While the two terms are intertwined, there are a few key differences that set them apart.
Understanding the differences and commonalities between customer success and customer satisfaction is as simple as knowing the key metrics you need to look at to provide both.
Most importantly, we’ll also explain why knowing the difference between customer success and satisfaction matters.
But before we dive in, let’s quickly go over what each term means respective to your business:
What is customer success?
The simplest definition of customer success is that your business or service has helped your customers meet the goals they set out to achieve.
Customer success in this case relies on the product or services your business offers to them.
Depending on your business case, customer success can mean a number things.
For example, if you operate a ride sharing app, then customer success could mean ensuring that your user gets to their destination quickly, affordably, and securely.
Another example could be a bank, which could define customer success as a client closing financing on their dream home.
The goal of customer success is, well – to help your customers succeed at what they’ve set out to accomplish with your business.
The benefit of focusing on customer success to your business is that it boosts customer lifetime value (CLTV), customer stickiness, and can prevent churn.
Focusing on customer success can result in a stronger bond between you and your customers, as well as increased and enduring loyalty.
I say “can result” because customer success doesn’t necessarily equal customer satisfaction.
…and how about customer satisfaction?
Helping customers achieve their goals and be successful is fantastic. It’s at the very core of what many businesses set out to do when just getting started.
But what’s the point of all the customer success in the world, if using your products or services makes your customers miserable?
Customer satisfaction can be simply defined as how happy customers are with your products or service.
Now, this level of satisfaction can be directly tied to how successful they are at achieving their goals – but it doesn’t have to be the case.
Sometimes, customers love your products or service – but not the outcome.
This can be turned into customer feedback that can go towards overseas chinese in usa data helping you improve your products and services.
What’s the difference between customer success and customer satisfaction?
Quick summary so far – customer success is the net business outcome a customer has using the products and services you provide.
Customer satisfaction indicates how satisfied customers are with your products and services. This can be (but doesn’t have to be) linked to the level of personal success a customer has had using your products or services.
So, the two terms are related and can be co-dependent – but also aren’t. Remember how I said it can be easy to confuse the two terms? Yeah…
Just keep in mind the roots of each respective term:
Customer success – is about how successful you make your customers in achieving their own goals
Customer satisfaction – is how satisfied customers are using your products and services
Where the two get intertwined is in the potential (but not necessary) reliance of customer satisfaction on success.
Now that we’ve made this clear, here’s why knowing the difference between customer success and satisfaction matters.
