Best Survey Practices in Keeping Customer Satisfaction

The one basis on which a business is established, grows and flourishes is its customer. Having a satisfied customer is like a blessing from the heavens above, for it means that you are on the right track, and your service or the product is fulfilling its purpose. It is highly imperative for any business to maintain its flow of customers while simultaneously work to attract new ones, because customers are what can actually make or break a business. A company that has happy customers is rated successful, and in order to maintain that constant customer feedback is very important.

You need to know where you stand with the customers, what needs your product or service is catering to and if there are any areas that need to be addressed. Surveys are an extremely easy and productive way to find out how your customers are reacting to your product, what they are happy about and what changes they think should be further made. Measuring customer satisfaction is incredibly important for both product development as well as improving your company’s support.

Reaching Out to Customers Individually:

Individual level surveys are the best way to discover that whether the service you are providing is fulfilling its purpose or not. When every customer is addressed personally, you stand a higher chance of finding out what steps you may take to update, improve or maintain the value that your service is providing.

Every customer counts and having their feedback will help you to increase your chances of growth and success.

Efficient Customer Care Service Department:

Companies can provide a complaint number on their products which can be toll free and make sure that it is attended by smart and customer-savvy, people-friendly type of employees who would not only answer the calls instantly but formulate satisfactory replies and make the customer feel heard.

Also, companies should strive to make the connection instant and avoid long holds and many call transfers as customers generally do not like to wait around for too long. The clearer the connection is, the stronger your relationship will be and the longer it will survive. Many reports have shown that the maximum amount of time people tend to wait on hold is 5 minutes, after that, you may lose your potential customer!

Using Mobile Friendly Surveys:

Another way to gain customer feedback is through mobile apps, which is the latest way to reach people anywhere they are. That is why surveys should be mobile friendly and responsive nowadays. It is not only a cheaper and faster means to get to people; it is also the next step because technology is turning the tide everywhere.

Though it is still in its early stages, this method is sure to gain popularity as it enables companies to reach people at all times, and though it may not be the way to go for older generation, but youngsters are sure to reply through here if nowhere else! So if your target customers are the youth, this is really one sure way to get their feedback because it is just one more excuse to use a smart phone!

Creating Survey Forms:

This is another good way to generate customer feedback, and they can be easily mailed or emailed to every customer, as emails are faster and cheaper, people would readily participate in the survey instead of ignoring it as a time consuming hassle. As many people do not have the habit to come back to the store and return their unsatisfactory product, or register complaints; through a home delivered or emailed survey form they will not feel it a tedious task.

Meticulous Survey Making:

Surveys that are conducted should be designed with utmost care, keeping them precise, simple, and quick to take and to the point. For instance a survey should be designed with simple questions with varied multiple choices for answers so that the customer would not have to think too much to give his desired feedback. Understand the class and quality of the people that are your customers and then address them at their level. Offer them 4 to 6 choices starting from “highly satisfactory, satisfactory, not satisfactory and highly unsatisfactory” so that you may be able to gauge their level of comfort or discomfort.

Also a good survey should include customers’ opinions on how to improve the existing quality, and inquire after the alternative people use for your product. You can simply ask which product is better than yours so that you may be able to beat the competition. It is also imperative that you immediately respond to any complaints or opinions that are shared with you via surveys and feedbacks, so that the customer will feel like they actually are important to you. A few consumer studies have even noted that 50 percent of consumers give a brand one week to respond to a question before they stop doing business with them. But you should not wait that long. Exceptional service is a way to stand out from the competition and the best companies are constantly looking for methods for improvement.

The Next Step …

Once you analyze the responses thoroughly it becomes easier to figure out the percentage of positive and negative feedback. If you know what your customers expect from you, it logically follows that you will be better able to offer them an enjoyable experience. So make an effort to discover the expectations of your customers in terms of both service and products in order to ensure that you’re meeting their needs.

If you are not meeting your customers’ needs, find out where the problem is occurring. Is the product not what it was advertised to be? Or was there a management issue, did the service put them off? Were the sales representatives not helpful and friendly? What made the customers’ experience an unhappy one that they would not want to return to your store? You need to take a step back and consider all aspects based on the survey results, address every part of your organization to make it better, even if the survey is a good one. Learning how to manage your employees better will undoubtedly have a positive effect on your customer service.

When all the employees work together as team, as a single unit that strives to achieve a single goal; customer satisfaction, it will be guaranteed that your company will not only retain its existing customers but also attain new ones.

Once the surveys are done and you have a fair impression of what your customers really want, how high or low were you rated, it is time to take steps towards improvement. Strive to make yourself smarter, better and closest to what a customer wants from your service.

Net Promoter Score

To have a good enough response that would enable you to really assimilate the correct numbers, use the Net Promoter Score system which helps in segregating the customers who are likely to recommend your company to other customers, hence it helps clarify the percentage of satisfied and unsatisfied customers. Because that is the highest level of loyalty a customer can show your company; that it brings you other loyal customers.

Now that you know your promoters from your detractors, you need to figure out the reason behind the unsatisfied customers’ complaints, and pay equal attention to all areas of your product or your service that is producing such results. Maybe the customers had to wait for a long time to get to the product, or maybe there wasn’t enough supply to cater to the large numbers. It could also be because of some management issue, the staff wasn’t cooperative or friendly, and any number of reasons can be behind the failure of your product or service.

To nip the problem from the bud, we need to read into the customer’s replies to our surveys, and address their queries seriously. Simply put, you need to have a strong read on your overall quality of service, especially as it pertains to fulfilling customers’ needs on a regular basis and creating the sense that your company is reliable. Customers are the backbone of a business. If they are not happy, your business cannot flourish.