Yesterday I was listening to a radio show about investing. Not that I’m a big buyer and seller of stocks and I certainly would never claim to be smart enough to teach anyone how to choose a stock to invest in. Trust me, I have my own investment problems and I certainly wouldn’t want anyone to follow what I do in that area.
What I found interesting about the program is that they were saying that smart investors are starting to measure a company’s growth potential (or the increase in value of their stock) by customer satisfaction. In other words, if a company has very satisfied customers, chances are the value of the stock of the company will rise. If the company does not have satisfied customers, the stock value will not increase.
Smart investors are so serious about this that they want customer satisfaction statistics added to companies SEC reports and financial statements. They want this rating to be readily available for them to evaluate when making stock purchase decisions.
This isn’t really rocket science is it. We as small business owners already know that if our customers are not satisfied, we’re not going to be in business very long. But, how do we determine how satisfied our customers are? Of course, we could (and should) ask them but are they telling us what they really feel?
Face to face people tend to give us the easy answer, the one we want to hear so they don’t have to answer any more questions. Sure, there’s always going to be the guy that complains about everything but he’s not a good measure. After all, he complains about everything.
Written questionnaires could be used but how many responses do you really get with written questionnaires. You might be able to get more responses if there were some sort of incentive like the potential for winning something.
A short survey on your website would be good. Again, if there were some sort of incentive, there would be a higher level of participation. People like to win stuff.
The best way to determine customer satisfaction, however, is by developing relationships with your customers. Customers that feel appreciated and cared about are the most satisfied customers and they are the ones that are going to spread the word about you and your business. I know, I’ve said before but it’s true.
This really needs to be taken a step further though. How satisfied are your customers going to be if your employees are not happy? Your employee’s feelings are going to be projected to your customers – happy or unhappy. Maybe developing a good relationship with your staff is what needs to happen first.
How satisfied are your customers and your employees?
Photo credit: bfishadow
