Why Customer Satisfaction is the Most Important Metrics in Project Management

The least focused metrics in Project Management is Customer Satisfaction. In this digital disruption age and increasing competition, most of the project managers rush to complete the project at any cost. Even though you complete a project on time and cost, but customer satisfaction isn’t guaranteed.

Then what is customer satisfaction?

Customer Satisfaction is a measure of your customer’s satisfaction with your product, services or experience offered by you. Enterprises use different methods to capture and measure CSAT. Some run surveys, ask for feedback, testimonials, NPS scores or predefined review meetings etc.

Customer Satisfaction measures how your service, product, or support meets, exceeds or falls short of customer expectations.

So the general principle is customer experience is directly proportional to customer satisfaction.

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As this blog of Neil Patel shows, experience will be the key differentiator by 2020 and in fact, it will be the most exciting area for businesses in the future. And more interestingly it mentioned, 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for a better Customer Experience.

Good Experience = Probable Prospects

Probable Prospects = Converted to Customers

Good Support or Service = Customer Satisfaction

Customer Satisfaction = More Retention

More Retention = Increasing Customer Base

Increasing Customer Base = More Profits/revenue

So, if you focus on Customer Satisfaction, then it is obvious your business will grow and revenue will increase.

What are the benefits of Customer Satisfaction?

The biggest benefit of Customer Satisfaction is word-of-mouth. As Neil Patel mentioned,

• 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family.
• 68% of respondents said a positive review made them more likely to use a business, while 40% said a negative one made them not want to use it.
• 93% turn to online reviews to decide if a business is good or bad.
• Just under half of consumers won’t consider a business with less than a 4-star rating.
• 34% read 4-6 reviews before deciding to trust a business.
• Word-of-mouth is listed as a key influencer for 74% of consumers.

As you can see you get free publicity if you have a high number of satisfied customers. Also, there are other benefits as well,

Brand Loyalty: Most happy or satisfied customers chose to stay with their brands or service providers. That means less churning, high retention & higher brand loyalty.

Brand Buzz: As mentioned earlier, your happy customers will leave positive reviews on social media or on different review sites. That’s free publicity you can’t get with paid ads.

Brand Trust: Your brand’s reviews or recommendations from your satisfied customers will make your brand more trusted than others.

Happy Employees: At the end, customer satisfaction means not only more revenue or customer retention, but also you’ll see employees will be happy too.

But as it seems, customer satisfaction is not an easy thing. During your project execution, customers will always ask you:

• What is the progress of the project?
• When will it be completed?
• How much billable time you have clocked?
• What is the status of modules or sprints?
• Where can I review the work?
• Where to give my feedback or to whom?
• Where and how can I see real-time progress?

Most project managers chose to hide the actual information and show incorrect data or info to satisfy customers. And at the end, the customer tends to be unhappy and may choose not to do business the second time. Beware, negative word-of-mouth spreads faster than positive reviews.

So how to keep your customers happy during Project Management? 

Once your prospects convert to a customer, it is important to share the right information at the right time in as transparent a manner possible. You can manage your projects and collaborate directly with your customers.

Let me explain how you can achieve better customer satisfaction using Orangescrum.

• Make them a part of the Team

If you consider your customers as outsiders, then you tend to hide the actual truth from them. Consider them as a part of the team that will help build trust and confidence on your product or service.

Invite your customer to Orangescrum & add them as Client users in your project. Login to Orangescrum.com, click on +Quick Links and invite your customers to be a part of their projects.

• Update the Progress

As mentioned earlier, most managers are occupied with project completion and overlook stakeholders’ expectations. Thus they tend to miss out on sharing the right info to the right audience at the right time. Understanding your audience and sharing relevant project information is key.

It is better to be transparent and truthful. Irrespective of your projects, if you share a logical view of the issue or situation at hand it becomes easier for you to get the customer’s buy-in and the help required; be it resources, funding or time.

You can easily share the progress of your tasks and projects with Orangescrum. Let them know where the project stands in real time to avoid any last minute surprises. With our Kanban board, customers can get to know what has been done, to be done and what’s in progress.

What updates can you share with your customer via Orangescrum?

• Task Progress
• Task Status
• Sprint Progress
• Estimated Hour vs Actual Time Spent
• Project Progress
• Total Billable hours
• Weekly progress report
• Pending Task Report

• Ensures No Communication Gap

When everything is open and available to customers, there will be no communication gap. When you follow traditional project management methods, you may use different sheets, email threads, and documents to manage your projects.

And most of the time, project managers or your customers may miss the email or document, and then the communication gap starts. There may be no logs to see what happened previously or what the status was?

With Orangescrum, the customer can share his feedback, comments, and even directly reach you over In-App chat. That will ensure everyone is on the same page.  Also, for every update or status change, there will be logs.

All your tasks threads will be in one place, so customer can dig in at any moment and ask for clarification.

Better Collaboration of Projects increases your chance to make the customer happy.

• Need Re-Planning?

Every Customer and Project Manager know there is a risk factor involved in each project. Sometimes everything does not go as planned & you may have to go back to the drawing boards.

With our Gantt chart, you can schedule and plan your tasks with dependencies and find the right way to complete the project on time. If you have anything to change in the middle of the project, then you can change your task planning and share with your client to approve it.

• Share your Timesheets

Time logs or timesheet is one of the important aspects of the project management. It concerns both the manager and the customer. With traditional project management methods, the manager may show more or may miss the actual time spent on a project. Thereby the customer may pay you less or more.

With our Timesheet or time log reports, the customer knows exactly how much time you’ve spent on the project versus the estimated hour.

• Generate Invoice

A project management tool like Orangescrum can let you know the actual time spent on the project and how much time is billable in a transparent manner. The customer can ask or seek clarification if they noticed something unusual. Also, they can approve the timesheet which will ensure there will be no inconsistencies.

As per the billable time, you can generate the invoice and send it directly to your customer.

A project management tool is a perfect way of managing not only your tasks or projects but also your customers as well. It gives them the clarity, trust, and confidence in your product and service and establishes you as a brand. Once they know the real-time progress, and happy with your service, they tend to come back again. Happy customers mean more retention.

Get happy customers with Orangescrum, sign up now! Happy retention!!

You can share tips you follow to keep your clients updated in Project Management. Please share it in comments below.