Why bother?
Good customer service is the life blood of any business. Although new customers are important 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.
A customer satisfaction survey will 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 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 the respondent is asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are easier to analyse than ‘open’ questions (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).
A great deal will depend on the likely 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.
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?
By asking this question not only will the store receive good market research feedback on the facility they provide but they will also promote their facilities and advertise themselves as a family friendly store, even beyond those customers who have a specific need for the baby changing facility that has been provided.
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 questions 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 key areas to providing good customer service.
Communication - What do you do to make it easy for your customers to communicate with you?
When a customer telephones is their call answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services handled properly? A good business will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, politely, quickly 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 confirm that all your staff are perceived by your customers as being 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 aesthetically pleasing and easy to use.
Regardless of the store being a bricks and mortar or purely an online internet store, 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 – Not only should you measure the quality of the service that you provide but you should check that the products and services that you market are what the customer wants and closely match their expectations.
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 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? 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.
Within the survey allow customers to highlight specific problems and provide contact details.
What next?
Having completed the survey analyze the results.
Trends – Identify 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 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 lose 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 further surveys.
If you are concerned about customer satisfaction and what to view a sample survey for a store that will demonstrate some of the above advice please visit:- Sample Customer Survey
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