Why businesses fail at customer satisfaction

Businesses often think there’s some mysterious and magical formula that should enable them to satisfy their customers most of the time. Truth be known, satisfying your clients comes down to effectively managing a few key factors that are critical to establishing a healthy relationship. And the one thing you can’t do when it comes to customer sat is make it overly complicated.

The 4 keys to maintaining superior customer satisfaction
One comment we often get on this topic from our clients is that it’s virtually impossible to keep our customers happy all the time. While this is a valid point, there are some fundamental things you can do to satisfy your customers’ needs most of the time.
1. Listen to your customers
This is probably the most important thing businesses need to do - and do consistently. And it’s also something many companies fail to give the necessary attention and resources. I’m constantly frustrated by companies that don’t listen to your concerns when you contact them with a problem or complaint. Instead they give a ‘stock’ response that has little to do with your issue or that fails to address it in any appreciable way!

Let your customers speak to you and tell you their concerns. Often times just enabling them to get this off their chests will help to alleviate many of their worries.
2. Show you care
This is an off-shoot of the first point. Showing genuine empathy as much as is possible is another attribute that’s important to delivering a superior customer experience. So make sure you show you care in some way. A genuine apology can often go a long way as a result.

On a related front, don’t make promises or say things that you know you can’t make happen. There is nothing like a false promise to make a difficult situation ten times worse. If in doubt, don’t make any commitments unless you know your supervisor or organization will support it.
3. Think like your customers!
After listening, this would be the next most critical action. We wrote a blog post on this topic a while back. In it we encouraged businesses to take a unique and often differentiated perspective when it came to their clients. Put yourself in their shoes when dealing with your customers and ask yourself:

? What needs are they trying fulfill? How can help facilitate them?
? What would motivate your customers to take action (i.e. inquire or buy something)?
? Do we truly understand our customers and their expectations?
? If they have concerns, are they legitimate and reasonable?
? If they’re proposing a solution to you, is it a reasonable one?
? And most importantly, if you were in your customer’s shoes and faced with a similar scenario, how upset would you be and what kind of solution would appease these concerns?
4. Make a genuine attempt to “make it right”
When a customer complaint occurs, you can do all the above really well but if you fail to close the loop by offering a reasonable solution, you risk upsetting the client even more than they were to start. Why? Listening, showing empathy and putting yourself in your customer’s shoes is all well and good but if you fail to resolve the problem, you’re no farther ahead and in fact have really done nothing to appease them!

While it’s very true that you can’t effectively resolve all your customers’ complaints, what you can do is clearly explain why you can’t provide the solution they desire, what you may be able to do instead or if appropriate to at least escalate the matter to your manager.

Providing a feedback loop where someone will get back to the customer with a response and update is important as it demonstrates the sincerity of your concern and apology. When you don’t do this, you leave it open for your customers to question your integrity.

We've also written a blog that presents a mini case study on a situation we encountered with a nationally recognized brand that failed miserably in delivering a superior customer experience. We outlined a number of their failures and explained how businesses can do things differently to create a positive experience out of a negative one. So check it out!

If we can assist in helping you develop a more robust customer experience with more devout ‘brand ambassadors’, please don’t hesitate to contact us.