These 4 Factors are Essential for Guest Satisfaction

Customers are always looking for the next best thing. Understand these key metrics to ensure you’re keeping up, no matter what kind of business you run.

Do you know your guests are happy enough for repeat business? Or just think they are?

Recent data from a market research group shows only 23 percent of customers are “very satisfied” with their experience at most businesses. Hanover Research regularly polls consumers for businesses to gauge the ROI of their offerings.

More than 4 in 10 said they’re “actively seeking other brands” even when they’re just happy with ones they currently rely on – and 8 in 10 will never return after a few bad experiences. How can you beat out the competition?

Assessing customer satisfaction is crucial for refining your services, ensuring that your current methods are effective, and avoiding as many mistakes as possible. Doing a proper deep dive into your practices can illuminate any pitfalls you might be blind to and reveal potential opportunities for you to expand on. Keeping a close eye on satisfaction ultimately makes you more competitive, helps build loyalty, and gives you a marketing aid since you’ll have a better idea of which services might be best to advertise.

Surveys are a great step in picking out these sorts of details. Depending on how you format them, surveys can give you keen insight into customer perceptions, wants, and experiences. But to create the most effective survey, or any other customer satisfaction analysis, pay attention to these four core areas.

1. Customer perception

Customer perception is the personal beliefs and feelings that consumers develop about a brand, product, or service based on their experiences. It plays a key role in shaping buying habits and overall attitudes about a business.

Understanding customer perception reveals customers’ positive and negative feelings about your business and how you compare to competitors in the area.

When writing surveys, to gauge this factor you could ask questions like, “Did our services meet your expectations?” Or, “Do you believe we value transparency and customer satisfaction?”

2. Customer loyalty

Customer loyalty is when you’ve gained consistent business from consumers; customers that keep coming back to you because of positive experiences and the trust you’ve instilled in them. A business that thrives in the long term depends on the consumers who continue to choose them over others.

By analyzing what’s currently bringing in your consistent customers, you’re able to understand your most essential assets, how to make the most of them, and where you may need to improve.

In a survey, you could ask questions such as, “What service/product motivates you to return?” Or, “Have you considered or tried services from other businesses? If yes, what made you explore other options?”

3. General satisfaction

General customer satisfaction refers to customers’ overall contentment with your service/product and whether it met their expectations. Ultimately, it reflects how well you meet their needs and whether they’ll recommend you to others.

If you inspect the general customer satisfaction of your business, you’re able to get a broader view of your current advantages and areas in need of improvement. It helps you see where you are compared to competitors. To analyze this in a survey, you could ask questions like, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with your overall experience with us?” Or, “What about our service/product was more memorable?”

4. Likelihood to recommend

A customer’s likelihood to recommend refers to the probability that a customer will support you publicly and encourage others to engage with your business. Someone who’s likely to recommend you might advocate for you on social media or around friends and coworkers. Whether or not they do this not only demonstrates loyalty but gives you insight into your ability to gain new clientele.

Tools like the Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer feedback forms, and online reviews can gauge customers’ likelihood to recommend. Even just taking a habitual look-through of social media and other online mentions can give you a general idea. The NPS is a scoring system that consists of one simple question, “How likely or unlikely are you to recommend our business?”