How to Measure Customer Satisfaction in Project Management

No matter what project management methodology you follow– aka waterfall, agile, hybrid, etc.– the final phase of any project lifecycle should involve systematic review. This is sometimes referred to as measuring project success.

This systematic review post-project should always include two things:

• Project profitability analysis– What was the project profit margin, where were most resources spent, etc.?
• Customer satisfaction analysis– How satisfied was the client with the endult? Are you likely to retain their loyalty for future projects?

In this article, we’re going to discuss the latter and show you exactly what a practical customer satisfaction analysis entails. 

Admittedly, customer satisfaction is not a readily quantifiable idea. However, there are various ways to accurately measure how your client feels about your services so that you can then put this information to use.

We’ll show you how you can adeptly measure customer satisfaction after project delivery. Be sure to check out all the links to free templates plus resources we found that can really help along the way! 

1. Benefits: Why measure customer satisfaction on your projects?

Customer satisfaction holds major weight in your overall project success since it determines whether or not you retain that customer. 

Figuring out client satisfaction can help you improve performance organization-wide and win what every service business wants, returning customers.  

Here’s why you should put in the effort to measure customer satisfaction:

• To figure out the difference between how you think you did versus what the customer actually thinks

Even the best project managers and most customer-centric teams can misjudge how the client feels about the end result. While you may think you knocked it out of the park, the customer could be on a completely different page and vice versa. 

• To figure out if you met their expectations

Expectations are often unspoken, so until you know for sure whether or not the client thinks theirs has been met, you won’t know if your project was truly successful.

• To improve customer loyalty

Measuring customer satisfaction can first help you pinpoint who loyal customers are or could be. If their rating is high, aka they’re thrilled with your services, this is a client you want to make sure you keep. Now, you can make sure to prioritize these customers and explore ways to help retain them.

• To develop better project strategies

You can judge, based on whether or not the customer satisfaction rating is high or low, whether certain strategies are working or not working. It’s easier to reuse processes and techniques that were successful and get rid of those that didn’t end with a thrilled client. 

• To recognize the strengths and weaknesses of your team 

Did someone on the team really stand in a survey for their excellence? Did the customer mention anything untoward about someone they worked with? Client input on the project's success may alert you to the strengths and weaknesses of your team. You may then, for example, choose to reward the mentioned superstars and address the negative customer input with the underperformers.

• To improve relationships with your vendors and subcontractors

Maybe you find out from your customer satisfaction analysis that one vendor delivered on quality in a big way. That lets you know that it’s a supplier you probably want to work with again. Letting stakeholders know that the customer was super-happy with them is always good to keep them motivated.

2. What are the ways to calculate customer satisfaction in project management?

Customer Satisfaction Survey

Perhaps the most effective measurement tool and the holy grail of all methods listed here is the customer satisfaction survey. A customer satisfaction survey measures the project’s customer satisfaction– aka how happy or unhappy they are with your services.

You can go about creating your customer satisfaction survey in a number of ways. A popular, easily scalable method today is the one-question survey. This is most often accomplished in three forms, which you’ve undoubtedly seen before:

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) - Literally just asking the customer how satisfied they were on a numerical scale.  

Customer Effort Score (CES) - This question is more about how easy or how difficult it was for the customer to benefit from your services.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) - This number will tell you whether or not your client was satisfied enough to recommend your services to others. 

While these single-question surveys are certainly easy to deliver and digest, you may want to get into more nuances of the customer experience. You can create a more in-depth customer satisfaction survey and mix and match popular questions. Check out these 23 survey examples from HubSpot to get started. 

Interviews

Many argue that conducting personal interviews with customers after project delivery is more effective than traditional surveys. You’ll be able to gain more specific insights into customer needs, more empathy for your customers, and more. 

To properly conduct a customer interview, be sure to keep an open mind, ask the right questions, and open the door for a follow-up in the future. 

Reviews

Another popular, promotional way to get vital customer feedback is with the almighty online review. In this scenario, you’ll ask the client to leave a testimonial on your website or third-party platform. 

Going about measuring customer success with reviews is a double-edged sword. When they’re good, they act like free advertisements for your business. When they’re bad, potential clients can see them and may second guess choosing you. 

Social media engagement tracking

If your business is super-active on social media, you’ll definitely want to track the engagement of your paying customers. This will help you determine your digital social influence on your clients by showing you the quantity of their engagement in the form of likes, shares, etc. 

First, you’ll need to correctly identify who your paying customers are on social media. Here’s a really good breakdown of how to accurately measure social media engagement from Moz.

Overall, higher social media engagement indicates that your customers are more loyal and more connected to your business. 

Repeat purchases

One of the easiest ways to tell if you delighted a client is if they come back for more. That’s why knowing how many repeat purchases you’re getting provides glittering insight as to how well you’re delivering.

HubSpot and other CRMs already have built-in tools to do this, so it’s just a matter of accessing the info and putting it into a report along with your other customer satisfaction data.

Complaints

The world’s most popular CRMs for service businesses have a built-in helpdesk that will track customer complaints and issues. For example, Salesforce uses cases to unify the information surrounding each of your clients, including any negative experiences they may have documented.

The methodology here is easy to grasp– the less the customer is complaining, the more satisfied they are. 

3. 4 steps to measure customer satisfaction after project delivery

Time to put it all together. Now that you know the various methods and metrics you can include to measure your customer satisfaction, you can get to work. Here are 4 easy steps to measure the client’s delight (or distress) after you’ve delivered on the project:

• Select which method(s) you will use.

Remember, you can be as simplistic or as granular as you want. You may prefer the popular one-question surveys that can easily be generated within your CRM. Or you can go with a combination of methods to zero in on more nuances. 

• Gather & organize customer satisfaction data with tools

Once you know which methods you’re going to use (i.e. surveys, reviews, etc.), you’ll need to gather the data. Utilize your CRM that will let you do most of this with their basic functionality. If you don’t use a CRM, you can use an online survey platform like SurveyMonkey (it’s free) to help you get the information you need. 

• Analyze the results

Now that you have the data, analyzing the results will help you pinpoint where things are going well and where they might be going wrong when it comes to the customer experience. Be on the lookout for trends and correlations in how the customer feels in relation to your project objectives. Also, check for different variables that might be affecting the scores. For example, perhaps certain team members, strategies, or project types are thrilling the clients, whereas others are not. 

• Share your discoveries

Your customer satisfaction analysis is almost complete. Now that you have hard data on how the customer feels about your services and you’ve identified positive and negative correlations with why that might be, it’s time to share with relevant parties. Communicate your findings to your team, your company shareholders, and even your clients when the results are good. 

4. What’s next

We hope you found this article helpful in doing a practical customer satisfaction analysis after your projects. By now, you are armed with solid data and powerful insights that you can use, going forward, to increase your project success. That means retaining customers, increasing revenue, and running a more efficient service business.