Why should you bother?
The life blood of any business is good customer service. Although new customers are important good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and repeat business. With each satisfied customer your business will secure many more customers through word of mouth and you should always keep in mind that if you are not taking proper care of your customers there is always a competitor that will.
Online customer satisfaction surveys will demonstrate to your customers that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.
Where to 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 - When the survey is complete consider how you will analyze 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 advertise 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 analysed 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?
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 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?
Each business is likely to have unique factors in relation to providing good customer services however there are common areas that are going to be 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 do anything to help your customers 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, politely, quickly 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 ensure that all your staff are considered by your customers to be knowledgeable, courteous and helpful.
Location – Are you doing everything you can to ensure that your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical store, does it have good access and is it conveniently located?
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.
Regardless of the store being a bricks and mortar or purely online web based store, is the store properly laid out and can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient detailed 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 hardly ever a good measure, value for money is.
Do your customers associate your business 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 any delay?
Customers like to be treated as individuals, how do you treat your customers? Attention is one thing but this has to be hand- in-hand with a quick and satisfactory resolution of 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.
Within the survey allow customers to highlight specific problems and provide contact details.
What next?
Analyze the results once the survey has been completed.
Trends – Look for specific and common areas where the service needs improving.
Ask yourself if any criticism is valid and is 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 customer service training programs have been implemented have they had the desired effect and improved the customer experience?
Follow-up – If a customer who has completed a survey has raised a specific issue ensure that they are contacted and their complaint addressed.
Do not squander the 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.