Customer Satisfaction Guarantee: The Dos & Don'ts with Examples
Kate Williams
Last Updated: 9 July 2024
14 min read
Looking for the dos and don’ts and examples of a customer satisfaction guarantee?
“C’mon, mate. Let’s shop from here. They’re giving a 30-day money-back deal on return. What more do we want?”
We’re not even guessing here. You must’ve had such conversations before going on a shopping spree. And that’s how it should be. As a customer, finding yourself the best deals is your right! But as a business owner, you’re on the other side of the table. You need to give customers the best deals to choose from and keep them satisfied. And you want to ensure their satisfaction is guaranteed.
We understand that, and that’s why we’ve come up with this. Here, we’ll help you figure out the dos and don’ts your teams should follow to guarantee customer satisfaction. Plus, we’ll talk about the examples of Customer Satisfaction Guarantees that work incredibly well. Excited? Well, the introductions are in order now so that you can jump right in.
But wait, reading without coffee? Nah. Make yourself one before starting.
What Is A Customer Satisfaction Guarantee?
To put it simply, a Customer Satisfaction Guarantee is like a vote of confidence that organizations show in their products and services. So, if a product or service cannot satisfy a customer, the organization delivers on the guarantee made to them before purchase. This guarantee could be many things, and we’ll explore that going forward. But up next, let’s see what you and your teams should do to ensure customer satisfaction is always guaranteed.
7 Dos to Ensure Customer Satisfaction Is Guaranteed
“I just want a decent product, not anything else.” said no customer ever.
From the time people are doing business, customers have longed for a quality experience and a quality product. They have loved brands that could deliver the right product with the proper knowledge and satisfaction. And this is precisely why giving a Customer Satisfaction Guarantee becomes essential for every business. But first, here are some reasonably specific things you and your teams must do to ensure customer satisfaction is guaranteed:
1. Listen. Listen. Listen!
Did we say it too many times? Well, that’s because listening patiently is a linchpin for guaranteeing customer satisfaction. But how, you may ask? See, when a customer support representative listens to your customer’s query or request, their chances of giving them the right solution go up. And the correct answer, when given quickly, always overwhelms the customer (in a good way).
Even when you’re conducting online surveys to understand what your customers like and what they don’t, delving deep into their responses is equivalent to active listening. You’ll deliver what they’re looking for once you’ve read the reactions patiently. Then, you can talk all about your Customer Satisfaction Guarantee offers and future launches. They’ll listen to you in a heartbeat!
Here’s a simple Customer Exit Survey that enquires about the reasons why a customer is no longer interested in a certain service. With this information in hand, you can mold your services to reduce customer churn in the future and ensure better customer satisfaction.
You, too, can create such detailed, engaging, and amazing surveys. Sign up for free here:
14-day free trial • Cancel Anytime • No Credit Card Required • No Strings Attached
2. Start Talking
Once you’ve patiently listened to the customers, it’s time to strike a conversation. Chatbots are great for initiating it, but after that, your customers want a natural conversation with a human, not a robot. And that’s why your customer support team should do this.
Show them you care and will not treat them as just another customer with an issue! Tell your customer support representative to ask them about their day, work, and family while working on the issue or request. Trust us; they won’t even remember the time your representative took, as they’ll enjoy the company. If that’s not a sure-fire way to guarantee customer satisfaction, what is?
3. Satisfied Employees = Satisfied Customers
Satisfied customers lead the way to sustained growth for a company, and without them, growth is not possible. Employee wellness and satisfaction have become a topic of discussion in the pandemic’s wake, and rightly so. Employees would do their work with full commitment only when they want to do it. Only when they’re satisfied with the work can they see themselves growing in that role. And if that’s not how the situation is, it’s your job, as a leader, to find why.
360-degree feedback software can help you massively here. You’ll get to add all the employee information in one place, conduct employee assessments, analyze their results with individual development plans, and finally, take action to improve their satisfaction levels. You know what? No Customer Satisfaction Guarantee offers would work if the employees aren’t happy, and everything would work if they are! So, the choice is yours.
14-day free trial • Cancel Anytime • No Credit Card Required • No Strings Attached
4. Train The Employees To Win!
Any Customer Satisfaction, Guarantee, or loyalty program would work not just when the employees are satisfied but when they are trained to win. If the training is proper, they will know about the products, services, and programs. And when that’s the case, they would deal with customers based on what suits them best. Tell us, why won’t they be satisfied after such support?
5. Give What Your Customers Want
This is where personalization comes in. You and your teams need to analyze the type of Customer Satisfaction Guarantee that’ll be the best fit. Because there is no one size fits all. Every customer is different. Their likes, dislikes, needs, and wants are all different. So, to guarantee customer satisfaction, deliver precisely what they want.
6. Keep Measuring. Keep Evolving.
Imagine this.
One fine day, your customer support representative is showing his superhuman side, as he’s solving a customer’s query in a matter of minutes, educating them about it, and even finding the time to talk about their favorite ‘Game of Thrones’ moment! Now, that’s fantastic.
Here’s another scenario. This same representative couldn’t solve a simple customer query. He wasn’t feeling good and wanted to take the day off. The customer didn’t know about this and is now dissatisfied with the service.
Well, both these scenarios can happen in the space of just 2 days! So, you cannot sit back just because you’ve satisfied your customers once with a great Customer Satisfaction Guarantee offer. They can get dissatisfied the very next day. Measuring their satisfaction levels using dedicated surveys to evolve and get better is the only way to prevent such dissatisfactions.
7. Shock & Surprise
This is where you need to have foresight. It would help if you did things that take the customers by surprise. Like introducing a new Customer Satisfaction Guarantee, especially for a customer knowing they would love it, or adding a feature based on the feedback received by a customer. Trust us, such delightful surprises would bring a wide smile to your customer’s face, and their loyalty would skyrocket.
5 Customer Satisfaction Don’ts To Never Follow
We’ve talked about the do’s, so why keep you waiting for the don’ts? Let’s start with it.
1. Taking An Eternity To Reply!
Customers hate it. They really hate the late response from your customer support team. According to a recent Hubspot research, 90% of customers rate an “immediate” response as important when they have a query. That’s why you can’t take long to reply. Even when your team is super busy with other queries, ask them to at least leave a mail to customers with new queries. This way, they won’t feel like their requests are falling on deaf ears. And that won’t hurt their satisfaction levels with your brand.
Another aspect that can help your team be quick with replies is by staying organized. Running a business and keeping customers satisfied is extremely tough if you and your teams aren’t well organized. Disorganized companies face a tough time in sending out timely orders; they miss important calls, promise things they can never deliver, and… well, you get the idea! So, from the customer data to even the smallest of business processes, keep everything organized and ready to use. You’ll end up satisfying customers in a much better way.
2. Making False Promises
As we mentioned above, the use of false promises comes when the teams aren’t organized and don’t know how much they’re capable of delivering. So, they resort to making unrealistic promises to satisfy a customer at that moment. But what about later? How will any customer remain satisfied if your support team is only saying and not doing it? It doesn’t matter the type of Customer Satisfaction Guarantee you choose to use; if you can’t deliver what you promised, nothing will guarantee their satisfaction.
3. Playing The Blame Game
Businesses around the globe face problems and faults sometimes. There’s no big deal about it. Even the customers understand that. What they don’t understand, however, is when a business blames them for such faults!
See, we’re not implying that the customer is always right. Sure, they may be responsible for an issue, but they don’t like it when you tell them straight up. So, when your customers come up with an issue, and you know it happened because of them, the way you handle the situation would determine their satisfaction levels. You can educate them about the issue and why it happened, or you can resolve it from your end. There can be more options too, but blaming the customer for the faults and malfunctions is not one of them.
4. Leaving Them Alone
Surprised? Most blogs would ask you to leave customers alone until you have something important or personalized to offer. Well, we don’t agree with this.
Never leave your customers alone because the relationship between a customer and a brand shouldn’t always be transactional. They’re human, and your teams are human. So why not take a step forward to know what’s going in their lives? How are they feeling while working from home? Or if they and their families are keeping safe?
It’s not rocket science that you’ll receive warmth if you give it. And that’s how customer loyalty and satisfaction would reach new heights.
5. Saying ‘No’ To Amazing Content
It’s 2021 now, and by saying ‘No’ to amazing and high-quality content, you would lose out on a lot of satisfied customers. Why? Because customers love reading and seeing things that can educate, entertain, and inform them about new trends.
Along with educating and informing customers about certain trends, great content would answer their nagging questions, solve their common problems, and let them know of the special offers or Customer Satisfaction Guarantee programs going on in your company. This would go a long way in making them happy and feel satisfied. Plus, it’ll boost the company’s profile and set them up as experts in the field. Ain’t that amazing?
5 Top Customer Satisfaction Guarantee Examples (With A Bonus!)
If, as a business owner, you’re asking your teams to follow these dos and avoid the don’ts, customer satisfaction would surely be guaranteed. But if you still want to take it up higher, Customer Satisfaction Guarantee deals would do the job. Top brands like Amazon, Apple, and Starbucks have been using them successfully to keep customers happy and completely satisfied. We want to talk about a few such Customer Satisfaction Guarantee examples that always work. So, sit back, keep sipping on your coffee, and read on.
1. The Money-back Guarantee
This one’s the oldest Customer Satisfaction Guarantee you can use. Companies use it all the time to build trust for their brand, and customers feel this is their right!
Well, that’s the only problem with it. It’s overused. Almost 98 out of 100 companies give money-back guarantees as a part of their Customer Satisfaction Guarantee strategy. And unless the product is valuable or easy to return, you would have difficulty satisfying buyers to keep buying just because you have a money-back guarantee. Having said that, it’s always better to have some guarantee than to have nothing at all.
2. Low Price Guarantee
Amazon is the master at giving a superb low price Customer Satisfaction Guarantee. Whenever you pre-order a product from Amazon, they promise to deliver it at the lowest price it has been sold for rather than selling it at the current price. And a customer gets this guarantee for all Amazon features, be it Kindle or Prime. Other companies are copying this aggressively, but Amazon is still the best at it.
3. 100% Satisfaction Guarantee
Another Customer Satisfaction Guarantee that Amazon uses brilliantly is its 100% satisfaction guarantee, where they promise complete satisfaction in terms of product quality, fast delivery, and post-delivery service. Basically, they deliver an overall satisfaction package to satisfy their customers. And isn’t that brilliant?
4. Free Trial
“Sign up for a 14-day free trial.”
You must have seen and read this online. Well, that’s a freemium business model. They have well and truly been a revelation in the past decade. Businesses, especially the new ones, consider it one of the best Customer Satisfaction Guarantee offers to satisfy customers and even win new ones.
5. The Forever Guarantee
“Buy this today, and you will never need to buy this again.”
When companies and businesses use guarantees like this, they’re trying to show themselves as a reliable brand. A brand whose products would last incredibly long while sustaining quality. See, this Customer Satisfaction Guarantee can backfire badly if the products are not up to the mark and customers are finding problems with them. So, use the forever guarantee only on your tried and tested product that you know would perform well and stand any test.
Bonus- The Extreme Guarantee
For the bonus, let’s talk about Zappos’ insane “Free shipping. Free Return. Free 365 Day Return Policy”. With this guarantee, you can buy a pair of stylish shoes from Zappos, keep them around for a year, and then send them back to get a refund!
As Don Corleone said in The Godfather, “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” Well, that’s exactly what Zappos does with this extreme Customer Satisfaction Guarantee. The customers aren’t just satisfied; they’re literally overwhelmed with this guarantee, and they can’t refuse it!
Wrapping Up…
Companies today are leaving no stone unturned to guarantee customer satisfaction. They even want to take it higher, so much so that the customers act as a promoter for their brand. Customer Satisfaction Guarantee programs and deals are playing a big role in this. Once you add a guarantee program with an amazing product and a customer support team that follows all the dos and avoiding don’ts of customer satisfaction, the sky becomes the limit for your business’s growth!
But before using any such guarantees, it’s important to decide the goals you want to achieve, as choosing the right Customer Satisfaction Guarantee becomes easier and ultimately more rewarding after that.
We hope you make the right choice. And we’re here to help if you need us with anything. Until then, keep striving for excellence.
Kate Williams
Product Marketing Manager at SurveySparrow
Excels in empowering visionary companies through storytelling and strategic go-to-market planning. With extensive experience in product marketing and customer experience management, she is an accomplished author, podcast host, and mentor, sharing her expertise across diverse platforms and audiences.