Keeping your customers happy is vital for small businesses. You won’t be able to grow your business unless you have loyal, satisfied customers who can spread the word about your product or service.

While finding customers is just a matter of marketing and outreach, keeping them is another matter. If you’re struggling with customer satisfaction, here are five things you can do to improve it. 

1. Ask for feedback

It sounds obvious, but that doesn’t mean it’s unimportant – feedback is vital to improving customer service. If you’re not already collecting detailed customer reviews, now is the time to start. 

Collecting effective feedback is about more than having a Google review or Tripadvisor link up on your website. It means keeping communication channels open so customers can easily get in touch with you and responding to reviews when you receive them.  

2. Act on feedback

The benefit of being a small business is that you have the flexibility to action things quickly without having to wait for approval from large departments. Take advantage of this by actively acting on feedback and ensuring you let customers know when you’ve made a change that will impact them. 

3. Build customer profiles

Customer profiles aren’t just useful for marketing or sales teams. They’re a great way of putting yourself in your customers’ shoes so that you can make decisions that benefit them the most. 68% of customers will spend more money with a company that knows them and treats them as individuals. 

To build customer profiles, collect data on your audience and customers’ demographics. Take into consideration their purchasing behaviours, pain points and any key characteristics of your ideal customer. Then, refer to these when making decisions so you can anticipate how a business change will impact your audience. 

4. Always think about the customer’s next steps

If you’re managing your small business alone, you might be focused on the present most of the time. But with customer satisfaction, it always pays to be one step ahead.

Consider what the next stage of your customer’s journey is likely to be. What are they going to do after they visit your Instagram page? What’s their first action after receiving your product? If you’re aware of this, you can anticipate problems before they happen. 

5. Be transparent  

How you respond to crises has a significant impact on your customers. 78% of customers will do business with a company again after a problem if their customer service is good. 

So, if you make a mistake, own up. Be honest with your audience and customers, and they will repay you with loyalty. 

Our Advice

When leading a small business, your customer service department likely starts and ends with you. But this is one area you can’t neglect, especially when laying the groundwork for future growth.

To improve customer satisfaction, firstly, ensure you know who your customers are and how they behave. And secondly, respond to mistakes and feedback promptly.