For a Safe Tomorrow – January 2023

This bulletin is available for download as a PDF.

Strong Customer Experience: A Catalyst for Business Success 

The success of businesses today relies on customer experience and satisfaction. In a rapidly competitive world, impressing and satisfying customers is critical for sustainable growth. Managing customer experience and satisfaction at both global and local level is a determining factor for businesses to gain a competitive advantage. 

On a global scale, customer experience and satisfaction enable businesses to reach a broad customer base beyond geographical boundaries. This field requires catering to a customer base of diverse cultures, languages, and expectations. To successfully achieve global customer experience and satisfaction, businesses must develop strategies that align with international standards, analyze customer feedback, and continuously improve their practices. 

In Turkey, customer experience and satisfaction are essential for local businesses to gain a competitive edge. Turkish customers expect high-quality products and services and personalized and attentive experiences. Additionally, Turkish customers anticipate a careful approach, reliability, and transparency from brands. To successfully ensure local customer experience and satisfaction, businesses must understand the local market, engage with customers, and develop strategies aligning with the local culture. 

Customer experience and satisfaction are crucial factors that determine the success of businesses. Companies need to develop customer-centric strategies to meet customer expectations, build loyalty, and stand out in the competition. 

Analyzing customer feedback, identifying customer expectations, and guiding companies to improve according to those expectations continuously are essential steps in enhancing customer experience and satisfaction. 

To illustrate the potential for success in this field, we can look at a few successful examples. For instance, an e-commerce company achieved remarkable results by prioritizing customer experience through personalized marketing strategies and customer-centric service. Similarly, a service provider improved service quality and increased customer satisfaction by effectively analyzing customer feedback. These examples demonstrate how customer experience and satisfaction can provide advantages to businesses.

Customer experience and satisfaction are critical factors that determine business success. Businesses can achieve remarkable results by developing customer-centric strategies to meet expectations, build loyalty, and stand out in the competition. We encourage companies to implement effective customer satisfaction strategies that align with their unique needs and goals. By enhancing customer experience and satisfaction, companies can unlock their full potential and drive sustainable growth. 

Improving the customer experience may require changes in companies’ internal organizational structures, employee understanding, and customer communications. This issue is a strategic issue and when handled properly by senior management, it can provide companies with a strategic competitive advantage.

ALP BULUC
Teolupus Partner 

alp.buluc@teolupus.com

What is the Difference Between Customer Happiness and Customer Satisfaction? 

One vast difference between customer satisfaction and customer happiness is – customer happiness predicts a customer’s brand loyalty. On the other hand, customer satisfaction is a customer service metric that predicts customer expectations and health. 

Loyal customers promote your brand without any incentive. They are the main powerhouse of your word-of mouth marketing. Customer happiness boosts brand organic marketing. It comes from unique customer experience over long customer activity. These customers stay with you, even rejecting your competitor’s tempting offers. 

On the other hand, customer satisfaction comes from customer’s daily interaction with your business, customer service team, or customer support and fulfilling their basic needs. Satisfied customers use your brand for their needs, but the efforts are not enough to keep them loyal. They can easily choose your competitors for a better deal anytime. 

Measuring customer happiness with metrics is difficult, but you can measure customer satisfaction with CSAT surveys. After every interaction, you can ask your customers- “how satisfied are you today with this conversation/interaction?” 

You can use this to measure customer satisfaction for the customer onboarding process, products, delivery, refund process, or your support agents. CSAT surveys tell you about customers feeling about a single experience. But customer happiness gives you an overall idea about the whole customer experience of your brand. 

Both are important. But not the same. Customer satisfaction contributes to customer happiness. The main factor is the emotional connection you build with your customers through time. Customer satisfaction is worthless without the emotional connection your customers feel about your brand, which ultimately drives customer’s happiness.

Definition of Customer Happiness 

How can one define customer happiness? Think of it like this: 

High level of (customer satisfaction + customer loyalty) = Customer happiness

What Does it Take to Satisfy the Customer? 

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) is a measure of how well a company’s products, services, and overall customer experience meet customer expectations. It reflects your business’ health by showing how well your products or services resonate with buyers. 

Customers are looking for effective and efficient customer service, but research shows that there may be a disconnect between what businesses think satisfies a customer and what actually does. 

In our CX Trends Report, 60 percent of companies surveyed gave themselves high marks for service. But 68 percent of customers said there’s room for improvement, and 54 percent reported that customer service feels like an afterthought for most of the businesses they buy from. 

A few more important findings: 

• Merely 18 percent of buyers are extremely satisfied with the number of communication channels businesses offer them. 
• Less than 20 percent say resolution speeds are extremely strong. 
• Only 21 percent report it’s easy to interact with businesses. 

Customer Happiness Scale 

Customer happiness measures the loyalty and satisfaction customers experience after engaging with your company, product, service, or team. A happy customer is confident you will meet their needs quickly and effectively and won’t hesitate to recommend your company to others. 

How to Improve Customer Satisfaction 

The benefits of focusing on customer satisfaction are clear, but truly making customers happy can take some trial and error. The key is persistence. Always aim to go above and beyond for customers, and lean on other departments to help boost your customer experience. Here are a few ways to start improving your customer satisfaction scores. 

1. Become obsessed with customer feedback 
2. Meet customers where they are 
3. Deliver fast responses 
4. Make customer satisfaction a company-wide focus 
5. Invest in agent training 
6. Make customers care themselves 
7. Lead with empathy 
8. Personalize the customer experience 
9. Provide proactive support 
10. Implement conversational customer service capabilities 
11. Build a customer community 

Customer Survey Questions That Should be Asked 

What is a customer survey and why is it so important? Most of the big and successful companies in the world are trying to put their customers at the center of their strategies more than ever. However, everyone should know that we live in an era when people are faced with a flood of information in the Internet world, and therefore, their knowledge and awareness of almost everything has greatly increased. Thus, companies that focus intensively only on customers and respond to customer needs in their basic strategies will approach success. 

Customer survey questions asked to customers in a systematic feedback system in the form of a customer satisfaction survey help managers and human resources to make better decisions to increase customer loyalty and satisfaction and to keep their businesses at the center of the market/ to move forward with a satisfied customer focus.

What is the customer expectations pyramid? 

Published by Gallup, “Break all the rules first!” the results of a study in his book describe a four-stage pyramid of customer expectations that should be taken into account in customer satisfaction studies. As a closer relationship with the customer is established over time, their expectations increase. In other words, in order to increase customer satisfaction, organizations need to focus on all four levels of the expectation pyramid. 

From bottom to top, these four levels are:

Level one, Accuracy: If you can’t give the customer what they want at the right time, you will naturally not be the customer’s first choice. They expect the hotel to give them the room they have reserved for themselves. No matter how kind your customers are, if your brand can’t give the customer what they want, it will fail in a very short time. 

The second level, availability (Availability): After the shopping transaction, the customer should feel that you are approachable. Customers also want to see different branches of a hotel in other cities. They expect you to provide them with support services 24 hours a day. They expect their favorite restaurant to have a parking lot. Customers are also more willing to shop from companies that are more approachable. 

The third level, Partnership: Beyond just producing and delivering a product, the customer needs to make sure that you understand their needs and build a consistent, personalized relationship with them. They want you to hear their words, complaints and ideas. Companies that understand their customers in every way and can think like them will gain more customer satisfaction and be one step ahead of their competitors.In order to receive customer feedback and increase their participation, you can receive customer feedback and send it directly to the relevant department by using an online survey and activating Porsline’s Webcams system.

The fourth level, Advice (Advice): The most advanced level of customer expectation occurs when they want to get advice. Customers expect to learn from you how to use the product and expect the product to have a significant impact on their business or life. They feel closer to the brand when they can learn something from you.

Customer survey questions 

In order to measure the satisfaction of your customers, you should ask them to answer these three customer satisfaction surveys and answer the following three main questions:

1. How was your experience with our services or products? (CSAT Customer Satisfaction Survey) 
2. Has our product or service been able to solve your problem? (CES Customer Experience Evaluation Survey) 
3. What are the chances that you will recommend our product or service to your friends or colleagues? (Determination of the NPS net Promoter score index) 

Product usage 

1. How often do you use this product or service? 
2. Have you been able to achieve your goals with the help of this product? 
3. Which part of the product or service appeals to you the most? 
4. If you could improve the product, which part would you change? 
5. Which of the following words describes our product or service?

1. Full of flaws 
2. Good, but he has some problems 
3. Excellent 
4. Unique 

1. Which features of our website are most valuable to you? 

1. Design 
2. Ability to add filters and logical questions 
3. Ability to create a thank you page 
4. Ability to create custom variables 
5. Sending notification e-mail 
6. Ability to create questionnaires, forms and tests 

Spectral satisfaction measurement questions (Evaluation) 

1. How satisfied are you with our services from 1 to 10 (1 is the lowest and 10 is the highest)? 
2. The use of emojis or images (from happy to sad) and the determination of customer satisfaction 

Open-ended questions 

1. Tell us in your own language what you think about our brand. 
2. How can we improve your experience? 
3. How can our employees serve you? 
4. Do you have any other comments or feedback that you would like to forward to us?

ISO 10002:2018 

(Quality management — Customer satisfaction — Guidelines for complaints handling in organizations) 

This document gives guidelines for the process of complaints handling related to products and services within an organization, including planning, design, development, operation, maintenance and improvement. The complaints-handling process described is suitable for use as one of the processes of an overall quality management system. 

Throughout this document, the terms “product” and “service” refer to the outputs of an organization that are intended for, or required by, a customer. 

This document is intended for use by any organization regardless of its type or size, or the products and services it provides. It is also intended for use by organizations in all sectors. Annex B provides guidance specifically for small businesses. 

This document addresses the following aspects of complaints handling: 

1. Enhancing customer satisfaction by creating a customer-focused environment that is open to feedback (including complaints), resolving any complaints received, and enhancing the organization’s ability to improve its products and services, including customer service; 
2. Top management involvement and commitment through adequate acquisition and deployment of resources, including personnel training; 
3. Recognizing and addressing the needs and expectations of complainants; 
4. Providing complainants with an open, effective and easy-to-use complaints process; 
5. Analysing and evaluating complaints in order to improve the quality of products and services, including customer service; 
6. Auditing of the complaints-handling process; 
7. Reviewing the effectiveness and efficiency of the complaints-handling process.

This document does not apply to disputes referred for resolution outside the organization or for employment related disputes.

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