Do you have a customer satisfaction survey to monitor your business performance and guage customer loyalty?
Obviously if you are constantly seeking new business it sort of answers the question for you! But perhaps you simply don’t focus on customer rentention and loyalty. Why not? I encourage my clients in their marketing to build in mechanisms to engage and improve customer retention and encourage reapeat purchase. This should be a priority before we look at new customer acquisition – otherwise you are always trying to fill that leaky customer bucket!
It is important to speak to your customers on a regular and ongoing basis to help build strong relationships and this isn’t just about sending out an automated, web based survey. But if you do use a survey to get customer satisfaction feedback, should you use just one simple question or many? For small businesses, I favour using this one powerful question: Would you recommend company X to a friend or colleague?
This may seem a very simplistic question to ask your customers but it has been shown to be a valuable indicator of future customer loyalty and profitability.
When used as the basis of the Net Promoter Score – a concept Frederick Reichheld (at Bain & Co and famous Loyalty expert/author) developed based on extensive research – it measures customer satisfaction, retention and shows a link to future revenue growth and profitability.
Companies calculate their Net Promoter Score by asking customers a single question (usually, “How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague?”). Based on their responses, customers can be categorised into one of three groups: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors.
The premise of this research is that the Promoters will spread positive word of mouth (WOM) about your business and remain loyal to drive future profit growth, whereas Passives will not. Passives are not true advocates for your business, product or service.
Detractors will of course do the opposite and spread negative WOM about your brand.
…Interesting food for thought for you in designing your customer feedback options.