Why Customer Sentiment Matters and How to Measure It

Customer sentiment is something that all businesses need to be aware of.

Believe it or not, emotions play a big role in customers’ decisions, and customer sentiment is the emotion that triggers customer engagement. For example, when a customer feels loyalty to a business, they’ll buy more of their products or use more of their services, and they may even refer the company to their friends and family. On the other hand, when a customer feels dissatisfied with a service or product, they’ll often express their feelings both online and offline in the form of negative reviews and word of mouth.

Whether a customer is making a purchase, writing a review or telling a family member or a friend about a business, all of these actions are the result of their emotions — otherwise called customer sentiment. Customer sentiment covers a wide range of emotions, from satisfaction, loyalty and excitement to indifference, dissatisfaction and even anger.

Regardless of whether your customers absolutely adore your brand or can’t stand it, it’s incredibly important that you understand what their emotional state is, but even more importantly, it’s essential that you understand what’s driving that emotional state.

Why it’s important to measure customer sentiment.

When you’re able to measure how your customers feel when they interact with your brand or business, you’ll gain an understanding of what you do that leads to satisfied customers and what you do that your customers aren’t as thrilled about.

Understanding what your customers are feeling and why will help you develop solutions that lead to more loyalty, and you’ll also be able to proactively repair any issues that may be hurting customer sentiment. It helps you establish realistic expectations, sets a benchmark for future success and reveals opportunities to improve the service you provide for your customers. Furthermore, it gives you insight into how likely your customers are to refer your business to a friend and use your services or product in the future.

How to measure customer sentiment.

Now that you understand what customer sentiment is and why it’s important to measure, it’s time to get into the details of exactly how you measure customer sentiment. Here are the top four ways to measure customer sentiment:

#1. Customer Willingness to Refer

Today, the vast majority of advertisements are done online, but that doesn’t mean that word of mouth is dead. Surprisingly enough, word of mouth is still, hands down, the most effective way to gain new customers. However, measuring the willingness of your customers to refer you to their friends and family isn’t something you can do with an online tool or an app. In fact, the easiest and most straightforward way to measure this metric is to actually ask your customers directly.

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is one of the most recommended methods for measuring your customers’ willingness to recommend. Here’s how it works:

Survey your customers, asking them how likely they would be to recommend your business to a friend or colleague on a scale from zero to 10. Customers who answer with a nine or a 10 are considered Promoters; customers who answer with a zero through six are Detractors; customers who answer with a seven or eight are Passives.

To calculate your results, you’ll take the percentage of Promoters subtracted by the percent of Detractors — and you’ll leave out the passives. The higher the score, the more likely your customers are to refer your business.

#2. Reviews

Reviews are probably the most straightforward way to gauge how your customers are feeling about your goods or services. That’s why it’s essential that you 1) claim your business listings on review sites, 2) actually read your reviews and 3) respond to those reviews. Responding to reviews, even if they’re negative — and especially if they’re negative — can help to turn around those negative emotions and make your clients feel heard. When you’re able to turn around a bad experience and demonstrate to a customer how much you value their feedback and service, it creates a new level of loyalty and helps you earn customers for life.

#3. Customer-Facing Employees

Another great way to measure customer sentiment is to simply talk to your employees that work with customers on a daily basis. Not every customer will be 100-percent honest with your employees about how they feel or how satisfied they are, but most customers are pretty straightforward, especially if their experience was particularly positive or negative. Furthermore, your customer-facing employees know when they’ve had positive or negative interactions with customers, even if the customers don’t always come right out and tell them.

#4. Social Media Monitoring

Social media has given companies of all shapes and sizes a new and effective way to measure customer sentiment and satisfaction like never before. Best of all, social media monitoring shows you real-time how your customers feel about your brand, service and/or product, unlike other metrics, which might be less up to date. Here are a few metrics to help you keep an eye on your customer sentiment via social media:

  • Velocity of Comments – How many people are talking about your brand and how quickly is the conversation moving?
  • Tone of Comments – Not only is it important to know the velocity of comments, it’s absolutely essential to know the tone of those comments. Is the tone of the comments regarding your brand positive or negative?
  • Shares or Mentions – Does your brand get a lot of shares or mentions? Have your shares or mentions increased or decreased with changes to your campaign or with the release of new products or services?
  • Reactions – When people react to your brand on social media, what emotions do they share?

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Customer sentiment is just one aspect of your business’s online reputation, and it’s an incredibly important aspect to keep a diligent eye on. Top Rated Local was developed to solve common problems that businesses face, like fake reviews, false, slanderous comments, interference from competitors, blackmail and more, and the best part is that it’s 100-percent free to sign up! Get started today!

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