News and Insights
Why You Should Be Measuring Customer Satisfaction
January 22, 2020
It is common knowledge that acquiring customers is more expensive than keeping customers (5 to 25 times more expensive according to HBR), and that bad customer experience/service is a leading indicator of client churn. While quality lead generation will likely always be a primary concern for marketers, effective lifecycle marketing necessitates a more balanced focus on all of the stages of customer acquisition and retention. Doing so will reduce churn AND improve leads.
FINN’s 2019 B2B Buyers INfluence Report explores the business-to-business (B2B) buyer journey and sheds some much needed light on the various factors that influence the purchase decision process. One of the most interesting findings is related to the key attributes of selected vendors, and what B2B decision makers value most.
What the chart below shows is that attributes related to customer service and the working relationship between client and vendor are highly valued. Put differently, being able to demonstrate strong customer satisfaction matters most as a prospect moves closer to the point of final decision.
If you’re not doing so already, it’s time to start measuring your customer satisfaction in a way that can provide actionable insight to your marketing and sales team (not to mention the other teams responsible for ensuring happy clients).
Being able to demonstrate strength in the key areas of customer support and on-boarding could help differentiate your company from the competition once a buyer has moved beyond cost and product specifications. Further, knowing which clients are super happy and which are feeling frustrated can identify new sales and marketing opportunities (case studies, reviews, referrals) and help prevent churn.
Perhaps the easiest point of entry is Net Promoter Score (NPS), which can be an extremely simple and low cost way to keep tabs on how your customers feel about your company and products. NPS has some well documented limitations, but it is a good starting point and certainly better than nothing. Plus, it can be easily integrated with your CRM to provide more robust intelligence.
For those interested in a more advanced solution, there are specific satisfaction metholologies (SUS and CSAT) and tools as well as custom suveys or customer interviews, which may provide a more effective approach depending on your product or service offering as well as the current health of your client relationships. If your client churn rate is high, then now’s the time to invest in really understanding why and what can be done to stop it.
ABOUT THE REPORT
Finn Partners partnered with GWI to conduct a global study to gain a greater understanding of B2B purchasing decisions – who is involved, the purchase journey, the key attributes and sources of information that influence decisions, and the confidence with the chosen provider.
Organizations looking to learn how this report applies specifically to their sales efforts can download the report below.
