Kathrine Rabjerg Hansen
Marketing Manager
Mar 12, 2024
How to create better dialogues and increase customer satisfaction by 20-40%
When you heighten customer satisfaction in your department, you also increase the likelihood that your customers remain loyal to your company, buy more often, and recommend your product to their friends. That is why customer service plays a crucial role in building a company’s reputation. When companies measure customer satisfaction, they gain insight into what customers think about their services and products – and can easily pinpoint areas that need improvement.
In today’s competitive market, companies must prioritize customer satisfaction to build loyalty and drive growth. Higher satisfaction levels lead to increased customer retention, more frequent purchases, and positive word-of-mouth referrals, all of which contribute to a company’s success.
Why is customer satisfaction so important, and how do we measure it?
Customer satisfaction is a key metric to determine if an inquiry has been successfully resolved. Even if an issue is solved on the first call, customers may remember employees may remember bad experiences.
Given its importance, the responsibility for maintaining high customer satisfaction should extend beyond customer service departments. From sales to customer success and technical support, customer experience should be prioritized.
The satisfaction can be measured in several ways.
One method is the Net Promoter Score (NPS), which reflects how likely customers are to recommend your product or service on a scale from 1 to 10. This score is collected by sending forms to customers immediately after a call.
Customer satisfaction can also be measured by the number of churn rates or online reviews.
Another way to evaluate satisfaction is through customer sentiment tracking. By using conversational AI software, you can automatically analyze how customers communicate and assign sentiment scores based on their language. For instance, phrases like "Perfect," "Fantastic," "Thank you so much," or "That was really helpful" result in higher sentiment scores.
The insights in this article are based on sentiment scores from 35 million customer conversations across Scandinavian contact centers.
Make a good first impression
The beginning of each conversation sets the tone for the rest of the conversation. When employees start the conversation in a polite way, they increase the likelihood of customers expressing high satisfaction by 5%.
But how exactly do you make good first impression in customer conversations? As a general rule, it is important to make the customer feel welcome. For example, you should not start a conversation with a short, impersonal greeting like "Capturi, this is Jacob" or "Capturi customer service, hello." Instead, you should use phrases such as: "Welcome to Capturi, you are speaking with Jacob."
Starting the conversation with a warm welcome not only boosts customer satisfaction but also enhances the overall experience for your customers. In 2022, only 35% of employees welcomed customers. Therefore, there is a significant potential to differentiate your service from your competitors’.
Initiate dialogues early in the conversation
Just like good first impressions, early dialogues are crucial to the flow of the conversation. When employees initiate a dialogue early in the conversation, they not only put the customer's problem at the center of the conversation, but also reduce the call duration significantly.
The best way to start a dialogue is to ask, “How can I help you?” or “What can I do for you?” which increases the likelihood of satisfied customers by an average of 25%.
Show genuine empathy and compassion
Empathic phrases are a common part of the most successful interactions. In fact, employees increase the likelihood of heightening customer satisfaction by more than 15% when they use empathic phrases.
In addition, it is proven to be a particularly effective way to turn dissatisfied customers into brand ambassadors who are likely to recommend your product to friends, family, and acquaintances.
Generally, customers respond positively to these expressions because there is a clear difference between saying, "Okay, let's look at it," and using empathetic phrases like, "I understand" or "I agree with you."
The improvement potential is huge, as empathic phrases are only mentioned in around 26% of all conversations.
If your team performs better than that, you are already significantly ahead of competitive brands.
Be positive and optimistic
Just as with empathic expressions, it is also important to plan how to include positive phrases in customer conversations.
You can increase customer satisfaction by as much as 15% by replacing phrases such as “I understand that you think this is an illogical structure” with positive phrases such as “Thank you for your feedback. We are continuously working to improve the website."
Despite the huge potential of focusing on the positive angle, only about 33% of employees actively use positive phrases in customer conversations.
Leave a positive last impression
Ending conversations with phrases like “Bye!”, “Okay, thanks for calling,”, or “Sounds good, goodbye!” might not leave your customers with the best impression.
While polite endings alone might not boost customer satisfaction, combining them with empathy, good dialogue, and a polite introduction can lead to a high-quality interaction.
Instead, employees should focus on following up on the good experience. This can be done with phrases such as “Have a nice day!”, “I’m glad I could help,” or “I’ll get back to you when I know more. Have a great day!”
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