps you count the number of existing customers who have switched loyalties. Retaining the existing customers needs more focus than acquiring new ones for a fast-growing business. Here is the generic formula to calculate the customer churn rate –

Churn rate = (Number of customers lost/ total number of customers) x 100

Customer churn is a long process of unfulfilled expectations. By analysing sentiment and offering solutions or incentives, you can lower the churn rate.

Customer effort score (CES)

CES is the effort a customer makes to reach you. If reaching you is difficult customers can move to your competitor. CES score is an outcome of a series of questions with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ responses.

You can improve the CES by using an omnichannel customer contact centre that monitors their journey and rectifies any problems quickly. Provide self-service tools that reduce the wait time and provide solutions to simpler questions that do not require human intervention.

Benchmarking

This is the process of comparing the existing performance with that of competitors, industry standards, or internal norms. Internal benchmarking compares the current customer satisfaction with that at different time periods. External benchmarking compares your business’s performance with that of your competitors on similar parameters.

Net promoter score (NPS)

NPS is the metric that measures the likelihood of your customers recommending your brand to others and is on a scale of 1-10. Usually, those with a score of 9-10 are active promoters, those with 7-8 are passive ones, and those with 0-6 are the unhappy ones who may damage your brand reputation. The generic formula to calculate NPS is –

NPS = (% of customers with score 9-10) – (% of customers with score 0-6)

Customer satisfaction (CSAT)

The CSAT is typically the answer to the question – ‘How satisfied are you with our services?’ It comes with five options to choose from and the results demonstrates the satisfaction level of the customers –

1. Extremely happy
2. Happy
3. Neutral
4. Unhappy
5. Extremely unhappy

Happy customers are repeated ones that become your brand’s advocate and a source of free marketing.

How can Infosys BPM help?

Customer service at Infosys BPM is a suite of customer-first solutions and design frameworks in an omnichannel experience. Refine end-to-end customer experience with transparency, enhanced self-service, and analytics.

Read more about customer service solutions at Infosys BPM.