Why should you bother?
Good customer service is the life blood of any business. New customers are important but good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and 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.
Online customer satisfaction surveys 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 - In addition to the objectives consider how you will analyze the answers having completed the survey.
Bare in mind that 'closed' questions (where the respondents are asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are easier to analyse than questions that are ‘open’ (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).
A great deal will depend on the expected 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, 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 a child-friendly and caring store even to those the customers who do not 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 highlight problems so that they can be addressed; regular customer satisfaction will prevent complacency and will also give early warning on where your competitors initiatives may be losing you business.
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 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 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 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 aesthetically pleasing and easy to use.
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 – 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 not always 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 to be dealt with quickly but attentively.
Are you doing everything you can to avoid any delay?
A good business will try to treat each customer as an individual, does yours? Customers appreciate attention but only if it leads to 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?
Understand your customers more and you will be able to better target your business.
Allow customers to highlight their specific problems and provide contact details.
What next?
Analyze the results once the survey has been completed.
Trends – Look for common and specific areas where the customer service is found wanting.
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 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 do all you can to ensure that their complaint is addressed.
Do not waste 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 follow up 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.