How customer satisfaction data helps improve retail marketing

Making customer satisfaction the cornerstone of your business will help you build a successful and long-lasting business. Companies that prioritize customer satisfaction grow and thrive while those that don't stagnate and die.

Gathering and acting upon customer and retail data is crucial to provide customers with the products and experiences that suit their needs and keep your customers happy to attract return business. Customer satisfaction data helps you make strategic business decisions that are in line with your customers' interests.

Customer satisfaction data provides crucial information to help you make informed business decisions about the experiences, products, shopping channels, and journeys you offer. By measuring customer satisfaction, you can take a customer-centric approach to business and product development, ensuring that your growth is sustainable and profitable. As a marketer, measuring customer satisfaction in retail marketing can help inform effective approaches to acquisition, growth, and upsell campaigns.

Measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty

Measuring customer satisfaction is more complicated than measuring website visitors or revenue streams, making it challenging to set clear marketing goals. There are a few great methods that are designed to help you measure customer satisfaction. Here are three tools available to you. (Note that the Net Promoter Score (NPS) performs better than most available tools, acting as the gold standard for understanding customer satisfaction.)

The Net Promoter Score

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey is one of the most widely adopted methods for measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty to a brand. It also measures the probability of your customers recommending you to their family and friends, a key indicator of business health and success.

When you use a customer data platform (CDP) to unify NPS scores and survey responses to individual customer profiles, you can gain more nuanced customer insights that help you improve your marketing to both new and existing customers.

For example, customer satisfaction data from surveys and NPS scores can help you:

1. Understand which sales channels perform best for you.

By comparing the shopping behaviors between NPS promoter and detractor segments, you can learn more about your customers' preferred shopping journeys and identify opportunities for improving the omnichannel experience.

If you notice that customers who purchase online only rate very low NPS scores compared to those who only shop in-store or across both channels, then that might mean there's room for improvement in your e-commerce experience.

2. Learn more about buying motivations for different types of customers.

By comparing the relative customer lifetime value of NPS promoters versus detractors in your database, you can learn more about why your best customers continue to purchase from you and why low-value customers are dissatisfied with your brand.

For example, if you notice that promoters tend to buy fewer, higher-value items throughout their lifetime with your brand, then think about their buying motivations in contrast with those of detractors. Promoters might be buying products for their quality and durability, whereas detractors might be impulse buyers who jump at the chance to purchase during a promotion or sale. The next step would be to test this hypothesis using survey questions tailored to each group and then optimize the customer experience with both groups based on the survey answers.

3. Identify your "hero" products for high-value acquisition strategies.

By looking at your product data to understand which products attract delighted customers, you can identify your "hero" products for high-value acquisition campaigns. Your "hero" products are the products that attract the highest volume of customers who go on to provide the highest value to your brand.

Say you notice that your promoter segment purchases significantly more from the footwear category than from other types, then footwear may be the best product category to feature in your paid social prospecting campaigns. The next step is to understand why footwear is such an outstanding product category for you and use those insights in your promotions. It will attract prospects who are more likely to be loyal, long-term customers.

Customer Effort Score (CES) Surveys

Customer effort score (CES) surveys to measure customer experience about the amount of work it took for them to engage with you and your support or customer service team. Customers who put less effort into interacting with your business are more likely to be repeat customers and spend more on your products or services.

CES survey asks one question, generally along the lines: "How easy was it to get the help you wanted from us today?" They have several choices of responses, such as easy, difficult, or not sure, that your customers can use to rate your business.

You can also add an open-ended question asking the respondents to describe why they chose what they did briefly. This question can help you gain deeper insights into the customer's state of mind and the quality of your customer service.‍

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Survey

A CSAT survey directly asks customers about their contentment levels with your products or services. It usually consists of various phrasings of a single question. The survey gives the customers five choices, and they can only pick one. These five choices are: very satisfied, satisfied, neutral, unsatisfied, and very unsatisfied.

You can consider a customer satisfied if they pick 'satisfied' and 'very satisfied'. Choosing 'neutral' means that you can do better, and there may be a bigger problem that is unresolved. 'Very unsatisfied' and 'unsatisfied' are the most unmistakable signs of a critical issue that you need to resolve immediately.

Importance of customer satisfaction data in retail marketing

Customer satisfaction data will help you understand your customers, how they use your product or service, and their overall shopping experience. This data, in turn, will help you create effective marketing plans and provide more meaningful customer experiences in-store and online. Here is why customer satisfaction is essential in retail marketing:

• It helps you create better marketing campaigns to attract higher-value customers.
• It helps you increase your conversions by improving personalization.
• It helps you improve retention rates by understanding when and why customers are likely to churn.
• It improves communication with customers at every touchpoint, including marketing, service, and in-store.

Once you have collected customer satisfaction data, it is essential to leverage it to get insights into your target audience. The insights you glean from the data will help you craft effective marketing strategies that will help your business maintain a competitive advantage in your industry.

Case study: 5.11’s post-purchase surveys collect customer satisfaction data for new insights and revenue growth

5.11 used post-purchase NPS and customer satisfaction surveys to learn more about their customers and encourage additional sales. With Lexer's help, their survey campaign resulted in a 2.5% response rate, a 9.4% email conversion rate (about 111% higher than their standard email conversions), and about $560,000 in sales. Click here to read their story.

A CDP like Lexer can help you make the process simpler and more efficient. Lexer is the Customer Data Platform of choice for leading brands like Quiksilver, Igloo, Nine West, Rip Curl, Supergoop!, and more. As the only CDP built for retail, we help the world’s most iconic brands drive incremental sales from improved customer engagement.

Contact us to learn more about how Lexer can help you discover actionable insights from customer data, create practical marketing strategies, and improve customer satisfaction metrics.