Customer Satisfaction: How to Increase Customer Satisfaction in 3 Steps
Last Updated January 18th, 2011

Valeria Maltoni wrote a great article about how you should develop a content strategy for customers who already bought one of your products. To summarize, she recommends that you:

• Confirm they made the right choice
• Tell them what they just bought
• Give them something to share
• Get there early

I’m sharing this with you because this is a crucial phase in the customer life cycle. If you execute it right, you can minimize returns, prevent buyer’s remorse, and increase customer satisfaction.

What else can you do? How can you create a satisfied customer who will continue to buy more stuff from you?

1. Justify the Sale with Social Proof

When most sales are made, chances are that the buyer will have to justify the purchase to another person – a boss, spouse, or anyone that may pass judgment.

To make this go smoothly, you should arm each one of your customers with testimonials from other people and companies. Or, if you have a low return rate, you might emphasize how few people returned it.

You likely recognize this as social proof. The problem is, many people use it in the selling process, but forget about it in the post purchase phase. It works, so don’t make that mistake.

2. Surprise Customers with a Bonus

When people spend money on a product, the last thing you want them to think is “was this worth it?” To combat this, you should surprise each one of your customers with a little bonus. To elaborate, let me share the fascinating experiment that helped waiters – service professionals – increase their tips by 23%.

Picture a restaurant that offers mints on the way out. Do you think customers will leave a bigger tip if the waiter left a mint with the check? How about 2 mints? Or, what if the waiter left 1 mint, walked away, and then out of no where, went back to the table to leave an additional mint?

As you may have guessed, leaving a mint increased the tip size. However, in each scenario, the increase was different. For 1 mint, the tip was 3% higher. For 2 mints, it was 14% higher. And for the third scenario it was an amazing 23% higher. The surprise triggered the largest tip because customers didn’t expect it.

So think about this. If tips are represenative of customer satisfaction, which I believe they are, you should surprise your customers with a free, valuable bonus. They won’t expect it and it will help them answer “was it worth it?” with an enthuasiastic, head-nodding, “yes!”

Ref: Sweetening the Till: The use of Candy to increase tipping by David Strohmetz.

3. Offer Free Product Training and Support

This is a clear, business-winning decision. Nothing decreases customer satisfaction more than being confused with how to make a product work. And free product training and support will be how you alleviate this customer frustration.

For example, the amazing e-learning software provider, Articulate, provides a free blog, for customers and non-customers, that teaches people how to create more effective e-learning training material. I had the chance to interview Artciulate’s CEO Adam Schwartz and he said this blog helped keep customers happy and bring in new business.

Why does this work? For starters, when people spend money on something, they tend to doubt themselves and their ability to make the product work right. With detailed, free training, you’ll alleviate that self-doubt and win a life-long customer.

The Bottom Line

Just because you made the sale, it doesn’t mean the work is over. Your job is to turn one-time buyers into loyal customers. If you follow these strategies, you should be well on your way. What do you think?