Customer satisfaction surveys measure how the products and services provided by a company meet or exceed customer expectations. These surveys are critical to predicting whether the customer will return and spend more, thereby affecting financial performance. Composing an effective customer satisfaction survey may seem simple, but it allows you to understand customer habits and their relationship with your business to return the results you seek. Properly constructed customer satisfaction surveys collect data that accurately identify the root causes of customer buying behavior, regardless of product, service, industry or market.
5 key steps to create customer satisfaction surveys:
1. COMMUNICATION
Communication will either make or break a sale, so this topic should be prominent in any customer satisfaction survey. Seamless communication is key in person-to-person interaction, email response time, effective phone conversations, and ease of selling. Customers not only want good communication with your company, they want to see that internal communication is great too. Your customers are the key to unlocking the secrets of effective communication, which results in increased sales for your business, so this should be an important focus of the customer satisfaction survey.
2. PRODUCTS
Products drive your bottom line, and knowing how they fare is integral to your company’s success. Researching input on the customer satisfaction survey will keep you updated on the quality and attitude surrounding the products you sell. Use questions not only about the product itself, but also about the purchase and the overall customer experience. Has the product been accurately described?
3. SALES PROCESS
In addition to product or service information, ask customers to provide feedback on the sales process and customer service received. Will the customer buy from you again? Was it easy to navigate the website through all the steps of the sale? Have the questions asked been promptly answered? Through questions like these, it is possible to predict the likelihood of customer return.
4. WEBSITE
Is your website slow and difficult to navigate? If so, you may turn off potential customers before they even know what your business has to offer. Knowing the speed, appearance and ease of navigation of your website through the customer satisfaction survey is the easiest way to turn potential customers into loyal ones.
5. CONDUCT OF EMPLOYEES
Finally, a customer satisfaction survey should include questions about the customer experience with employees. If every stage of the sale was successful, but the interaction with an employee was poor, it could drive the customer away before a sale is complete and 91% of dissatisfied customers will never return . The power of word of mouth shouldn’t be overlooked, and receiving feedback via a customer satisfaction survey will help you understand your customers ‘honest opinion about your employees’ behavior.
