Delivering high levels of customer satisfaction is not easy, but the formula is simple. First identify the things that really matter to customers. Then deliver those things consistently well. If only it were that easy.
Why CSAT is a commercial metric
Customer satisfaction is sometimes treated as a nice-to-have. It isn't. A great customer experience delivers a higher conversion rate, a larger basket and more visits. Eliminating pain points and creating magic moments lifts CSAT and NPS, and a higher NPS translates into sustainable sales growth.
The reverse is true too. Customers are less forgiving than ever. Many say they'd stop doing business with a company after a single bad experience, and they'll tell family and friends.
After location, service is the thing most likely to make a customer choose one shop over another. Customers remember how an experience made them feel long after they've forgotten the price.
Start with the shopping trip
A good place to start building a customer plan is to break the shopping trip into a few simple stages, seen through the customer's eyes. For example: deciding where to shop, getting there, finding what I want, getting help, paying and getting it home.
This avoids the easy trap of inward-looking corporate objectives and business speak. It's also easier for colleagues and stakeholders to relate to.
I've seen this model work very effectively in companies large and small:
- Appoint a director as sponsor for each stage of the trip.
- Use CSAT and NPS tracking, in store and online, to show where promises aren't being kept.
- Give colleagues at the coal face a voice. They surface brilliant insight and it builds buy-in.
- Rate every initiative on ease and value. Anything easy to do with high value gets done with pace and rigour.
- Track progress through a customer plan steering group so everyone can see the dependencies.
Find the pain points
Unearthing pain points and barriers unlocks sales by removing friction, whether it's product, price, range, service or the overall experience.
In every retail business, customers want the same basics: good value, decent quality, excellent availability and an appropriate level of service. In other words, the prices are good, they can get what they want when they want it, it's easy to shop, and help is available if they need it.
Your best stores are a goldmine here. Identify the ones with the highest CSAT and get a real understanding of what they do differently. Then inject their magic into your average performers.
Use "Marketing Judo" when things go wrong
Things will go wrong. The best brands flip a bad experience into something memorable by overcompensating to put it right. I call this Marketing Judo. It keeps the customer, and they tend to tell others, which lifts NPS.
When companies get CSAT this high, something interesting happens: customers start blaming themselves when things go wrong. "They've run out because they're so popular. I should have got here earlier."
Happy colleagues, happy customers
The Service Profit Chain tells us colleague satisfaction has a direct link to customer satisfaction. It's very hard to lift CSAT if your colleagues are unengaged. Customers will never love a company until colleagues love it first.
Give colleagues the tools and training to do the job, a voice with a genuine "you said, we did" approach, and make sure they feel valued and recognised.
Kindness matters more than we think. A convenience store customer once told me: "I shop here because I feel like a somebody, whereas when I shop at the supermarket I feel like a nobody." That's the bar.
Spend in proportion to the gain
Investment needs to be proportionate to the lift in satisfaction. For every £1 spent, we need to be convinced the customer will feel happier as a result. Sometimes thinking laterally achieves the same outcome for far less money.
Remember that colleagues in finance default to certainty. A customer hypothesis needs a clear financial case alongside it. Link CSAT to conversion, visits and basket in your own data, and the conversation gets much easier.
Make sure the marketing matches the experience
Finally, if your advertising makes bold claims, your stores and website must deliver them. When they don't, customers feel let down and vote with their feet, or with a click of the mouse. The best brands make sure what they say and what they do are the same thing.