How to Improve CSAT & NPS in a Contact Centre

Loyal, satisfied customers stick around far longer than those who aren’t. Noticed more complaints and issues lately? It’s time to start improving your CSAT and NPS. Here’s how to do it…

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promoter Scores (NPS) are a bit like having business barometers. Both are pretty much essential if you’re looking to gauge – and improve – your interactions with customers and the experiences they have with you.

Want them to sing your praises? Itching for them to keep coming back time and time again? Improving your CSAT and NPS can help with that.

By measuring both metrics, you can unlock tons of useful insights, establish your current performance, and predict where you want to be later down the line. The question is: what can you do to improve these scores?

Below, we’ll look at these essential metrics in more detail, along with a range of effective approaches you can use to make sure you and your team deliver an optimal customer experience now and in the future.

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What is Customer Satisfaction?

We’ve talked about customer satisfaction in the past, but consider that a scratching of this vital metric’s surface. Essentially, it’s a key performance indicator that tracks how satisfied customers are with your products and services.

It’s a simple process too. Obtaining your Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is a case of using a survey to ask “how satisfied were you with your experience?” or a similar variation. Respondents use a corresponding scale, which tends to be 1-3, 1-5, or 1-10, with the lower end representing dissatisfaction and the higher end representing satisfaction.

Calculating the score is also a straightforward undertaking. You add up every positive response, divide them by the number of responses collected and then multiply this resulting figure by 100.

So, let’s say you received 40 total responses and 10 of them were positive. Your CSAT calculation would look like the following:

10 positive responses / 40 total responses = 0.25 x 100 = 25%

That’s that: an instant view of customer satisfaction across your business (although a CSAT score of 25% is a bit of a warning sign. Thankfully, that’s why you’re reading this very article).

How to improve your Customer Satisfaction scores

Prioritise employee satisfaction

If your employees find work a struggle, then boosting those customer satisfaction scores is going to be a slog. Happy employees, on the other hand, go a long way towards getting your levels up, so make sure you let them know they’re appreciated.

Things like employee of the month programmes, rewards and even a simple ‘thank you’ here and there can give their roles real value and motivate them to go the extra mile in their roles.

Create a customer-centric culture 

Plenty of businesses make it a point to put customers at the heart of everything they do. If you claim to do the same, then you need to make sure you’re walking the walk.

Before making big decisions, putting new processes in place, or designing new products, ask yourself how this might affect or impact your customers.

Offer multi-channel support

 Between email, live chat, social media and phone support, everyone has their preferred way of getting in touch with you. Put simply, customers aren’t going to be happy if they have to contact you through a method they don’t like using.

But by offering the best possible support across all channels, you can give customers the option to engage with you in ways they prefer.

Make feedback collection a company process

Part of making your culture customer-centric is focusing on customer feedback. By leaning on what they have to say about you, you’ll have a wealth of insights into your brand, services, and products which you can use as a measure of their satisfaction. And as if that wasn’t good enough, customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than those who forego focusing on customers.

Put customer feedback at the forefront of your processes by collecting it through surveys across each of the channels you use – and then act on the feedback.

Ask for feedback proactively

If you’re playing the waiting game with customer feedback, then you could be waiting for some time. It’s far better to take a proactive approach by asking them to leave feedback wherever you can.

If they purchased something from you, then ask them how they found the experience. Or if you’re launching a new feature, then ask your customers what they expect from it.

By aligning expectations with function, you can ensure greater success when the feature launches. Plus, your customers will be glad you’ve asked for their insights.

woman working on computer graphic

What is Net Promoter Score? 

A Net Promoter Score is a metric often used to gauge customer experience performance, measure your customers’ sentiment over time, and assess your business against your competition.

That might sound like CSAT, but there’s a difference. CSAT is a measure of satisfaction, whereas NPS measures your customers’ loyalty to the business. And rather than looking at reactions to a specific interaction, NPS sheds light on the ongoing relationships with your customers.

Like CSAT, you can get to the bottom of your Net Promoter Score with a single question. In this case, some variation of “on a scale of 0-10, how likely is that you would recommend us to your friends, family or business associates?”

Any respondents that give you a score of 6 or below are called Detractors. Those who give you a score of 7 or 8 are called Passives, while those who give you 9 or 10 are known as Promoters.

To calculate your NPS, subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters. So, if 60% of respondents were Promoters and 10% were Detractors, then your NPS would be 50.

How to improve your Net Promoter Score

Make your expectations clear

Everyone needs to be on the same page if you’re to improve your NPS. Both leaders and agents need to understand that you aim to win over as many promoters as possible. When they’re aware of this, they’re able to share in your vision.

So, be clear about what NPS is and what it can contribute to the business. State how it’s going to be tracked. Make it a point to mention the role it will play in annual reviews. You could even incentivise your team based on NPS performance as a further means of improving customer service.

Work to close the loop

Backing up your NPS’ quantitative information with more qualitative aspects is a great way to understand the context and reasoning that go into the figures. Delve into your NPS by conducting direct interviews, follow-up emails, and other investigative methods to close the loop. Through this extra feedback, you can work to make your processes even more customer-centric than they already are.

Engage with Detractors

Your Detractors are detractors for a reason. Ultimately, they were unhappy with some aspects of your service.

Your contact centre staff should work to improve their relationship with them by investigating what they disliked and working to resolve whatever the issue was. With a resolution at hand, your team are in a better position to support customers, who may be inclined to change their opinion of your business as a result.

Give your team the processes and tech to do this, and you may well have a higher NPS through their actions.

Make changes to your structure

While a few Detractors aren’t enough to alter your site from top to bottom, if trends start to appear – and all the signs suggest it’s a structural issue – then you’ll have to act. Making changes to products, policies and messaging might be a case of trial and error, but by tracking your NPS, and then comparing both the score and feedback pre- and post-alterations, you can identify whether your changes have been successful.

Looking for customer service that speaks to your contacts? Gnatta makes interactions matter, delivering quality exchanges and quicker responses that meet your customers’ expectations. Find out how we can help here or head here to try out your free trial.

 

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