Businesses cannot exist without customers. IT departments cannot exist without the business.

Whether your customers are internal or external to the company, your ability to satisfy them and create loyalty is critical to your success in driving revenue growth and taking your business to the next level. If you hope to stand out from the crowd and gain a competitive edge, your ultimate goal should be to not just meet, but exceed your customers’ expectations.

Maintaining customer satisfaction is hard work. How do you know your customers are satisfied with the product or service you provide? And just how satisfied are they?

In trying to determine my top 10 strategies for mastering customer satisfaction, I came across an article from Mitch Coopet, Founder of Code42 Software entitled 5 Ways Companies Can Conquer Customer Satisfaction. With his permission, I’m using a couple of his points in addition to my own.

Create an in-house customer support team

Many companies outsource customer service overseas as a cost-savings measure. But outsourcing to a third-party team results in the loss of key knowledge ownership, a decreased ability to serve customers quickly, and the elimination of personal touch. With a local support team, your company maintains greater and more constant visibility into the customer experience. You can then use that insight to influence business decisions and strategy. By outsourcing, you also forfeit valuable opportunities to build relationships.

Bake customer support into every job description

Creating a culture of high customer satisfaction is not just isolated to the support team. To create happy customers, every employee in the company has to have some “skin” in the service game. Real-time collaboration must exist at all levels to quickly resolve customer issues. Remember, the faster the resolution, the happier the customer.

Never consider support as an afterthought. Whenever a new product or service is being planned, build support into the roadmap process. Focusing on elements such as quality assurance, documentation, and product design won’t ever replace the support process, but it will result in a higher quality product that reduces the number of support issues.

Turn customers into advocates

Happy customers are both repeat customers and a source of new business. You know that your company has highly satisfied customers when they advocate to others on your behalf. And hey, it’s free marketing!

Advocates are your most loyal, passionate, and engaged customers. They tweet and blog about you, they praise you with high reviews on-line, they talk about you on social networks and with their colleagues, and they defend you from detractors.

High customer satisfaction is not just about a quick appeal to the masses anymore. It’s about establishing long-term relationships with existing customers, no matter the type, and then letting your customers speak for you. Consumers trust other consumers more than an unfamiliar brand or service.

Execute, execute, execute

Not many things can deflate customer satisfaction more than lack of execution. Missed product deadlines, over-billed services, and projects delivered late, over budget, and out-of-scope reduce credibility and loyalty. Failure to execute fundamentally equates to not keeping promises to customers. If customers can’t trust you to do what you tell them you are going to do, they won’t come back, and they certainly won’t recommend your product or service to others.

Using a football analogy, the test of your ability to execute comes when your team gets inside the 20-yard line, also referred to as the “red zone.” You can move the ball up and down the field all you want, but if you can’t execute inside the 20 and put the ball into the end zone, you will end up with a losing effort. The same applies to customer satisfaction. The more you execute when it matters most, the more your customers will appreciate your efforts.

Do the right thing

It’s often an emotionally charged moment when customers contact support with a problem. They want to talk to someone who knows their stuff inside and out. Every employee of the company should feel like he or she is a member of the customer’s team, so if a challenge arises, the customer trusts the support team to handle the situation. As Stephen M. R. Covey discusses his book The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything, that when trust goes down, the speed of business goes down, and costs go up. In addition, when trust is diminished, productivity decreases, execution is hindered, and customer loyalty ends up in the tank.

Creating a strong support team and centering company culture on customer satisfaction does more than lead to high customer retention and new business. A sincere dedication to putting the customer first isn’t always easy, but it does go a long way.

Listen and communicate

Listening to your customers and effectively communicating back makes the difference between poor, mediocre, and great customer satisfaction. Understanding their needs is the first step to loyalty. As Stephen R. Covey said in his 7-Habits book:

“Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

Be a sincere listener, and don’t just give your customers ear service. They’ll see right through that. Be there in the moment.

When it comes time (AFTER listening intently), communicate solutions to your customers in simple terms and help them fix whatever issues they are facing. Don’t just stop there, however. Keep communicating with them, listening to them, and nurturing and strengthening your relationship in the process.

What doesn’t get measured doesn’t get managed

There is no way to know how satisfied your customers are unless you reach out and ask them. Find out how you’re doing. Survey them but don’t just determine a customer satisfaction number. Ask for actionable items that can drive change and hold individuals responsible. Reach out to your advocates personally. They tend to be the ones that will be the most honest and forthright in their responses.

As mentioned above, listen to the feedback. Take stock of what you can do to better your product or service. Take action! Create customer advisory boards, hold user group meetings, schedule events with your customers, and implement other such methods to determine what you can do to more fully manage customer engagement and loyalty.

Set and understand expectations

You can have an exceptional product or service, but if you fail to consider how it fits the needs of your customer, you don’t have an exceptional business. In addition, it is imperative that you are honest in setting customer expectations during the sales or the product development process. Don’t over promise. If expectations are set correctly from the beginning, even if there are issues, customers won’t complain as much.

Once expectations are set and understood, revisit them often with the customer as a reminder. Everyone makes mistakes from time to time, and adjustments might need to be made. Don’t wait until the end to apologize or “fix” things.

When customers have high and unrealistic expectations and these expectations fall short, they will be disappointed and will likely rate their experience with you less than satisfying.

Be a partner

Become a partner with your customers. Don’t just look to them as a source of revenue or simply a consumer of your product or service. Get curious about what they do, work with them on ways they can generate more revenue through your help, and implement solutions with them to achieve your defined common objectives. Doing so will increase your credibility with your customers, show them you care, and as a result, both parties will be more loyal and committed to each others’ success. As Alan Weiss, Author of Million Dollar Consulting said:

“Ask your customers to be part of the solution, and don’t view them as part of the problem.”

Focus on the little things

Some of the most insignificant things can turn out to create big wins with your customers. Never let anything seem too small to worry about. For example, if you know the birthday of a customer is coming up, reach out to extend best wishes. That doesn’t have anything do to with direct revenue generation, but it does have everything to do with showing you care. Simple follow-ups to see how a customer is doing, recognizing them as a reference in a case study, sending them a hand-written, post-service thank you note, or taking a client to lunch goes a long way to generate fiercely loyal and satisfied customers.

In conclusion, regardless of what you do, ensure that customer satisfaction doesn’t hinge purely on the sale or service rendered, but on the entire experience and journey. You must truly work for your customer and satisfy their needs to earn your success. The term service comes from the same root as both the words serving and enslaving. Which perspective do you apply?