5 Levels of Customer Satisfaction [+ How to Improve It]

Measuring different levels of customer satisfaction is one of the best ways to measure user sentiment.

Instead of using a simple satisfied-or-not format, these levels of satisfaction allow you to get more detailed data on how users perceive your brand and find ways to improve customer retention.

That said, let’s explore what these different satisfaction levels mean, what other metrics can complement them, and how you can measure them.

TL;DR

• Customer satisfaction measures how well your product is at meeting customer expectations.
• Here are the five levels of the customer satisfaction hierarchy:

1. “Not satisfied”, which means there’s a significant gap between what your customer expected and what they got.
2. “Slightly satisfied”, which signals that the product was going somewhere and had potential, but it ultimately failed at meeting expectations.
3. “Satisfied”, means that the user is content with the product as is, but it’s not particularly impressed or enthusiastic about it.
4. “Very satisfied”, which proves that your product is successfully meeting users’ expectations and providing value to their lives.
5. “Extremely satisfied”, which is the highest level of customer satisfaction, and it means that your customer couldn’t be more delighted by your products and services.

• The metrics to calculate your levels of customer satisfaction include retention rate, customer lifetime value, NPS, CES, CSAT, and product-market fit.
• Besides metrics, there are other qualitative methods to get insights about the levels of customer satisfaction, including:

1. Triggering in-app surveys across multiple touchpoints in the customer journey, which allows you to measure user satisfaction for specific experiences.
2. Reaching out to users for 1-on-1 interviews and getting more detailed feedback about their satisfaction levels.
3. Monitoring online reviews on sites like G2 and Capterra (for SaaS) to understand customer expectations and see where your product is lagging.

• As for improving your levels of customer satisfaction, there are four useful tactics:

1. Analyze customer feedback to identify common issues among dissatisfied users and solve them.
2. Segment users based on survey responses and in-app behavior to provide proactive help during their journey.
3. Implementing an in-app resource center to provide self-service support.
4. Monitor the power user curve to identify what drives customer loyalty and try to replicate their experience to the rest of your users.

• Since you’ll need reliable software to perform many of these tactics, why not book a Userpilot demo to see how you can elevate the product experience?

What is customer satisfaction?

Customer satisfaction measures how well your product meets or surpass customer’s expectations. It’s determined by calculating the percentage of total customers satisfied with your product or service based on their survey responses.

Your levels of customer satisfaction can signal whether your customers will stay around as loyal customers and recommend your product to others.

5 customer satisfaction levels

To get a deeper, more accurate measure of your customer’s satisfaction, you can prompt users to point out “how satisfied” they are with your business based on five different levels:

Not satisfied

A not satisfied score screams that there’s a significant gap between what your customers expected and what they got.

If you’re getting too many of these responses, it’s valuable to ask yourself if you truly understand what your customer needs are and if you’re fulfilling them effectively.

Slightly satisfied

A slightly satisfied score signals a marginal degree of satisfaction, maybe the product was going somewhere with the user and had potential, but it ultimately failed at meeting the expectations.

These responses can come in the form of—for example—passive NPS scores (from 2-7), and it might mean that your product is still incomplete and has room for improvement.

Satisfied

A satisfied response means that the user is content with the product as it is, but they are not particularly impressed or enthusiastic about it. It might even come off as mediocre in their mind.

Users who choose this score are probably just using your product for overflow work and are more likely to churn sooner rather than later.

Very satisfied

Very satisfied scores mean that your product is successfully meeting users’ expectations and providing value to their lives. It’s a signal that you’re on the right track and that the customer is putting you in high regard.

However, since “very satisfied” isn’t the highest score, it can also mean that your product isn’t meeting some “non-essential” needs. Maybe the customer is yet to be delighted with your support service, or maybe they expect to receive more help during onboarding.

Extremely satisfied

Extremely satisfied is the highest level of customer satisfaction, it means that your customer couldn’t be more delighted by your products and services.

Customers with a promoter NPS score are a good example, as they signal strong customer loyalty and high chances of referring your product.

Key metrics for measuring customer satisfaction

Now, what metrics can measure customer satisfaction?

Although there are many metrics to calculate your levels of customer satisfaction, some KPIs are particularly valuable for most SaaS businesses, and they include:

• Retention rate. The percentage of customers that keep using your product over a period of time. The better the retention rate, the better your product is at keeping customers happy.
• Product-market fit. Which uses a survey that asks users how disappointed they’d be if they could no longer use your product. It determines whether or not your product achieved PMF depending on the results.
• Customer satisfaction score. The percentage of users who feel satisfied with your product or service. The more satisfaction, the more likely you are to retain customers.
• Net Promoter Score. Calculated based on a quantitative survey, NPS is the number of brand promoters your brand has over the number of detractors. It’s used for measuring customer loyalty.
• Customer effort score. Which measures how easy it is to use your app based on its usability, UI, and learning curve.
• Customer lifetime value. The total revenue you generate from one customer throughout their entire lifetime. It indicates how lucrative it is, on average, to acquire a new customer based on their spending and their time spent doing business with you.

How to measure customer satisfaction?

Metrics aren’t the only way, other qualitative factors can also provide insights about the levels of customer satisfaction.

Let’s go over three methods to measure customer satisfaction:

Use in-app surveys to gather customer feedback

Collecting feedback precedes any type of user research, especially when measuring customer satisfaction.

With in-app surveys, you can ask the right questions at the right time. This means it’s possible to trigger score-based customer satisfaction surveys across different touchpoints in the customer journey—which allows you to check satisfaction levels on specific experiences and build customer relationships.

You can ask a first-time user about their onboarding process or a regular user about their experience with advanced features. And with this data, you can get actionable insights to improve your product.

Conduct interviews to collect detailed insights

The most fruitful yet time-consuming method is contacting customers for 1-on-1 interviews.

Interviews are an invaluable tool in measuring the satisfaction of your users. You can see and hear your customers’ emotions about your product and get valuable insights in the process.

For this, simply identify customers who’ve been active for many months at least (or any other criteria that’s relevant to your goal), and reach out to them to ask for their participation. If they have something to say, chances are they’re going to say yes.

Tip: Make sure to prepare and ask open-ended questions to have the best chances of uncovering useful insights. Remember that your goal is to understand their satisfaction levels to see what you can do to improve.

Monitor reviews to understand customer expectations

An underrated method for measuring your satisfaction levels is to monitor online reviews.

These can be highly useful to understand what expectations your users have, what they’re satisfied with, and what they wish to get.

That said, building the habit of monitoring and analyzing reviews can go a long way. For SaaS, you can go to review sites like G2 and Capterra, then categorize them based on recurrent themes (such as features, support, pricing, etc), the keywords they used, and whether these reviews were positive, neutral, or negative.

With this data, it’s possible to quantify the levels of customer satisfaction based on real user feedback, as well as understand exactly what your product excels on and what it’s lacking.

How to improve customer satisfaction?

Measuring your levels of customer satisfaction is cool, but have you tried improving it?

Let’s go over some tips:

Analyze and act on feedback to drive customer retention

There’s no use in collecting and analyzing customer feedback if you don’t act on it.

Identify recurring themes, pinpoint areas of friction, and implement practical solutions to these issues proactively. This works on every aspect of your product, including its functionality, ease of use, customer support, and overall service quality.

A good tactic for this is to, for example, use an NPS tool (like Userpilot) to tag NPS survey responses. This way, you can quickly identify common issues among passives and detractors who responded to the survey.

Trigger in-app proactive help to deliver exceptional customer service

The learning curve plays an important role in customer satisfaction levels.

That said, leveraging in-app communication to offer proactive help can help you avoid churn. As it can make the learning experience smoother, personalize the user journey, and provide proactive support automatically.

Start by segmenting customers based on relevant criteria such as their survey responses, in-app behaviors, and stage in the journey. Once you’ve done that, use a customer success tool to trigger personalized messages to guide users toward their goals.

Build a resource center to provide self-service support

A great opportunity to improve customer satisfaction is to offer provide self-service support.

Creating an effective in-app knowledge base prevents users from exiting your app to solve their issues (experiencing friction in the process) while also leaving a good impression.

Plus, the process can be quite simple:

1. Analyze customer feedback to identify common issues that make customers feel unsatisfied.
2. Survey your users, review your support tickets, and examine your usage data to see what’s causing friction and pushing customers away.
3. Create help resources in different formats to directly tackle these challenges. It can include FAQs, tutorial videos, step-by-step guides, or help articles.
4. Organize your resources in content modules so users can find resources that are relevant to them (instead of having to browse through messy documentation).

Monitor loyal customers’ behavior to find customer loyalty drivers

The best way to know how to generate more loyal customers is to study the power user curve.

Monitor your power users closely. What features do they favor? What’s their feedback? What’s making them stick around and develop trust with your business?

This way, you can spot what makes them stick with your product (a.k.a “loyalty drivers”) and plan a strategy to replicate the same enhanced customer experience to the rest of your user base—expanding more customer loyalty in the process.

Conclusion

Measuring the different levels of customer satisfaction is the closest you can get to measuring user emotions.

In-app surveys, interviews, and online reviews can help you track customer satisfaction, while in-app communication, proactive help, and self-service support allow you to exceed customer expectations.

That said, since you’ll need reliable software to perform many of these tactics, why not book a Userpilot demo to see how you can elevate the product experience?