Research into customer satisfaction and loyalty can help drive repeat business. That’s why Nailboo created a 91,000-member Facebook community where customers share nail art and swap tips, perfectwhitetee’s founder personally calls customers when their orders go wrong, and Polysleep turns happy customers into paid affiliates who earn money monthly just by referring friends.
Valued customers tend to become repeat customers and bring others with them. When customers don’t feel valued, they turn to other brands. The brands that last don’t leave customer satisfaction and loyalty to chance; they actively measure how customers feel and use that data to make smarter decisions.
Read on to learn about the customer satisfaction and loyalty research methods brands use to understand how customers feel, strategies to keep people coming back, and customer feedback systems to turn complaints into business improvements.
What is customer satisfaction?
Customer satisfaction is a measure of how customers feel about their experience with your company’s products, services, and overall brand. It’s the degree to which your brand meets or exceeds customer expectations according to key factors like product quality, perceived service quality, customer service interactions, shipping speed, your corporate image, and website experience.
High customer satisfaction means you’ve served your customers’ needs well; low satisfaction means some part of the customer experience has let them down. From a behavioral perspective, satisfied customers are more likely to return, making customer retention easier and more cost-effective than constantly acquiring new shoppers. Over time, consistent satisfaction also helps retain customers by reinforcing perceived value, strengthening brand image, and boosting overall brand reputation.
Customer satisfaction means you are more likely to inspire customer retention, which is a step before customer loyalty.
What is customer loyalty?
Customer loyalty is when customers consistently choose your brand and products over those of your competitors. You earn loyalty by building trust and an emotional connection over a series of positive experiences.
A loyal customer doesn’t just spur repeat purchases. They prefer your company over alternatives—sometimes even if those alternatives are cheaper or more convenient. Truly loyal customers turn into brand advocates. They refer friends, write glowing reviews, and defend your brand.
5 ways to approach customer satisfaction and loyalty research
- Measure NPS and CES
- Conduct one-on-one interviews
- Deploy surveys
- Comb through customer support tickets
- Use social media listening tools
Every ecommerce brand should routinely collect feedback and data to understand what customers actually think. Some business research methods are formal—like quantitative surveys that provide you with scores—while others are more qualitative, such as reviewing comments on Instagram.
Pick the methods that match your audience, and be consistent in gathering and analyzing the feedback so you know where you stand with your customers over time. Here are a few research methods you can use to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty:
Measure NPS and CES
Net Promoter Score (NPS) and customer effort score (CES) are two popular brand loyalty metrics that give you a quick read on customer sentiment. Net Promoter Score is based on a simple survey question: “How likely are you to recommend our brand to a friend or colleague?” Customers respond on a 0–10 scale, and their answers indicate their loyalty and eagerness to promote your brand. Tracking NPS helps you spot if you’re turning more customers into enthusiastic “promoters” or if too many are “detractors” who wouldn’t recommend you.
Customer effort score measures how simple or difficult it was for a customer to complete a certain interaction (for example, “How easy was it to resolve your issue today?”). CES is a satisfaction litmus test for your processes, like ecommerce checkout, returns, or contacting customer support. If your CES is high (low effort for customers), you’re likely delivering a smooth experience; a low CES flag points to friction that may frustrate buyers.
You can use both of these scores in combination. You might send an NPS survey a week after purchase and a CES survey right after a customer support chat or after a product onboarding process.
Conduct one-on-one interviews
Personal interviews provide nuanced feedback in the customer’s voice. You can ask open-ended questions about why they bought (or stopped buying), and what they wish you’d do better. These conversations uncover emotional drivers of satisfaction or consumer loyalty that surveys can miss. One-on-one interviews don’t scale as easily as surveys, but even a handful of calls per month can deliver usable insights.
Make it a habit to personally reach out to customers. Jen Menchaca, cofounder and CEO of perfectwhitetee, a direct-to-consumer fashion brand, takes this approach to heart. “I’ve actually picked up the phone and called so many customers that have complained because they didn’t get their shipment on time or it was wrong,” Jen says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “When there’s a human being and a story behind the brand, people love it that much more.”
Deploy surveys
After key interactions, send quick surveys to capture satisfaction in the moment. For example, after an order is delivered, you might email a short survey asking the customer to rate their shopping experience and the product.
Keep these surveys brief—a couple of multiple-choice questions with an optional comment box—to encourage participation. If your store is hosted on Shopify, you can download and install apps like qikify Contact Form Builder, Hulk Form Builder, and Powerful Contact Form Builder to automate this process. In addition to post-purchase feedback, consider milestone surveys at points in the customer lifecycle. If you run a subscription box service, you could survey customers after three months, six months, or on their one-year subscription anniversary.
Milestone surveys show customers you care about customer relationship management beyond the first sale. Over time, this data also reveals patterns. You might find customers are happiest right after unboxing your product, but satisfaction dips a month later if the product support is lacking. With that knowledge, you could introduce follow-up resources or check-ins to maintain satisfaction.
Comb through customer support tickets
Don’t just resolve tickets one by one—step back and analyze patterns and metrics from your help desk or support inbox. Dig into your support emails, chat logs, and call recordings to find common issues and understand sentiment.
Customer success metrics to watch include average response time, first-contact resolution rate (how often you solve an issue in one response), and the volume of tickets about particular issues. If you notice a spike in tickets about delayed shipments or a recurring complaint about a certain product, that’s a red flag to investigate deeper and fix the root cause.
Razvan Romanescu, cofounder of beauty brand Nailboo, says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast that his team treats support data as a feedback loop: “[We] try to monitor everything—from average response time, how many tickets are formed, [and] how fast something is handled. Customer satisfaction’s at the frontier of all that, because an unhappy customer is louder than the happy ones … especially with the internet.”
Use social media listening tools
Customers often voice their opinions on social networks, forums, or review sites without tagging you, revealing unfiltered sentiment. Set up alerts for your brand name and product names on platforms like X, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, and Facebook groups.
You might discover trending praise (“People love our new packaging!”) or an emerging issue (“There are multiple tweets about the website crashing on mobile”). Social listening tools (like Brandwatch or Sprout Social) can aggregate these mentions.
For a scrappier approach, simply check comments on your posts and related hashtags. For example, an ecommerce activewear brand might notice in its Instagram comments that customers are asking the same question about fit or material—an opportunity to clarify product descriptions. Treat these unprompted opinions as a form of customer research: they’re honest and in real time.
How to build customer satisfaction and loyalty
- Create customer communities
- Develop customer education resources
- Improve your website experience
- Establish a customer referral program
- Close the feedback loop
Having a great product or service is the baseline for customer satisfaction and loyalty—no amount of clever tactics can overcome a poor offering. Assuming your product delivers on its promises, these strategies can yield a significant impact by building customer trust and ensuring they remain loyal:
Create customer communities
Bring your customers together and make them feel part of something. A community—whether it’s a Facebook group, Discord server, or forum—gives your audience a place to share experiences, get advice, and celebrate your products. By facilitating these interactions, you deepen their emotional connection to your brand and to each other. Consider what platform your customers prefer and what common interests or lifestyle elements connect to your product. Once your community is up and running, encourage discussion and recognize your top contributors (perhaps with badges or freebies).
Nailboo sells DIY at-home nail kits, and its team realized that their passionate customers wanted to show off their nail art and swap advice. “We created a group called the Nailboo Fam on Facebook. It’s about 91,000 of our most engaged customers,” says Razvan. “There’s hundreds of thousands of posts in there of people sharing, ’Hey, this is my new mani,’ ’I just got married,’ ‘Just did my daughter’s nails,’ ’What does everyone think about this look?’” Over time, this community has become a rich source of user-generated content and a self-sustaining engine of support and excitement around the brand.
Develop customer education resources
When people know how to get the most out of your product—or can easily find answers when something goes wrong—they’ll naturally be happier with their purchase. Think of things like how-to videos, blog tutorials, troubleshooting FAQs, knowledge bases, or even webinars for customers. Razvan notes how Nailboo invested in customer enablement and education: “Customers want to learn these lessons so they can have a better experience with the product. We took it to the next level on our website and released something called Nailflix Academy, which is our version of an academy or educational center.”
In the same vein, Lisa Hickey, cofounder of perfectwhitetee, stresses putting your brand ear to the ground to drive content creation: “It’s listening to your consumer, what they’re gravitating toward, what they’re asking you for online, or questions they might have. We’re putting more content out there that might answer those questions.”
If you sell kitchen gadgets or work-from-home tech, or if you produce recipe videos showing the gadget in action, offer webinar tutorials for new users. These resources reduce frustration (customers don’t have to struggle alone or contact support for common issues) and increase the perceived value they get from your product (they might discover new features or techniques that better their experience).
Improve your website experience
Sometimes, the barrier to consumer satisfaction is simply a clunky website. In ecommerce, your website or app is your storefront, and if it’s hard to find products or complete a purchase, customers will get frustrated and leave. Lisa emphasizes this point, warning that “Consumers get frustrated, and when they get frustrated, they bounce. Make sure that your consumers can find the product they’re looking for. … That is super important when you’re first starting your website.”
Improving your website navigation and checkout flow can boost satisfaction and customer perception by removing sources of irritation. Think about it from a shopper’s perspective: Can they quickly locate the item they want using your mega menu or search bar? Is product information clear and organized? Are there unnecessary steps or forms during checkout? Then, simplify any cumbersome steps and eliminate friction (for example, allow guest checkout, provide multiple payment options, and ensure the mobile experience is excellent).
Establish a customer referral program
Loyal customers love your brand enough to refer friends and family. You can encourage and reward this behavior by creating a referral program, turning satisfied customers into an informal sales force. A typical referral program offers something valuable for each successful referral. For example, the referrer gets a coupon or cash reward when their friend makes a purchase, and perhaps the friend gets a discount too. This drives new customer acquisition at a lower cost and recognizes your loyal customers for their advocacy.
Jeremiah Curvers, cofounder and CEO of Polysleep, a Canadian direct-to-consumer mattress brand, has turned his well-rested customers into an army of advocates. “Whenever someone purchases from us, our customer service [team] will thank the person and offer the opportunity to monetize a referral. They could do that very easily using Friendbuy,” he says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “If they refer a friend and that email address is used, they’re going to get a $25 to $50 gift card. Some people are just becoming so good at it that we push these people towards our affiliate program.”
By tapping into existing customers’ enthusiasm, you not only gain new business, but you also reinforce the referring customer’s connection to your brand.
Close the feedback loop
If someone takes the time to fill out a survey, leave a review, or offer a suggestion, it’s powerful to show that you heard them and made a change because of it—which is called “closing the feedback loop.” The idea is to not only implement improvements based on customer feedback, but also to circle back to let customers know their voices mattered.
Direct-to-consumer brands have a unique advantage here. In the past, perfectwhitetee sold through retail sales channels and didn’t get to hear end-customer opinions—now, they do, via their website reviews, social media, and other customer feedback loops. They use these channels to experiment with new products and immediately gauge the reaction. “We love that the consumer can tell us right away. We can put something on the website and find out, Hey, this is a hit. Look, they’re loving this fit and they’re leaving reviews and comments and they’re letting us know,” says Lisa. “We take all of those things into account when we’re developing our future seasons.”
In practice, you might close the feedback loop by implementing a popular suggestion (say, adding a new product color) and then announcing to your customers, “You asked, we listened!” By treating customers like partners in your business’s improvement, they’re no longer just buyers; they feel like stakeholders whose opinions truly matter, driving long-term loyalty.
Customer satisfaction and loyalty research FAQ
What is the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty?
Customer satisfaction is what gets loyalty started. If people dislike or feel indifferent toward your product or service, they’re definitely not sticking around. But being satisfied doesn’t automatically make someone loyal; plenty of customers are perfectly happy with what you offer but will still jump ship if they find something cheaper or more convenient.
What is the impact of customer satisfaction and loyalty?
When customers are happy and loyal, they buy more often and spend more money. Plus, you don’t have to work as hard (or spend as much) to keep them around; finding new customers tends to cost more. The real payoff is that these customers become your biggest fans, telling their friends about you and standing up for your brand when others complain about it.
What are the four stages of loyalty?
The four stages typically progress from cognitive loyalty (customers believe your brand is the best option) to affective loyalty (they develop positive feelings toward your brand) to conative loyalty (they form intentions to repurchase) and, finally, to action loyalty (they actually follow through with repeat purchases despite competitive offers). Most people don’t jump straight to being die-hard fans; they progress through these stages over time as their relationship with your brand strengthens.
