The customer is the king. You must have heard this from people involved in marketing. But how often do businesses actually implement this thought into their workflow? The entire experience that a customer faces when interacting with a brand is responsible for his overall feedback. 

Feedback is crucial for a business in order to keep improving its services. The most important reason behind this is that the experience that your brand gives to a customer makes or breaks the crucial metric which is known as customer loyalty. 

If your brand can figure out a way to inspire, measure and improve customer loyalty, then you can rest assured that half your task is done. Revenues will never be a problem for you. In this post, we look at some of the ways to do exactly that – inspire, measure and improve customer loyalty. 

Meaning of customer loyalty 

Before we get into the nitty gritties, it is important to define customer loyalty in a concrete and tangible manner. Customer loyalty is more than an abstract concept. It is a measurable principle that enables you to identify what exactly motivates your customer to return to you for another purchase.

Since measuring this metric is so important for your business’ success, it is also crucial to know that this motivation of the customer’s loyalty towards your business may be due to his or her purchase experience, behavior of your staff, after sales service or return process. 

Needless to say, overall, the product or the service must also meet his or her needs accurately. Only then will he or she become a loyal customer. 

Customer Satisfaction Survey Software 

The time tested method of ascertaining how satisfied the customer is with your business is to use a customer satisfaction survey. Gone are the days when you had to hand over large paper forms to your customers which would ultimately end up in dustbins. Today, all you need is simple software and you are good to go. 

The different modes of a survey that can be developed with the help of customer satisfaction survey software are SMS surveys, email surveys, kiosk-based surveys, online surveys, web-based pop-up surveys or even link-based surveys. 

The objective behind using a customer satisfaction survey software is to calculate a Customer Satisfaction Score. This score often becomes the score to beat for the customer facing vertical in the business. Having a number to achieve always helps in the entire growth process. 

Pro Tip – If you are a small startup which cannot go ahead and use professional softwares, consider opting for something as simple as a Google form. You would be surprised how genuinely helpful some of these link based surveys can be. 

Example – In case of any product based industry like make-up products, the core metrics that you need to measure would be whether the customer felt good about their look after using the product. If this metric can be achieved, customer loyalty would definitely be in the higher range. 

Net Promoter Score 

Net Promoter Score is what it says it is. It is a metric which tells you how likely your customer is going to recommend your products or services to other people. In other words, if your Net Promoter Score is high, it means that your customer is more likely to bring in more customers for you just by word of mouth publicity. 

Pro Tip – Keeping the question simple always helps.

Example – If you provide legal services to your clients, asking your client to answer the question – how likely are you to recommend us to someone else who is looking for legal services? – with a simple number between 1 to 10 will give you an indication of the likelihood of getting newer clients because of the work you did in the past. 

Customer Feedback

If the customer is the king, customer feedback is no less than the queen. In fact, it is incumbent upon any business, be it product or service based, to spend substantial time and effort into getting customer feedback and changing their offerings accordingly.

Customer feedback can be taken through various means. Surveys are a crucial part. Apart from that, feedback also needs to be taken for ancillary processes such as order booking, payment and delivery of products or services.

Pro Tip – The feedback process should factor in both objective as well as subjective criteria. Everything cannot be ascertained with the help of numbers. 

Example – If your business is content heavy, it makes sense for customers to tell you whether your content entertained them or helped them or not. A number based ranking will only come in if the main purpose (help or entertainment) is fulfilled. 

Using a combination of customer survey softwares, net promoter score and customer feedback along with other processes will surely yield results for your business. Remember, at the end of the day, you need to collect enough qualitative and quantitative information about your customer’s decision making process to fine tune your strategy. Gut feelings don’t always work in business.  

Author: Arvind Kumar 

Arvind heads product marketing at Zonka Feedback, an all-in-one customer feedback, and survey management software. He is passionate about technology, software products, and marketing. He has spent nearly a decade helping businesses across the globe deliver uncanny customer & user experiences, market faster, and growth-hack effectively. He is an avid reader and a writer and shares insights based on experience that let readers connect with them fluently.