Making Customer Satisfaction Surveys Work
11th July 2009
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 each satisfied customer your business will secure many more customers through word of mouth and you should always keep in mind that if you are not taking proper care of your customers there is always a competitor that will.
Online customer satisfaction surveys will help you not only identify problem areas but will also demonstrate to your customers 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 – When the survey is complete consider how you will analyze the answers.
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).
Much will depend on the predicted volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analyzing 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.
Before you publish the survey confirm that the questions you have asked will provide you with market research data that when analysed will help you 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?
By asking this question not only will the store receive good feedback on the facility they provide but they will also advertise their baby changing facilities and promote themselves as a family friendly store beyond those customers who have a specific need for the facility provided.
Warts and all – be prepared to accept criticism.
A well designed customer satisfaction survey will enable you to identify problems so that they can be addressed; regular customer satisfaction will prevent complacency and give you early warning on where you might be losing out to your competitors initiatives.
What questions should you ask?
Each business is likely to have unique factors in relation to providing good customer services however there are common areas that are going to be 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 – Do customers find it easy to communicate with you?
When a customer telephones is the phone answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services properly handled? A good business will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, politely, quickly and fairly.
If there are reported problems that cannot be 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 helpful, courteous 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 a virtual business it is important to ensure that your website is aesthetically pleasing and easy to use.
Regardless of the store being a bricks and mortar or purely online web based store, is the store properly laid out and can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient detailed 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 make sure that the products and services that you provide do fully match your customers’ requirements.
Value for money – Cheap or expensive is rarely 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 – No matter what the business, the majority of customers will 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 their gender, age group and where they live?
The better you understand your customers the more you will be able to properly target your business.
For customers who have specific problems allow them to provide details and contact details.
What next?
Analyze the results once the survey has been completed.
Trends – Look for specific and common areas where the customer service is found wanting.
Ask yourself if any criticism is valid and is there anything that can be done to resolve or minimise the problem?
Training – Are the staff properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?
Where staff training programmes have been implemented have they had a positive impact on the business?
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 squander the opportunity to resolve a problem and keep a customer.
Continuously Monitor – Based on the survey results make changes and then re-measure by issuing further surveys.
If you are interested in tracking customer satisfaction and would like to see a sample survey for a store that demonstrates some of the above advice please view the following example that can be used as a customer satisfaction survey template.
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