Writing Effective Customer Satisfaction Surveys

By: Martin Day Click author's name for more of his/her articles

Why should you bother?

The life blood of any business is good customer service. Although you should try and attract new customers good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and encourage 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 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 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.

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 - 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, from a marketing view point read through the survey, confirm 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 feedback on the facility they provide but they will also advertise their baby changing facilities and promote themselves as a family friendly store beyond those customers who have a specific need for the facility provided.

Warts and all - to benefit most from a customer survey you need to be prepared to accept criticism.

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?

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 some key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication - Do you make it easy for the customer to contact you?

When customers telephone are their calls answered quickly; are their 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 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 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 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 that the products and services that you provide do in fact match your customersâ€™ requirements.

Value for money - Cheap or expensive is rarely 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 delays?

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?

By understanding your customers more, the better your chances of correctly targeting your business.

Encourage customers to highlight their specific problems and provide contact details.

What next?

Having completed the survey analyse the results.

Trends - Identify specific and common areas where the customer service is failing.

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 employee training programmes have been implemented have they made a positive contribution to the business and improved the customer service?

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.

Don't lose a customer by squandering an opportunity to resolve a problem.

Continuously Monitor - Make changes and then 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.

http://www.surveygalaxy.com/surPublishes.asp?k=WRR9DDFTFJSW

Article Source: ABC Article Directory

About The Author: Martin Day is a Director of Survey Galaxy Ltd a web site that allows anyone to create, design and publish online survey. For more information please visit www.surveygalaxy.com.