Why should you bother?
Good customer service is the life blood of any business. Although new customers are very 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 – As a first step decide what the main objectives of the survey are, in that way you will be able to retain focus and find it easier to decide what questions to ask.
Analysis – Having completed the survey consider how you will analyze the answers.
Bare in mind that ‘closed’ questions (where the respondents are asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are easier to analyse than questions that are ‘open’ (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).
A lot 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.
It is important that before you publish the survey that you check that the questions you have asked will provide you with market research data that when analyzed 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 – 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 – Are you confident that you 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? Good businesses will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, politely, quickly and fairly.
If there are 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 ensure that all your staff are considered by your customers to be knowledgeable, courteous and helpful.
Location – Are you doing everything you can to ensure that your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical store, does it have good access and is it conveniently located?
Making it pleasant, making it easy – For a virtual business it is important to ensure that your website is easy to use and aesthetically pleasing.
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 fully match your customers’ requirements.
Value for money – Cheap or expensive is not always 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 to prevent any delays?
A good business 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 their gender, age group and where they live?
By understanding your customers more, the better your chances of correctly targeting your business.
Allow customers to state any concerns that they may have and the opportunity to provide their contact details so that any problems that are raised can be followed up.
What next?
Once the survey has been completed analyse the results.
Trends – Identify specific and common areas where the service is found wanting.
Ask yourself if any criticism is valid, be honest to yourself, is there anything that can be done to properly resolve, or at the very least, minimise the problem?
Training – Are all employees 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 who has completed a survey has raised a specific issue do all you can to ensure that their complaint is addressed.
Don’t squander the opportunity to resolve a problem and keep a customer.
Continuously Monitor – Based on the survey results make changes and then re-measure by issuing further surveys.
If you are concerned about customer satisfaction and would like to view a sample survey for a store that will demonstrate some of the above advice please view the Sample Customer Survey
