If you notice one thing about almost every successful business, it’s that they have customers that rave about their experience working together or buying from them. This isn’t an accident. The best companies are the ones that are obsessed with creating a great customer experience and continue to make improvements to their process so their customers never want to go anywhere else. As a business owner, you’re keeping track of profit and loss, marketing, sales, operations, and a million other things. But you’ll find you have a lot more flexibility if you put your customers first and make sure they’re as satisfied as they can be. The rest will take care of itself. So let’s jump into how you can first and foremost measure how satisfied your customers are and then look at how you can be improving parts of your business so they can be more satisfied for years to come.

Measuring (Numerically)

You have to start somewhere when you’re measuring customer satisfaction and the easiest way to do that is with some sort of “exit interview” if it’s a one time purchase or more of a survey if someone is a regular customer. You’ll probably find that a lot of people that buy from you may not be willing to fill out these forms, but it’s also a way of showing people that are buying from you that their feedback is valuable to you regardless of whether or not they want to take the time to use these forms. Here are some basic questions you can use on your customer satisfaction form and feel free to adjust or add questions that are going to be more specific to how your customers actually interact with you.

1. Did you enjoy your purchase (or service) experience? (scale of 1-5)
2. Did our employees make your experience a positive one? (scale of 1-5)
3. Would you recommend our business to a friend? (scale of 1-5)
4. Notes: What products or services would you like to see us offer in the future? (optional)
5. Notes: Is there anything you would like us to know about your experience or ways you think we could improve? (optional)

Ideally you want to make this customer feedback survey short and sweet so your customers are actually motivated to fill it out. Make it too long and people won’t even bother so be mindful about how many questions you end up having on your form. But you also want to collect enough information that the stats are actually meaningful to you. We added a few optional questions here for your diehard customers that really want to see you succeed and provide their detailed feedback on how they think you can be doing better.

In terms of how you format this survey, maybe you have it on an ipad as an online survey, send it out as a link, or have a paper form if it’s inside a store location. Whatever method you choose to use, ideally you want to motivate your customers to fill it out then and there otherwise the likelihood that they’ll give you any feedback goes down pretty significantly over time.

Measuring (Annecdotally)

Now that you’ve got a framework for understanding numerically how your customers feel about you, it’s time to do the harder work of staying aware throughout your process of working with them and paying attention to the subtle little things they do that could be impacting your ability to serve them better. Did they make a weird face when you got to a certain point of the purchase process? Did they ask a question that made it seem like they were confused and you didn’t do a good enough job explaining something to them? Did they pause when you got to a certain point when you pitched them on a particular service? Did they have a particularly great or particularly negative experience working with a specific employee? All of these are the kinds of questions you want to ask yourself and have your employees report back to you when you’re not around.

The numbers from your initial step and customer feedback surveys will help you move in the right direction, but taking note of these more difficult to report on behavior types will sometimes tell you more about what you need to change than any stats from customer feedback surveys ever will. You want to take these notes with a grain of salt. Sometimes a customer might just be having a bad day that has nothing to do with their experience working with you. But if you start taking notes and see a similar phenomenon showing up time and time again, it’s probably time for you to start looking at those pieces of feedback more intently.

Making an Improvement Plan

So now you’ve got the numbers, you’ve got the notes, and it’s time to make a plan. What are some of the initial things you see when you look at the stats? Does anything stick out to you? Are people strongly negative or positive on any of the questions? Do the notes you and your team took on anecdotal scenarios significant? You probably want to meet with your team and come to an understanding about what these stats mean and compare that against what you and your employees see on a day to day basis. At the end of the day, the customer is always right, so if your customers are saying the same thing over and over again, it’s time for you to change.

To change a part of your business that’s having a negative impact on your customers, or to make a change that you’ve identified that could help them, you need to follow these simple steps.

1. What is the problem that we’re solving with this change?
2. What is the proposed improvement or solution that will solve the problem?
3. When and how will this solution be implemented? Who will be involved? What steps will they take as part of your process moving forward to stay on top of this?
4. Who will be responsible for making sure this process is monitored and has the desired impact for your customers?

Once you’ve written down all these steps with their corresponding answers, see how it plays out and make adjustments as necessary. Customer satisfaction is an ongoing process, so never stop learning and growing with your team as you repeat these steps as you see fit!

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