Why bother?
The life blood of any business is good customer service. New customers are important but 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.
Online customer satisfaction surveys will help by not only identifying problem areas but will also 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 - Once the survey has been completed consider how you will analyse 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).
Much 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 – As well as obtaining valuable market research data keep in mind that customer surveys are also a good way to advertise areas of your service that your customers may not be aware of.
Once you have drafted your survey read through the survey with a market research hat on and confirm that you are asking the right questions in the right way and that with the feedback information you will be able 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 maximise the benefit from a customer survey you must be prepared to take criticism.
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 - 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 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 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 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.
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 that the products and services that you provide do in fact match your customers’ requirements.
Value for money – Cheap or expensive is not always 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 any delay?
Customers like to be treated as individuals, how do you treat your customers? 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?
The better you understand your customers the more you will be able to properly 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?
Analyze the results once the survey has been completed.
Trends – Look for common and specific areas where the service needs improving.
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 the staff 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 has raised a specific issue through completing a survey ensure that they are contacted and that their complaint is properly addressed.
Do not waste an 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 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.
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