How helpful are customer satisfaction surveys? It depends on who you ask. After all, just as a dissatisfied customer is more likely to go out of their way to make a complaint, satisfied customers may be more likely to skip a survey or give up in the middle if it’s too long. Those customers got what they needed and they’re ready to move on – asking them for more than one or two points of feedback might just be asking too much. That doesn’t mean customer satisfaction surveys can’t be useful, though.
No, when it comes to gauging customer satisfaction, there are several factors that determine whether you get valuable feedback. Whether you’re trying to understand their big picture experience with your company or how much they liked a given product, you’ll want to focus on these 5 survey principles.
Automate It
As a business, there are countless moments when you can seek customer feedback, but certain times are more important than others. Make sure customers have a chance to give feedback after brief service interactions by launching simple satisfaction surveys using your onsite chatbot. Chatbots are already a valuable tool for improving the customer experience; by reducing service wait times, and by offering immediate service feedback, you ensure customers can respond when your brand is on their mind.
Make It Mutual
Among the different types of customer satisfaction insights brands regularly seek, those that look at the broader customer experience tend to be the most in depth – and the least likely to be completed. They’re also some of the most important, since they can help you understand customers’ big picture experiences, rather than just receiving feedback on a single service or interaction. To encourage customers to complete these surveys, make it mutually beneficial; reward customers who complete the survey with a coupon code, a relevant download, or other small offering to get more information.
Understand The Sales Cycle
Customer needs and experiences vary widely depending on where they are in their journey with your brand. Depending on what type of products or services your company offers, you may see a lot of repeat customers, customers who are growing with your products, or customers who primarily deal in single sales. These differences matter, which is why it helps to develop customized surveys based on sales touchpoints. This can help you understand if there are problems with specific processes, where you might be losing customers, and makes for more valuable feedback.
Combine Key Insights
Customer satisfaction feedback offers just one way of understanding consumer needs, which means that if you want to maximize its value, you need to combine satisfaction survey data with other consumer feedback. This can help you identify groups of consumers you aren’t reaching, ways to expand your services without compromising your business models, and how you can keep up with the competition.
Add Some Nuance
You don’t want to ask customers too many questions, especially when it comes to long-form, written responses, but make sure your customer satisfaction survey goes beyond a simple star ranking. After all, what does five stars really mean? Sure, you can infer it means the customer is satisfied, but hit the three star mark and it’s hard to know if that means you did an average job or subpar one. The meaning is in the nuance – more detailed feedback, whether it’s additional ratings or a sentence or two about why the customer chose the rating they did.
Customer feedback surveys are just one of a wide range of tools in your company’s arsenal that can help you understand and serve your customers, but it’s important to make sure you’re getting the most out of them. Often, that means finding the narrow space between too few questions and too many, but with a little experimentation, you can hone a survey strategy that serves your company’s needs.
