Customer satisfaction (CSAT) studies are an important input for managing customer relationships – at Prayag, we have been part of quite a few for some of our cleints and have found it to be a particularly enriching experience. Why is understanding customer feedback important for your company’s business? You need to remember that your customers are more than happy to talk to a neutral entity (the firm conducting the CSAT) and are more often than not more open in their feedback. Yes, the project team would have a fairly good grasp at the operational level – but I’m pretty certain that very few companies would have a grasp beyond that. We have seen cases where not so positive feedback from high-value accounts are unanticipated – this is clearly a case of totally inadequate account management efforts.
The benefits of CSAT are multi-fold – however, the key is for the company to take the feedback seriously, prepare an action plan and implement the changes and finally sustain the periodic feedback mechanism. One of our clients has done a great job with this whole process – they have a half-yearly feedback cycle and tied the KRAs of the account managers and project teams back to the customer satisfaction. Having a stringent review mechanism also in place ensured that changes were actually implemented. The results were definitely worth it as their customers were clearly pleased with the importance accorded to their feedback and the subsequent attention they received from their vendor. Clearly, CSAT studies are a worthwhile investment and help you understand your customer better – the question is how many companies appreciate the role it can play and be willing to invest?
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In today’s environment especially it is imperative to get a good understanding of customers, and CSAT can be a good place to begin.
With the market certain to become more value conscious even as the recession abates, the only sure way to remain successful in business is by understanding your customer well and delivering value.
In fact, companies should now look at frequent interactions with customers, some formal like CSAT, and other semi formal, to know the pulse and adapt accordingly.
‘It costs 5 times more to acquire a new customer than satisfying and retaining an existing one’. If vendors understand this, then they would be more inclined to finding what customers feel about them. Delighted and loyal customers will not only generate repeat business but also act as promoters of the vendor in the media and market.
Being part of a CSAT study myself, I had witnessed one such positive customer-vendor relationship – wherein the customer had referred other businesses to the company. Equally surprising was the customer informing us about an award which their vendor had won recently, which even the vendor had not told us.
Happy customers go to any lengths to spread a positive word about their vendor.