Finding out what your customers really think isn't always a straightforward process and that's why it is more important than ever to spend time learning how to design customer satisfaction surveys that genuinely deliver results. It's easy to ask someone what they think, but to get a survey (and the results that it provides) that actually gives you something useful and concrete to work from, that takes some hard work. Well-designed customer satisfaction surveys are crucial for gathering actionable insights that can drive improvements to your products, services, and overall customer experience. They allow you to measure customer sentiment, identify areas for optimization, and make data-driven decisions to increase customer loyalty and retention.
Customer Satisfaction Survey Best Practices
Customer satisfaction surveys can seem a bit scary at first, after all you're opening yourself up to criticism. It is, however, important to remember that this is a good thing. Chances are if you even spend a few minutes reflecting on your business practices that you might acknowledge there are areas that you could improve on. It is very easy to ignore your own reflections, but hearing it from a customer's perspective, this brings it into the cold light of day and forces your hand to act, thus improving your business.
Following best practices for customer satisfaction survey design is crucial to ensure you collect high-quality, actionable feedback. This includes keeping surveys brief and focused, using clear language, avoiding leading questions, and carefully considering timing and distribution channels. Adhering to survey design best practices will increase response rates, reduce bias, and ultimately provide more reliable insights into your customers' experiences.
Taking the time to survey, listen to and then measure customer satisfaction means that you can identify, work on and then improve areas of concern. But not only that, you'll be able to see where your business is succeeding, meaning that you can consider further growth in those directions or expand best practices to other sectors within the business.
Regularly surveying customers and analyzing the feedback is essential for continuously optimizing the customer experience across all touchpoints. It allows you to pinpoint specific issues causing dissatisfaction, as well as highlight strengths to double down on. An ongoing commitment to collecting and acting on customer feedback demonstrates that you value your customers' perspectives and are dedicated to meeting and exceeding their expectations.
Getting to the crux of the matter comes through the customer satisfaction survey. This tool allows you to have a direct conversation with the customer and understand their issues related to their customer journey with you, their successes and their own reflections on the process with you. When acted on properly, these results are likely to have huge benefits for your business.
Customer satisfaction surveys provide a structured way to solicit open-ended feedback and uncover the "why" behind customer experiences. This qualitative data is invaluable for truly understanding the customer's perspective and pinpointing areas for improvement that may not be apparent from quantitative metrics alone. Combining survey feedback with other data sources like analytics and customer service records can paint a comprehensive picture of the customer journey and experience.
Satisfaction surveys come in many different forms. They could be as simple as a happy face vs an unhappy face, they could be a scale from 1-10 based on customer experience or they could have a comprehensive list of questions. However they are designed, it's important to always think about the data that they'll produce and how that data will be used in the future. Your business might get 85% happy face clicks, so what? You might get scored 8+/10 by 75% of the customers, well what about the other 25%? How will you act?
When designing customer satisfaction surveys, it's crucial to consider the specific metrics and insights you want to measure, and then select the appropriate survey type and questions to capture that data. Different question formats like Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES) each measure distinct aspects of the customer experience. Combining multiple question types can provide a well-rounded view of customer sentiment while allowing you to dig deeper into areas of concern through open-ended feedback.
- Organize high quality customer satisfaction surveys
- Measure customer loyalty
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Measure customer effort
- Measure customer intention to repurchase
- Consider using survey software
Why Customer Feedback Surveys are Important
There is, unsurprisingly, more to customer feedback surveys than simply gathering information. They have myriad different benefits and should be an important part of your company processes:
Customer feedback improves retention.
When it comes to business growth, there are few tactics better than focusing on customer retention. Answers, both positive and negative, from the survey can lead to an improvement in customer retention. If a customer feels positively about the service that they have received then they'll appreciate being asked for their feedback, will likely be willing to offer their suggestions on product/service improvements and will, vitally, feel that you genuinely care about how they feel. This feeling will drastically improve customer loyalty and will keep them coming back to you.
Actively soliciting customer feedback through surveys demonstrates that you value the customer's voice and are committed to continuously enhancing their experience. This proactive approach to gathering insights and taking action on that feedback is key to building trust, increasing satisfaction, and driving long-term loyalty. Customers who feel heard and see their input translated into meaningful improvements are far more likely to remain loyal advocates for your brand.
If a customer were to respond negatively there is still a chance that they will become a retained customer. A negative experience that is listened to, considered, discussed and then acted on proves that the company cares about their customers and customer experience. In a world where few companies genuinely do this, it could make all the difference.
Promptly responding to and addressing negative customer feedback is crucial for preventing churn and turning dissatisfied customers into loyal advocates. By demonstrating a genuine commitment to resolving issues and incorporating customer input, you can transform a negative experience into a positive one. This level of responsiveness and customer-centricity sets your brand apart and can be a powerful driver of retention and referrals.
Customer feedback helps build differentiation.
The truth of the matter is that many brands simply don't bother to ask for customer feedback, or if they do it's in a limited capacity. By taking the time to ask for customer feedback through a proper customer satisfaction survey the business will stand out from the competition. When it comes to referrals, chances are that people will mention interactions like this, that portray your company in a positive light, and therefore will all work towards a new customer coming onboard.
Proactively gathering customer feedback through well-designed surveys is a powerful way to differentiate your brand and build a customer-centric reputation. In an era where customer experience is a key competitive differentiator, demonstrating a genuine commitment to continuously improving based on customer input can set you apart. This level of customer focus not only drives positive word-of-mouth and referrals, but also helps attract and retain customers who value a brand that prioritizes their needs.
Customer feedback identifies potential brand advocates.
Customer surveys help you identify both the positive and negative experiences that are had by your customers. The negative feedback that you might receive certainly helps you resolve problems quickly through identification and action. The positive feedback allows you to see where you're doing well, and increase efforts in these areas to maximise potential conversions in the future.
Highly satisfied customers who provide glowing feedback through surveys can be identified as potential brand advocates to cultivate and leverage for marketing and referral efforts. These passionate promoters of your brand can be incentivized to share their positive experiences through reviews, testimonials, case studies, and referral programs. Turning your biggest fans into vocal advocates and brand ambassadors is an incredibly powerful marketing strategy that builds credibility and trust with prospects.
Brand advocates are like gold dust and should be identified and nurtured into a useful tool for your brand. They will, effectively, do a great deal of your marketing for you and they’ll deliver it with genuine emotion too, greatly benefiting your emotional marketing campaigns. Once identified, reaching out to them on a personal basis will go a long way to cementing a relationship with them. Going another step further and asking them to formalize a partnership with your brand will pay dividends in the long run.
Customer feedback improves customer service.
Gone are the days where customer feedback forms were received then neatly filed away for no-one to see again. In the age of social media and online, public reviews, customer feedback is visible for all to see. This forces the hand of brand's to offer better and better customer service, and to be seen to be doing so publicly.
Collecting customer feedback through surveys provides invaluable insights for optimizing customer service processes, training, and support resources. By analyzing survey responses, you can pinpoint common pain points, identify areas where service is falling short, and make data-driven improvements. This customer-centric approach to continuously enhancing service quality based on direct feedback is essential for meeting evolving customer expectations and delivering exceptional experiences.
The survey should explicitly ask customers what their experience was of the company during the process, what the follow up service was like and how it could be improved. As always, the answers to these questions should then be acted on. This data will be best used when broken down into smaller sections. The process of user segmentation allows you to get granular and understand why certain groups of customers feel the way they do. You may discover that onboarding is great but aftercare requires work, or you may discover that customers find it difficult to get in touch with certain departments during their subscription.
Segmenting customer feedback data allows you to identify service issues and optimization opportunities specific to different customer groups or touchpoints in the journey. This level of granularity is key to prioritizing improvements that will have the biggest impact. Combining survey insights with other customer data like support tickets and usage analytics can further pinpoint root causes and inform a holistic service enhancement strategy.
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How to Measure Customer Satisfaction
Gathering the results of the surveys is only really part of gaining an understanding of customer satisfaction, the real art is in measuring just how satisfied customers are through a series of metrics. Through organised collation of measurable data, you'll be able to actively track information about customer satisfaction on a quarterly, annually and beyond basis.
Establishing standardized customer satisfaction metrics is crucial for benchmarking performance, setting goals, and measuring the impact of improvements over time. Common metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES) each provide unique insights into the customer experience. Combining multiple metrics allows you to gain a multi-dimensional view of satisfaction levels across different touchpoints and stages of the customer journey.
Net Promoter Score® (NPS)
Net Promoter Score is typically applied to surveys which have a simple, one question style with a measurable scale. It is also used to measure the chance that your customer base is planning on referring you to their friends, family and network in general. Consider the question, "How likely are you to recommend our business to friends and family?" with a scale 1-10 applied, 1 being not likely at all and 10 being extremely likely.
While NPS provides a useful measure of customer loyalty and likelihood to recommend, it's important to combine it with other metrics that directly assess satisfaction with your product or service experience. NPS alone may not capture nuances in the customer journey or pinpoint specific areas for improvement. Pairing it with transactional surveys using CSAT or CES can provide a more comprehensive view of the overall customer experience.
In this instance the scale is divided into 3 core sections, those who score 1-6, those who score either 7 or 8 and those who score 9 or 10. These sections are referred to as detractors, passives and promoters.
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Detractors: People who are likely to move away from working with your business and may be actively telling others negative feedback about the brand.
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Passives: Those people who will offer neither positive nor negative feedback. They aren’t likely to refer others but nor will they actively dissuade them from working with your brand.
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Promoters: Those who are so pleased by working with you that they will actively refer others to your brand.
To find out the actual Net Promoter Score (NPS) that your survey has concluded you take the percentage of promoters and subtract the percentage of detractors.
500 people were surveyed.
60% (300) scored 9 or 10 and are noted as promoters.
20% (100) scored 1-6 and are noted as detractors.
This means that the NPS is 40 for that time period. The following year the same survey can be issued and one can measure whether there is an improvement or not.
This information can drive certain marketing elements, focus improved customer service and enhancements to individuals scoring as a detractor and incentivize those acting as promoters.
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
CSAT provides a straightforward measure of customer satisfaction with a specific transaction or interaction. When using a CSAT you simply tally how many customers have scored each number and look at the trends applied. Tracking CSAT over time can reveal trends in overall satisfaction levels, while analyzing scores across different customer segments or touchpoints can pinpoint areas of strength or opportunities for improvement.
Combining CSAT with other metrics like NPS and qualitative feedback data provides a more holistic view of the customer experience.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
A slightly different approach to customer satisfaction, rather than scaling on satisfaction the survey focuses on how easy the process was with your brand. Questions such as "How easy was it to (complete an action) today?" are then scored using the Very Difficult through to Very Easy scale.
CES provides valuable insight into the level of effort customers need to expend to accomplish tasks or resolve issues with your product or service. High effort experiences can lead to frustration and dissatisfaction, even if the end result is achieved. Tracking CES alongside other satisfaction metrics allows you to pinpoint potential friction points in the customer journey that may be impacting overall perceptions of your brand.
The outcome is an understanding of the process the customer has to go through. If they're scoring it as very difficult or difficult, it could indicate that the process is too convoluted, people were getting frustrated or lost and generally having a bad time. This could lead to losing customers or worse, they tell others not to bother with your brand as it's too much hard work.
Low CES scores signal opportunities to streamline processes, improve user experiences, enhance support resources, and remove unnecessary friction points. Addressing high-effort areas proactively can prevent customer frustration from compounding and negatively impacting loyalty and retention. Combining CES data with other voice of the customer insights like support tickets and usability testing can pinpoint root causes and inform experience optimization efforts.
Types of Customer Satisfaction Questions
Incorporating a mix of question types in your customer satisfaction surveys is key to gaining a well-rounded understanding of the customer experience. Quantitative metrics like NPS, CSAT, and CES provide a standardized way to measure and track satisfaction over time. However, combining these with qualitative, open-ended questions allows you to capture the "why" behind the numbers and uncover deeper insights into customer needs, pain points, and potential areas for improvement.
Binary Scale Questions
Questions that have a straight yes or no answer. This eliminates the fairly useless middle scores and forces a direct answer.
Did we solve your issue today? Yes or No
Multiple-Choice Questions
The classic grade school test of customer satisfaction questions. Normally limited to 3 or 4 possible answers, the closed options gives you a clear and easy way to measure the results without ambiguity. That said, scales using the 1-10 or 1-5 scale are still classed as a type of multiple choice question.
Rather than scales multiple choice questions may also get users to complete a sentence such as “When I purchase (product) I find that____” with multiple choice options after.
Rating Scale Questions (Ordinal Questions)
Ordinal meaning a series of numbers, these are the questions that are followed by a simple scale of rating 1-5, or 1-10. Questions can then be measured using NPS or CSAT.
Semantic Differential Questions
Created in a similar way to binary questions but with more of a sliding scale. So they’re almost a hybrid of binary and scale based questions. The user is provided with two opposites such as Inefficient and Efficient. Between the two words is a dotted line where the user marks their feelings.
The concept has been found to allow people to more accurately note their experience and can be interpreted in various ways. The usual way to measure semantic differential questions is with binary results focusing on positive and negative feedback, with the central line being neutral.
Open-Ended Questions
These are questions to ask when you aren’t looking to achieve genuinely measurable results. They give you a more holistic view of how your customers are feeling but as the questions are open, the answers are too varied to accurately measure feedback.
Instead of quantitative results, you are presented with a set of qualitative results which can give important insights into customer journeys and interactions across the process. When customers present genuine issues you have the opportunity to resolve them on an individual level, you may also spot a trend allowing you to create a fix on a wider basis.
The 7 Best Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions to Try
- Did our support satisfy you today? Yes or No
- Binary CSAT - This figure should, of course, be highly positive, if it’s not that’s a red flag that an issue needs to be resolved immediately.
- How well is [product or service] working for you? 1-5
- Rating scale CSAT - The answers can create follow up questions depending on whether they score 1-3 or 4-5. This question can be asked at multiple points in the customer lifetime, when they first purchase, quarterly and annually.
- How likely are you to recommend our product to your network? 1-10
- NPS - As this question is asking about referrals it makes sense to use the NPS system to deal with the data. Generally, it is worth waiting a quarter before asking this question.
- Was it easy to resolve your issue today? Very Difficult to Very Easy
- CES - Here the question focuses on customer effort and allows you to understand the customer experience for that particular interaction.
- How would you feel if you couldn’t use [product or service] anymore?
- Open question - This gives you some emotional opportunities, you can also find out if anyone is signalling as a brand advocate.
- How old are you?
- Simple Quantitative - It might seem obvious but questions of this type allow you to segment customers into specific demographics.
- How can we improve [product or service]?
- Open question - This question could have endless answers, but if a trend develops it might offer genuine opportunities.
Key Takeaways
Customer satisfaction surveys offer your customers the opportunity to tell you how they really feel. Sure they can be scary but they can pay dividends and massively improve your business should they be acted on.
- Don’t just ask and forget, analyse and act on the answers given.
- Asking customers how they feel can massively impact customer retention.
- Survey customers in a variety of ways to gain true insight.
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