Today's customers are increasingly unhappy.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index has steadily declined for the past four years. By the end of 2021, it had reached its lowest point since 2005.
What's causing the decline?
A survey conducted by Toister Performance Solutions in April 2022 aimed to find out. Over 1,500 consumers across the United States were asked about their experiences with companies.
The results point to three ways that companies can immediately improve their customer experience.
#1 Listen to your customers
In an era of endless surveys, customer listening is severely lacking.
The survey found that 30 percent of Americans feel companies rarely understand their needs. Another 44 percent thought companies understand their needs just some of the time.
Think about the impact when a company hasn't listened to your needs as a customer:
Your favorite feature was removed from a product you loved.
A salesperson pushes a sale without listening to what you want.
You have to repeat your story three times when calling customer service.
Companies and employees who don’t listen can’t understand their customers. That creates unmet expectations, frustration, and an incentive for customers to try out the competition.
It seems dead simple, but customer listening is underrated. Here are some resources that can help you improve:
Discover how a professional association grew membership by 67 percent
Learn how a convenience store chain gets 4x more customers than the competition
Improve your customer listening skills with these exercises
#2: Keep your promises
Companies promise the moon, but in the end you feel like you got mooned.
Service failures are rampant.
The survey found that 21 percent of Americans have been disappointed by a product or service that they purchased in the past week. This includes defective products, faulty services, and unmet expectations.
This often comes from an accountability gap between marketing, sales, and operations. Examples are everywhere:
False or misleading advertising
Salespeople who lie or exaggerate to get a sale
Defective products
Services that fall short of expectations
Employees who don't call you back
You can avoid these disappointments by keeping the promises you make to your customers. Here are some resources to help you:
Conduct a customer experience promise audit
Learn how a restaurant chain keeps its brand promise
Discover how a public transportation system monitors its promises in real-time
#3: Recover from service failures
Problems are inevitable, but many companies fail to recover.
The survey discovered that 14 percent of Americans have experienced an unresolved service failure in the past week.
It's an insult to injury when a company breaks a promise and then fails to adequately fix it. These repeated service failures cost customers time, money, and aggravation.
You have to contact a company five times to fix a billing issue.
A product breaks while under warranty, but the company won't fix it.
An airline cancels your flight and leaves you stranded.
Service recovery is ultimately about restoring trust. You can earn your customer's repeat business if you can get them to trust in your ability to avoid another service failure in the future.
Here are some resources that can help:
Learn one thing that will make you instantly better at service recovery
Discover what customers want more than freebies or discounts
Read how one brand's poor service recovery is costing it customers
Conclusion
There's a reason the basics never go out of style. That's why I'm advising my clients to do a few things really, really well:
Promise: Win customers by promising to solve their problems
Action: Earn trust by taking decisive action to keep your promises
Recovery: Restore trust with a flawless recovery in the event of a service failure
You can get a step-by-step guide for implementing these concepts in The Guaranteed Customer Experience.