Appreciative feedback from customers is a sign that your company is thriving and growing. However, positive reviews and feedback are not the only indicator of customer satisfaction levels when it comes to software development. There are other ways to retain customers to become loyal ones while avoiding the common pitfalls of software development services.
Key Factors for Customer Success in Software Development
There are many factors that can influence how customers feel about their partnership with a software development company. Namely, customer satisfaction and product quality are some common metrics which usually go hand in hand. These terms are often interchangeable. Yet, in many cases, if the customer is not satisfied with the results of cooperation, it does not necessarily mean that the delivered product is of poor quality.
For example, the software development team managed to develop an excellent business web application, but there was some delay in the delivery and communication issues with the customer were not addressed properly. These problems can create an unpleasant interaction despite an outstanding software solution. Therefore, a quality product is not the only factor that guarantees positive reviews and customer recommendations.
How to Track and Improve Customer Satisfaction in Software Development
One of the best ways, in general, to ensure customer satisfaction is to deliver the work on time, stay within budget and ultimately create a great software product. It sounds like a breeze in words, but how easy is it to achieve in reality? What exactly do you need to do to turn customers into loyal ones, especially when it comes to software development services? Finding the exact answer requires getting into the specifics of evaluating customer satisfaction.
1. Regular Communications & Close Co-operations
To establish a close cooperation, you can ask more questions during meetings and video conferences to get more information about customer expectations. By checking in regularly with the customer, you and your team can detect problems before they actually occur. To take it further, you can ask your company’s customer success manager to come up with a list of questions to quickly understand whether the customer is currently being satisfied with the service or not. Make it a regular, everyday part of your project planning.
For instance, one of our clients was very concerned about the project timeline. He thought the project might not be completed on time, losing the advantage of being early in the market. By frequently communicating and checking in with the client, we noticed his concerns which enabled our project manager to take care of the situation. More developers are invited to work on the project at the earliest opportunity. This allowed us to speed up the project without increasing the workload or going over budget. We were able to provide a quick solution and the customer was very pleased with the outcome.
2. The Role of Quality Assurance in Customer Satisfaction
Daily quality monitoring ensures an objective assessment of service quality. The benefits of impeccable quality assurance in a software development company include:
- The client readily happily accepts the results of the developer’s work.
- Software development outsourcing services providers do not receive complaints about the quality of products and services.
- No additional resource is required to fix defects and errors after the application/system goes live.
3. Users feedback
In some cases, the software product is owned by the customer who will take over the further development and promotion of the project. It’s still essential to constantly monitor the product. Here, the marketing department can conduct campaigns to collect and analyze feedback from end users. Collecting this information will identify the end-users’ reception of the software application and the company that developed such one.
One of our customers who is also the product owner requested the development of a new food delivery application. Thanks to a significant number of user reviews, our business experts can identify user needs as a basis for a project development plan.
4. Customer survey after completing a project
To get a complete overview of the customer’s perception of the quality of service, it is recommended to use a variety of complex questions rather than simple ones.
- The Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is one of the most popular ways for evaluating customer satisfaction. Ask customers to rate the quality of services they receive from your company, for example on a scale of 1 to 10.
- Customer Effort Score (CES) is a survey that enables you to gain an understanding of the general feeling of your customers about working with you.
- With the Net Promoter Score (NPS) you gain insight into how loyal your customers are. Create a survey with a question like “How likely are you to recommend our company to someone?”. This is an effective method to identify customers who are likely to come back to you with new projects.
Final words
To ensure maximum customer satisfaction, you should always focus on quality assurance, communicate frequently and maintain a close relationship with customers. In this case, you can be sure that you are on the same page as the customer and know what they require to address those needs accordingly.