Customer Satisfaction Surveys – Top Tips
Why should you bother?
Good customer service is the life blood of any business. Although you should try and attract new customers good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and encourage 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 to 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 – Once the survey has been completed consider how you will analyse 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).
A lot will depend on the predicted volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analysing the results.
Opportunity – Keep in mind that as well as obtaining valuable market research data 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.
Next, read through the survey from a marketing view point, check 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 – to benefit most from a customer survey you need to be prepared to dig deep and accept the worst.
A customer satisfaction survey should be designed to identify any problem areas so that they can be fixed; conducting regular customer satisfaction will help prevent complacency and will also give early warning on where you may be losing business to your competitors initiatives.
What should you 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 key areas to providing good customer service.
Communication – Are you confident that you make it easy for your customers to contact 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, quickly, politely 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 check that your customers find your staff to be helpful, courteous and knowledgeable.
Location – Do your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical bricks and mortar store, is it conveniently located with good access?
Making it pleasant, making it easy – For an online 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 – You should not only measure the quality of the service that you provide but you should also monitor that the products and services that you market are what the customer wants and closely match their expectations.
Value for money – Cheap or expensive is rarely a good measure, value for money is.
Do your current customers consider the products you sell or the services you provide as value for money, if not, why not?
Speed and attention – Customers want their enquiries or queries to be dealt with quickly but attentively.
Are you doing everything you can to avoid delays?
A good business will try to treat each customer as an individual, does yours? Attention is appreciated but it needs to be followed up with a quick and satisfactory resolution to the query.
Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example where do they live and what is their age group?
The more knowledge you have of your customers the more information you will have to better target your business.
Provide your customers with an opportunity to document any specific problems that they may have had and provide contact details so that problems can be resolved and followed up.
What next?
Having completed the survey analyze the results.
Trends – Identify common and specific areas where the service needs improving.
Ask yourself if any criticism is valid, be honest to yourself, is there anything that can be done to properly resolve, or at the very least, minimise the problem?
Training – Are all employees properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?
Where employee 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 do all you can to ensure that their complaint is addressed.
Don’t lose 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 view a sample survey for a store that will demonstrate some of the above advice please view the Sample Customer Survey
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