It’s a commonly accepted today that customer retention costs your company much less than acquisition. According to Gartner “65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers, and it costs five times as much to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one satisfied.”

For example, let’s take a look at the very well know brand Zappos. The company uses a loyalty business model and relationship marketing that yields an exemplary results: 75% of Zappos customers are repeat buyers. Very impressive numbers, aren’t they?

So, what are the best practices to follow to improve customer satisfaction? Let review five proven ways you can start with:

Measure customer satisfaction metrics. Everyone knows – customer is a king. In order to beat the competition, you need to measure the current level of customer satisfaction – you won’t get the whole picture without numbers, so you need to figure out what metrics supply you with valuable information for decision making and track them on a constant basis.

For instance, these can be:

• Customer expectation vs perception – this metric is very straight forward, as your customers are asked to agree or disagree with each statement using five-point scale for estimating
• Repeat purchase intention – ask your customers directly about their intention to renew the contract or make purchases again in your store. Experts say that higher repeat purchase value means a well-retained, satisfied customer.
• Overall satisfaction – focus your efforts on rising customer satisfaction KPI. Set internal benchmarks to track the rating progress and measure each set of new results against the previous ones.

Check customer experience your competitors provide. No one knows better than you do about strong and weak sides of your business – so what is about your competitors? By checking customer experience, you can figure out what really works for them, and apply these best practices to your business.

Ask for feedback and implement valuable suggestions. Your customers can provide you with the most veracious feedback on what is really good and what is not about your service, what they like and what makes them unhappy. Moreover, they want to be heard! Ask your customers about how you can become better for and apply those suggestions.

Personalize the customer experience. Customers want to be treated as individuals; you won’t increase their loyalty if you don’t know who they are. Personalization is your main tool to increase customer satisfaction rate. It is achieved by combining both the technology solution for managing customer relations (CRM) and good agent soft and communication skills. For instance, innovative CRM solutions like bpm’online CRM allows you to offer omnichannel customer experience, no matter what channels of communication your customers use or whether they ask you about product on your Facebook page, call you to make purchase, send you emails, or do all the above mentioned – you should know who they are. The appropriate CRM will help you to cope with this task.

Exceed expectations. Meeting customer expectations is something you won’t surprise the customer with. To improve customer satisfactions you need to go further and figure out how to impress your customers and enhance their buying experience by means of implementing customer-facing processes. Just to give you an idea – as a customer I expect to feel like your number one customer, regardless of the number of customers you serve.

Jerry Gregoire, CIO of Dell Computers said, “The customer experience is the next competitive battleground.” You can sell the best products or provide cutting-edge services, and so can do your competitors. However, what can make you stand out of your industry peers is a unique customer experience you can provide, which increases loyalty and satisfaction.

Author’s Bio:

Simon Hopes loves to article and blogs to relate to technology. He suggests the readers to opt for the bpm’online CRM that offers omnichannel customer experience and customer relation management.