Is there a high level of client satisfaction with your offerings? Do you know how you could enhance your performance? Answers to these questions and novel insights into your strengths and flaws can be gleaned through customer surveys. Many small firms don’t believe in the value of conducting a customer survey because they lack resources.

VR Director of Research and Market Intelligence Isabelle Simard said, “Nothing could be further from the truth.” “There are various online survey tools—inexpensive and sometimes even free—that make consumer surveys practicable for all organizations, including templates, sample questions, and more.” Here are some pointers for business owners who are just starting customer surveys or want to sharpen their existing practices.

Customer Satisfaction Survey

Businesses often conduct customer satisfaction surveys to learn how customers feel about a product or service offered by a company or how they feel after dealing with a certain department within that company. The level of customer happiness with a service, product, or team member can be easily quantified using a CSAT, or customer satisfaction, score. The size and number of questions on a survey are completely up to the company conducting it, which might be as few as one or as many as twenty.

One of the best applications of surveys is when they are used to:

• Keep track of how satisfied your customers are over time.
• Sort clients into groups according to how happy they are.
• Observe and take note of any mistakes.
• Create cutting-edge new goods and services.
• Inform your staff of their performance.

Importance of Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Customer happiness and brand loyalty are more crucial than ever in today’s cutthroat business climate. It doesn’t matter how committed a customer is to your brand; if they have a bad experience with you, they will go elsewhere.

In addition, unhappy customers tend to share more of their stories than satisfied ones. If a customer has a negative experience, they will tell an average of 16 other people about it. It will take five positive experiences to make up for one negative experience that has not been rectified.

That’s why it’s crucial to see trouble with customers as soon as possible and work to fix the issues before they go online and leave a bad review.

Why it’s crucial to conduct regular customer satisfaction surveys:

• Finding the good points of your brand.
• Offering a way for clients to have their voices heard is a great way to show them that you value their business.
• Rectifying flaws.
• Adapting to the needs of dissatisfied clients through individualized communication.
• Setting your product or service apart from the competition.
• Discovering glowing customer reviews to utilize as examples of the brand’s success.

Surveys Creator Checklist

Customer satisfaction surveys can help you get feedback on a new product or service, determine how your customers feel about your service level, or even gather testimonials. To set up an effective survey, follow this 12-step checklist:

1. Define your goals. Decide what you hope to accomplish with your survey.
2. Select a survey tool. There are many to choose from online, including the VerticalResponse survey creator.
3. Choose a template. Most survey tools offer templates that you can choose based on your type of business and your survey goals.
4. Make it uniquely your own. Use your company logo and colors to make the survey mirror your branding.
5. Include clear questions. The customer satisfaction survey questions you ask are key to this process. We’ll dive into this more later.
6. Review before sending. Be sure to proofread your survey before sending it to customers. Better yet, ask a colleague to proofread it for you. Mistakes or typos look unprofessional.
7. Make your survey email subject line enticing. You may even consider offering a reward for completed surveys with a subject line such as “Share your feedback for a chance to win a gift card.”
8. Write an effective email invitation. Surveys are generally sent via email, and the contents of that email are important. Try to keep it short and sweet and let the reader know how long the survey will take (shorter is typically better).
9. Include a call to action (CTA). This simple link or button directs readers to your online survey. They won’t take the survey if they can’t find it.
10. Decide who to send your survey to. Sometimes you may want a broad survey that includes all customers on your mailing list, and at other times you may want to be more specific, such as customers who have bought a product or service in the past 30 days.
11. Give your email a final review and send it. Ensure there are no grammatical errors in your email and that all the links work correctly.

Collect and review responses. This is where the valuable data begins to flow. We’ll take a deeper look at what to do with your results below.

Create a Customer Satisfaction Survey

If you want customers to take the time to complete your survey, you need to make sure it’s easy to use and looks excellent.

Make it Simple and Easy to Understand

If the language in your survey is difficult to comprehend or too lengthy, your customers will be less likely to participate in the survey. Asking questions that can be answered with a straightforward yes or no will make their experience much easier to navigate. To avoid leaving your customers guessing about the answers to their questions, make sure that your inquiries are always focused on a single subject at a time.

Keep it Brief

Your consumers’ opinions are priceless nuggets of information. The completion rate, however, can be slowed by an excessive number of questions. Participants in lengthy surveys may feel pressured to respond quickly without considering the questions. Seventy-four percent of respondents would rather take surveys with no more than five questions.

Consider filling out one of GatherUp’s customer satisfaction surveys; it’s much more likely to finish with only four questions. If you offer a combination of open-ended and yes/no questions, you may discover that only four questions are necessary to cover everything without overwhelming your clients.

Know Your Goals

Before developing questions for this survey, you should consider why you’re conducting it and what you intend to learn from it. If you don’t have a plan, it’s easy to find yourself asking many questions for no real reason. Otherwise, the length of your questionnaire can end up becoming unmanageable.

Write a Mix of Question Types

For the most reliable findings, we recommend asking open-ended and closed-ended questions in the survey.

You can only reply to closed-ended questions with a yes or no, a number rating (such as the 0-10 Net Promoter Score scale), or a select few options. These types of questions are also known as multiple-choice questions. It is much simpler to compare responses and draw conclusions based on the data if you ask questions that are very similar to one another.

If you conduct analysis, you can discover that seventy percent of your customers are pleased with the new delivery service, while thirty percent were dissatisfied with it.

It would be beneficial to have more open-ended questions that encourage customers to provide comments. Use these questions to educate yourself on a subject that hasn’t garnered much of your attention or that you do not have the time to address.

Promote Your Survey to Customers

Timing is crucial when it comes to achieving a high response rate from customers while conducting a survey. The optimal time to distribute your customer satisfaction survey will be determined by several criteria, including those connected to the products or services you offer and your customers.

In deciding whether or not to distribute a survey, you should keep in mind the following details:

• The data collection skills you use to contact customers.
• How long a customer stayed at the business.
• The duration of the call with customer support.
• The regularity of the customer’s visits to the store.

Shortly after a guest purchase a room at your hotel, you can send them a survey asking for their feedback on their experience. A few days after their stay, you can send a more in-depth survey to gauge their impressions of the hotel.

You might also send out surveys every six to twelve months if you manage a law firm with repeat clients. You may ask them about their general happiness with the service, their suggestions for how you could enhance it, and whether or not they would refer you to a friend.

Include an Option to Follow Up

You could always ask your customers if they would be willing to answer some additional questions if you want to learn more about the genuine opinions of your customers and how you can use that information to grow your business. In other words, if you want to learn how to use that information to grow your business.

After you have asked them three relatively brief questions, you may inquire as to whether or not they would be willing to answer additional questions. Although not all customers may be willing to do this, those who are maybe delighted about the opportunity to provide more in-depth feedback, which may lead to substantial business insights. In this way, you won’t have to sacrifice your completion rate to receive additional feedback from customers who are invested in the future of your business.

Customer satisfaction surveys put your organization up for success

The difficulties inherent in running a small business are well known. The last thing an owner of a firm wants is any additional work to complete to keep up with their existing responsibilities. On the other side, getting feedback and ideas from customers shouldn’t be perceived as a burden at any point. They are important for evaluating which components of your organization customers enjoy and which aspects they believe could use some improvement based on what they have to say.

Designing a customer satisfaction survey takes a little work; however, many resources are available online. You can also use the VerticalResponse survey creator, which may help simplify the process. Customers, who ought to be considered the company’s lifeblood, are surveyed regularly by thriving organizations. These businesses do this because doing so enables them to keep their finger on the pulse of the people who ought to be considered the company’s lifeblood: their customers.

Conclusion

Customer surveys are market research focusing on an organization’s existing clientele. It is standard practice to conduct in-depth research on the target market before entering or launching a new product. In this kind of scenario, you would be polling a representative sample of your target audience, some of whom might or might not be familiar with your brand. This more detailed form of customer research often requires the assistance of industry professionals.

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© 2018, Contributing Author. All rights reserved.