Measuring in-store customer satisfaction

Why measure customer satisfaction in physical stores?

Customer satisfaction is a key concept for understanding the effectiveness of a physical store other than through sales performance . It allows you to evaluate the layout of the store, the offers proposed, or the training of the staff, and generally gives an idea of the perception of your brand.

This indicator will serve as a benchmark for setting goals. You can study the evolution of satisfaction with your store, with new points of sale, or even compare customer satisfaction generated by each conversion channel.

What tools can be used to calculate customer satisfaction?

Several indicators can be used to measure customer satisfaction. Initially, the CSAT was the main indicator.

CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) involves asking customers about their level of satisfaction with a given issue, and then calculating the proportion of positive responses out of all responses. However, CSAT, due to its calculation method, is considered a very optimistic indicator. It is therefore more likely to be used to communicate it to prospects. This is why we find advertisements claiming, for example, that 70% of users are satisfied with a given product.

As part of improving the customer experience, and therefore decision-making, we will use, rather than a satisfaction indicator, a recommendation indicator: the NPS score.

The NPS (Net Promoter Score) helps determine the extent to which customers are brand ambassadors, i.e., whether they are satisfied enough to recommend the brand, product or store, for example, to their friends and family.

This indicator is therefore particularly interesting since, more than customer satisfaction at a given moment, we are interested here in the impact of our brand on our customer even after the purchase.

How is the NPS calculated in a physical store?

To determine this NPS score, customers are asked "on a scale of 1 to 10, would you recommend our store, for example, to your friends and family?"

Based on these responses, customers are classified into three categories:

Detractors : for a score between 0 and 6
Passives : for a score of 7 or 8
Promoters : for a score of 9 or 10

The NPS score is an absolute number that ranges between -100 and 100. It is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters:

NPS = % promoters - % detractors

In our experience, a brand score of 50 or higher is considered a positive score! Anything over 60 is the icing on the cake!

Following these answers, it is essential to follow up with an item question. This consists of asking

For detractors and passives: "What are the possible areas for improvement?" with a list of items that you will have identified beforehand.
For promoters: “What were the points you appreciated the most?” with a list of items that you will have identified beforehand.

For this second question, choose a multiple-choice answer with several options, as well as an “Other” box in which customers can enter a free answer.

These steps allow you to first find an NPS score , and secondly the strengths and weaknesses of the store.

What tools are used to collect customer responses to obtain the NPS score?

The most common technique for collecting the information needed to build the NPS score is sending a questionnaire by email after the purchase .

There are several tools available to create surveys, such as Drag'n'Survey and SurveyMonkey. However, at Nestore, we use and recommend Typeform for its ergonomics, the aesthetics of its surveys, and its connections with numerous CRMs (including Mailchimp and Sendinblue).

Why mention this last point? It's very important to link the NPS survey to your customer database. Imagine being able to track spending, open rates, and brand loyalty all in one database? You'll then be able to create hyper-segmented communications based on individual behavior.

Once the questionnaire has been created, it will be necessary to see how to find motivational levers to encourage customers to provide their email addresses and thus be able to distribute it.

Once this step is done, the question then becomes: when is the right time to ask customers for information?

When is the best time to calculate customer satisfaction?

The deadline for sending the questionnaire depends on what you want to measure:

If we want to know how the in-store customer experience went, the questionnaire should be sent “hot off the press”.

If you're looking to test customer satisfaction with your products, it's best to wait to gather more informed opinions. Ideally, you should test for the duration that best suits the product being sold: if you have the time to conduct an A/B test, that's great :)
When it comes to customer experience , it is customary to send your questionnaire on D+1, because the customer still has the details of the time they spent in your store fresh in their minds.
To understand whether the customer is attached to your brand, the sending is usually done eight days in advance. Indeed, we are looking for a "cold" response to verify whether the purchase had enough impact on the customer for them to recommend the brand to their friends and family.

Regarding the time of submission, SurveyMonkey explains that the number of responses to weekday questionnaires increases from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. It decreases around lunchtime and picks up again, peaking at 2 p.m. After this time, responses become scarce and pick up again the next day.