Top Tips - Customer Satisfaction Surveys
Why bother?
Good customer service is the life blood of any business. Although new customers are important good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and repeat business. With each satisfied customer your business is likely to win many more customers through recommendations and remember, if you are not taking care of your customers, your competition 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 - Before you start compiling your survey consider what the objectives of the survey are, in that way you will remain focused 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 the respondent is asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are easier to analyse than ‘open’ questions (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).
A lot 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 – 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.
Before publishing the survey read through the survey from a market research view point to confirm that you are asking the right questions in the right way and that your chosen answer format will provide you with feedback that will allow you 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 a child-friendly and caring store even to those the customers who do not actually require the facility.
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 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 - Do you make it easy for the customer to communicate with you?
When a customer telephones is the phone answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services properly handled? Good businesses will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, quickly, politely 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 knowledgeable, courteous and helpful.
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 a virtual business it is important to ensure that your website is easy to use and aesthetically pleasing.
Regardless of the store being a bricks and mortar or purely an online internet store, 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 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 customers consider your business synonymous with 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?
Good businesses will try to treat each customer as an individual, does yours? Attention is one thing but only if it leads to a quick and satisfactory resolution to the query.
Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example their gender, age group and where they live?
Understanding your customers more will allow you to properly target your business.
For customers who have specific problems allow them to provide details and contact details.
What next?
Having completed the survey analyse the results.
Trends – Identify common and specific areas where the service is failing your customers.
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?
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.
Do not lose a customer by squandering an opportunity to resolve a problem.
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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