Top Tips – Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Why should you bother?

Good customer service is the life blood of any business. Although new customers are very 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 creating your survey clarify the objectives of the survey, in that way you will find it easier to decide what are the right questions to ask.

Analysis – Consider how you will analyse 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.

Before you publish the survey confirm that the questions you have asked will provide you with market research data that when analyzed will help you 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?

By asking this question not only will the store receive good market research feedback on the facility they provide but they will also promote their facilities and advertise themselves as a family friendly store, even beyond those customers who have a specific need for the baby changing facility that has been 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?

Although it is a given that each business is likely to have specific and unique factors that are important in providing good customer services there are common areas that are relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online internet 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 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, quickly, politely and fairly.

If customers 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 – 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 internet 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 – Not only should you measure the quality of the service that you provide but you should check 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 customers associate your business with value for money, if not, why not?

Speed and attention – Regardless of the business most customers will want to be dealt with quickly but attentively.

Are you doing everything you can to avoid any delay?

Good businesses will try to treat each customer as an individual, does yours? Attention is important but so is 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?

Understand your customers more and you will be able to better target your business.

Allow customers to state any concerns that they may have and the opportunity to provide their contact details so that any problems that are raised can be followed up.

What next?

Once the survey has been completed analyse the results.

Trends – Look for common and specific areas where the service is failing.

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 customer service training programs have been implemented have they had the desired effect and improved the customer experience?

Follow-up – If a customer has raised a specific issue through completing a survey ensure that they are contacted and that their complaint is properly addressed.

Do not lose 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 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