What Is Customer Satisfaction & Why Is It Important?

Customer satisfaction is one of the most important metrics to measure how successful your business is. It can lead to exponential growth or a shrinking business.

Businesses have been switching their aims from product to customer success. You might have heard about “customer-centric” a lot these days and there are certain reasons behind it.

This article will explain why keeping customers satisfied is beneficial.

Definition of customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction or user satisfaction gauges how happy a customer is in experiencing the products or services of a company. It’s a guide for a business to understand its targeted customers, then foster the good, and eradicate the bad.

Social media has progressed during the past decade enabling customers to voice their opinions more freely and widely. It’s a double-edged sword!

If you do well, you earn a huge group of fans. If don’t, it will hit your reputation so badly.

Below is the anatomy of why high customer satisfaction can pivot your revenues along with some customer satisfaction examples.

5 Reasons why customer satisfaction is important

#1 Define happy and unhappy customers

Defining customer satisfaction helps you identify who is happy and who is not. If you don’t bat your eyes on this indicator, you can’t understand what you did well and what went wrong. Meaning your business can’t scale and you tend to lose your unhappy customers. At best, you still gain profit from happy customers (in a period of time) and at worst, your business will fail.

Equip yourself with a customer-centric mindset! Everything you do should be at the heart of your customer experience. Customer service satisfaction is a big part of the picture and it’s what a business owner can’t lose sight of.

If you are wondering how you can get into the head of your customers and understand them. Simply follow up with them on a periodical basis or ask them to take some surveys.

Here are some templates you can refer to: 10 Customer Review Templates for Your Requesting Emails

#2 Customer satisfaction creates new leads

Customer reviews are essential to attract new leads. People tend to believe in real-life comments from a user rather than marketing mantras. So you should focus on gathering good feedback from your customers after their purchases. 

Here are 4 Easy Steps to Display Facebook Page Reviews on Website to let the good words flow through all the platforms.

However, bear in mind that these good comments won’t come out if you don’t do the first step well: Fulfilling customer satisfaction.

Another perk of displaying reviews is that good feedbacks from your customers will become concrete testimonials for your frontline sales staff who closely engage with customers every day. It’s so much hard work to blabber about something that is untrue, especially to your customers. So good testimonials will help your sales reps do their work better and sound more convincing to your customers.

When the staff takes pride in the thing they are doing, they are doing their best!

#3 Customer satisfaction breeds loyalty

Service quality and customer satisfaction correlate with each other. You serve them well, they are happy, then they keep coming back. And if you continue to satisfy them, they will never turn their back on you - they have become loyal to your service.

Imagine you have acquired a new customer, he/she decided to make a purchase. If you think your work is done, you have fallen into a huge trap. Customers have so many choices and expectations today: new features, real-time response, quick delivery, etc so engage and understand them!

Reach out to them sometimes, take their opinions, listen to them, and build connections. Aim for long-term business. Otherwise, you will have just go out there, exhaustively excavate new leads time after time just to find out they have left you after 1 or 2 weeks!

#4 Increase customer retention

Existing customers spend more. Data backs this up.

A repeat customer spends 67% more than a new customer. They are gold mines to grow revenue. So set your mind on building a long-term business. It helps you grow organically and sustainably. As a result, you can grow your customer lifetime value - a metric that every business is going after for sustainable growth.

Want more on customer retention and what strategies to apply?

>>>> Read more:

• Customer Retention 101: What is it & Why is it Important to Your Business?
• 11 Effective Customer Retention Strategies to Retain Clients

#5 Turn your customers into advocates

Mark Organ - the Godfather of category creation and a successful serial founder has said “Your customer is the best sales reps” and there is no doubt about it. 

What your customers say is the most credible thing to their friends and connections, as it’s the authentic experience from a user’s point of view and it’s worth it.

Trader Joe’s has created an exceptional service that gets told to many people. They have definitely gained many new and loyal customers from this. Everyone who comes and stays with Trader Joe’s must have their own stories and it varies: from the favored return policy, great foods at great prices (of course) to exceptional delivery service. The company’s effort got paid back having many people talking about them and keeps introducing them to others.

That is to say, if you serve your customers well, they will serve you well. Word of mouth will never be an obsolete marketing tactic. It comes from the value you deliver to your customers and it’s a must not miss out on.

You can build your advocacy campaign by setting up a reward point program. When you get new prospects from your customers, show your appreciation by rewarding them. They will definitely cherish it and keep the ball going. A win-win situation!

Customer satisfaction is really essential to your business

The influence of customer satisfaction is no denial. Customer satisfaction is important as it indicates where you are in customers’ hearts and where you should be headed from now on. Utilize customer satisfaction in marketing to create impact and get people to spread the good words!