Designing Customer Satisfaction Surveys that Work

Why should you bother?

The life blood of any business is good customer service. New customers are important but good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and repeat business. With every satisfied customer your business is likely to go on and secure many more customers through recommendations and if you do not take proper care of your customers there is probably a competitor waiting in the wings that will.

A customer satisfaction survey will help by not only identifying problem areas but show that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.

Where do you start?

Objective – As a first step decide what the main objectives of the survey are, in that way you will be able to retain focus and find it easier to decide what questions to ask.

Analysis – Consider how you will analyze the answers having completed the survey.

Keep in mind that ‘closed’ questions (where a respondent is asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are much easier to analyze than ‘open’ questions (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).

A great deal will depend on the likely volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analysing the results.

Opportunity – As well as obtaining valuable market research data keep in mind that customer surveys are also a good way to publicise aspects of your service that your customers may not be aware of.

After you have drafted your survey read through the survey from a market research view point and check that you are asking the right questions in the right way and that with the feedback information you will be able to make informed decisions.

Then, from a marketing view point read through the survey, confirm that you have phrased each question so that every opportunity has been taken to promote your business?

The ideal question will perform the following three functions:-

• Market research – provide valuable feedback to help you improve your customer satisfaction levels and in turn your business
• Marketing – promote aspects of your business
• Information/Education – advertise a service that you provide that your customers may not have been unaware of

For example:- Do you find the in-store baby changing facilities useful?

In asking this question the store will hopefully not only receive useful feedback on the baby changing facility but they will also promote the store as being child-friendly even beyond the customers who actually require the facility.

Warts and all – be prepared to accept criticism.

A customer satisfaction survey should be designed to highlight problems so that they can be addressed; regular customer satisfaction will prevent complacency and will also give early warning on where your competitors initiatives may be losing you business.

What are the questions you should ask?

Depending on their own particular size and makeup each business is likely to have unique factors in relation to providing good customer services however there are common areas relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online store or a service industry. The following are some key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication – Are you confident that you make it easy for your customers to communicate with you?

When a customer telephones is their call answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services handled properly? Good businesses will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, politely, quickly and fairly.

If a problem is not resolvable immediately do you promise to respond in a given time period and do you deliver on your promise?

Use a customer satisfaction survey to ensure that all your staff are considered by your customers to be courteous, helpful and knowledgeable.

Location – Are you doing everything you can to ensure that your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical store, does it have good access and is it conveniently located?

Making it pleasant, making it easy – For an internet business it is important to ensure that your website is easy to use and aesthetically pleasing.

Physical store or online website, is the store properly laid out, can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient information and help on hand to explain how a particular product works?

The right quality products – In addition to measuring the quality of the service that you provide you should ensure that the products and services that you provide match your customers’ requirements.

Value for money – Cheap or expensive is not always a good measure, value for money is.

Do your current customers consider your services as value for money, if not, why not?

Speed and attention – Customers want to be dealt with quickly but attentively.

Are you doing everything you can to avoid delays?

Good businesses will try to treat each customer as an individual, does yours? Attention is one thing but this has to be hand- in-hand with a quick and satisfactory resolution of the query.

Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example what is their age group and where do they live?

Understanding your customers more will allow you to properly target your business.

Within the survey encourage customers to highlight their problems and provide contact details.

What next?

Analyze the results once the survey has been completed.

Trends – Identify common and specific areas where the service needs improving.

Ask yourself honestly if any criticism that you receive is valid and if there anything that can be done to resolve or minimise the problem?

Training – Are all employees properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?

If customer service training programs have been implemented have they improved the customer experience?

Follow-up – If a customer who has completed a survey has raised a specific issue ensure that they are contacted and their complaint addressed.

Don’t waste an opportunity to resolve a problem and keep a customer.

Continuously Monitor – Make changes based on the survey results and then re-measure by issuing further surveys.

If you are concerned about customer satisfaction and would like to see a sample survey for a store that demonstrates some of the above advice please view the Sample Customer Survey