Every business is built on its customer’s loyalty and satisfaction. It is more likely that a satisfied customer will come back to buy your products or services and even recommend them to friends and colleagues. This degree of satisfaction is crucial for business growth in many different directions.
Customer satisfaction builds trust in your brand, helps to reach your target group, bring new clients (therefore, new profit) and makes you stand out from other similar companies.
If you are questioning what is customer satisfaction and how your business can benefit from it, this article is right for you. It will equip you with basic facts and tips on how to use the survey to find out the customer’s opinion, and when to use one.
Customer Satisfaction: What You Need to Know First
Customer satisfaction is a key factor in retaining customers and building their loyalty. Customers come to the company with certain expectations regarding the quality of the product or service, price, and level of service. Its success, financial and overall growth depend on how well the company manages to meet the expectations of its customers.
To put it simply, customer satisfaction (CSAT) is how happy the customers are after dealing with your company. When the customers are satisfied, it is more likely that they will make a second purchase. Satisfying the needs and requirements of existing customers is much cheaper than attracting new ones. Moreover, their loyalty to the company will also grow. Then, these loyal customers will advertise your product or service among their peers. Sometimes it can be more efficient than launching a marketing campaign on social media or television.
5 Reasons Why You Should Measure Customer Satisfaction
Usually, small startups ignore working with feedback or simply do not know when and how to do it. However, finding out the real opinion about your product or service is of great importance for the company’s growth. You can measure customer satisfaction in various fields and evaluate any aspect of your work. Later, you can analyze the answers and work on problematic issues.
Here are five of the main reasons to measure customer satisfaction:
- Satisfaction index can forecast future sales – If a customer is satisfied with a product or service, they are more likely to buy it again. Therefore, you can predict what will be in demand in the next several months and even in the longer term.
- Evaluate your success – It is always good to know what makes you stand out in comparison with other companies on the market. It works well for team spirit and motivates your employees to continue their great job. However, honest feedback will also show your weak points, which means that you know what has to be improved and developed.
- Set up new goals and develop new ideas – Sometimes customers’ feedback can show the real needs of your target group and what is in demand nowadays. They might be interested in a new product or service which you (or even anyone!) do not provide but it could be a new niche for your business. There can also be ideas which compile well with your current proposal.
- Customer satisfaction correlates with the company’s profit – Customers’ opinion is very important for forming your brand’s image and it affects your sales revenue. Negative feedback should never be ignored because it can easily destroy a company’s image built over the years. A happy customer will come back and will even bring new customers. More customers bring you more sales, therefore, more profit. It is as simple as that.
- Show that you care about every customer’s opinion – If you would like to get an honest opinion about your product or service, there is no better way than asking customers directly. Launching a customer satisfaction survey is a good tactic to show you really care and are open to communication. Moreover, if you take into consideration the suggestions and complains from your customers in order to improve, they will definitely appreciate it.
Customer Satisfaction Surveys: What Are They?
There are several methods and tools to effectively assess customer satisfaction and, if necessary, develop customer service, boost new marketing strategies and improve the quality of your product or service. One of them is a customer satisfaction survey form, which includes a set of questions to find out the customer’s opinion.
Nowadays, there are plenty of opportunities to conduct a survey of your customers. For this purpose, you can use both offline and online tools. To begin with, you have to identify the objectives of your survey and what exactly you would like to learn. Then, you have to write a set of questions and make sure that they really meet the objectives. After, you can share it with your customers and collect the data to analyze it afterward.
Top 10 Customer Satisfaction Surveys Use Cases
It all seems very abstract, doesn’t it? However, there are many world-famous companies which use best customer satisfaction survey tactics on a regular basis. All of them prefer finding out the customers’ opinions in a different way. Their customer satisfaction survey examples can be useful for creating your own survey and give you an overview of the questions you can ask.
1. Airbnb
Airbnb sends a simple email to those who found an apartment with the help of their website or application. In this email, the company thanks for using their service and asks whether their customers would like to evaluate their experience. It helps to receive feedback about booking services and to fix the bugs on the website or in the applications.
2. Facebook
Facebook has different algorithms for collecting users’ opinions. First of all, every user can leave their reviews of certain places, groups, organizations, brands, companies, etc. It helps to receive feedback from various customers from different parts of a country or even the world. Additionally, there is a scaled questionnaire which allows rating the quality of calls and video chats.
3. Twitter
Twitter took the next step in order to bring together companies and users. It provides an opportunity for companies to send a customer satisfaction survey to users mentioning the brand’s name in conversation and messages.
4. Skype
Without a doubt, Skype is the most popular and widely used online tool for calls and video chats. It would not have been so successful without taking into consideration its customers’ opinions. After every call made, it asks to evaluate the quality of the sound and video. If there are technical problems not connected with the internet signal, the Skype tech team is always ready to deal with the problem. It provides solid support, which is very important for users.
5. Netflix
Netflix is built on its customers’ preferences. After you watch a movie or a TV show, the service asks you to rate the product. Then, it collects the data and suggests similar content to its users according to their likes and dislikes or recently watched content. There are also numerous surveys about customer satisfaction where users can rate not only watched movies but also the interactions with Netflix itself.
6. Nimble
Nimble utilizes customer satisfaction surveys to better help their customers achieve their business goals. With the helpful input of our users, Nimble implements product updates to reflect the demand of our growing customer base. You ask, and we listen.
7. Slack
Slack’s development team cares a lot about their customers’ opinions. You do not have to open any surveys, you can simply write them a message with your complaints or suggestions. The team reads all the received reviews carefully and replies to all of them. This type of collecting feedback is good for the services which are still developing and would like to adjust their interface and features according to the needs and requirements of their target group.
8. Uber
Some companies have two main customer groups, like Uber, which works with both taxi drivers and passengers. Therefore, it is important for them to analyze the satisfaction of these two parties. To collect their opinions and feedback, Uber uses a rating system. After every ride, both driver and passenger evaluate their experience.
The collected data is visible not only to the company but also to other potential passengers and drivers. Both parties can decide whether they would like to accept the request from a certain user/driver when they have low rates.
9. Amazon
Amazon is the biggest online seller in Europe and beyond. It sells lots of different goods, from needles to laptops. It provides a tool with which every person who buys something can evaluate the quality and the information provided in the description. It helps the next customers to analyze other people’s experiences and decide whether they want to buy the product or not.
Additionally, Amazon has a customer service which deals mostly with reviews about the functionality of the website and the delivery.
10. Paytm
Recently, Paytm has deleted over 85,000 sellers from its database using customer satisfaction surveys and reviews. It appeared that among real sellers, there were numerous frauds who charged the money and refused to refund the costs if customers returned the bought tickets.
How to Create Your Own Customer Satisfaction Survey
A customer satisfaction survey template is a universal way of collecting information about your customers and their opinions about your work. To make the right conclusions which your company can use to improve, you must first create a correct survey.
All questions in the customer satisfaction survey sample should meet your objectives and aims. It is better not to ask anything just for the sake of curiosity. Make a draft with a list of topics/questions that interest you the most, discuss them with colleagues, brainstorm for more ideas. Then, choose the most important and indicative ones among them. Think in advance about how you are going to use the information collected.
You cannot change the survey structure or add questions once you’ve launched it. Therefore, take the customer satisfaction survey with the utmost seriousness and test it on up to five respondents (you can ask your employees or friends). Ask the test group to share their impressions after filling your survey, to indicate what is missing, confusing, or difficult. You will also notice which questions need to be asked differently, which options to add, or if you maybe need to change the questions’ order. You will also have an opportunity to check how long it takes to fill your survey. When it takes too much time, it is better to delete several questions and shorten it.
You can send your survey via email or as a link to a platform where customers can fill it online. Another option is to evaluate your services via phone. In this case, the phone call should not disturb a respondent in any way and be within regular working hours. If you provide services or sell products mostly on a local level, you can even organize a face-to-face meeting. It can be more expensive and time-consuming, however, customers can receive your feedback about their opinions immediately.
Small startups may face difficulties in conducting surveys and collecting the data. However, with a CRM system like Nimble, you can automatically send a customer satisfaction survey to your customers whenever they purchase your product or use your service. The system will collect the data and analyze the results for you.
4 Types of Questions to Include in Your Survey
The key to the success of a customer service satisfaction survey is including the right questions.
The questions should be simple, not confusing and not affecting the answer (before a mass launch, try the questionnaire on several customers). First, ask general questions and then move on to more specific ones. It is better to include difficult and personal data questions to classify the respondents according to their profiles at the end of the survey.
Each question must be checked to see whether it makes the necessary contribution to achieving the objectives of the survey and whether it is acceptable for respondents. Make sure the customers will not be bothered by the questions. Otherwise, you will reach the opposite effect. Instead of improving your products or services, you will leave your clients angry, puzzled and disappointed.
When formulating customer satisfaction survey questions, always put yourself in the shoes of a respondent. Avoid questions which may cause embarrassment, those which are too personal or require sharing commercial information.
Do not ask about something that does not exist yet, e.g. “How would you react if this product was sold in a pack?” First, you need to make changes, give people the opportunity to try it out and only then ask their opinion. Well, or at least visualize your innovations and improvements.
There are different types of questions which you can use in your customer satisfaction survey template. The most popular are yes/no (closed), open-ended, multiple choice and scale questions. Let’s take a closer look at them.
Yes/no questions
These types of questions are perfect when you need to create a simple questionnaire that will be easy to analyze afterward. Respondents also like them because they are quick. However, it will not provide you with lots of useful data. The best way is to combine yes/no questions with other types of questions.
Multiple choice questions
Multiple choice questions are very similar to yes/no questions but they provide several options to choose from. You can go deeper into your customer’s opinion. Remember that for this type of questions, you have to provide a wide range of possible answers (but not too many). This type suits you perfectly if you need to collect data about your customers and measure their satisfaction according to their age, place of residence, profession, etc.
Scale questions
Scale questions allow collecting data which you can easily score later. This type is suitable when you would like to learn the customers’ satisfaction degree connected with a certain aspect of using your product or service. For example, you can ask “How satisfied are you with our product/service?” And then suggest evaluating their experience from 1 to 10 where “1” is totally unsatisfied and “10” is fully satisfied. Then, you can visualize the results and see your weak and strong points clearly.
Open-ended questions
If you would like to collect more specific information and to go deeper into your customers’ opinions, it is better to choose open-ended questions. For you, these questions will be the most important, but for the respondents, they will be definitely the most difficult ones. That is why you should not include too many questions of this kind in your survey.
Do not place them one after another: mix them with other types of questions. Here you can ask something specific, like what could be improved, ask for suggestions, concrete opinions, detailed experience of using your product/service, etc.
Design Matters, Too
Customer satisfaction survey design is the key to success. A bad visual performance and messy structure of a questionnaire can negatively affect respondents’ feedback.
For a survey, it is better to choose the one-column structure. The color palette should be calming, the font should be readable and scaled enough for those who have eyesight problems. Make sure that the questions are visible: it is better to write them in bold to contrast with answer options. If your customer satisfaction survey template is online, activate the submit button after every question or a certain block of topics (depending on your survey type). It allows your respondents to focus on their answers and not skip the questions.
If you decided to print the questionnaires, do not print them on both sides of a paper, or make sure that both sides are readable. If the question is open, you need to leave enough space for a respondent’s answer. For yes/no questions, it is also better to include the answer option “other” and enough space for writing.
When and Where You Should Send Surveys
There is no universal answer to the question of when and where you should send a customer satisfaction survey. It all depends on the product you sell or service you provide. Sometimes, you can send it immediately after a customer’s purchase, but there are also cases when you have to wait before your customers can evaluate their experience with your company. The most important rule is that customers’ feedback has to be fresh, only in this case they can be honest and indicative.
You Got the Results: Now What?
The simplest recommendation is to use them! You invested your time and effort in finding out your customers’ opinions. The first thing you have to do is to summarize all the results and analyze them. However, do not take all the feedback literally and as the ultimate truth. The result of the customer service satisfaction survey is simply food for thought and it’s good for building new marketing strategies and improving your product or service.
It is important to inform your customers about the results of your survey (if it was not anonymous). If someone is dissatisfied and left negative feedback, you should contact them first. In this case, you can keep their loyalty and show that you take their thoughts into consideration. They will appreciate your readiness towards changes and improvement.
Every department in your company has to work towards improvement and contribute to customer satisfaction. If survey results show that your customer service is slow, rude and irresponsible, then you have to analyze the reasons and come up with ideas on how to make it better within the bounds of reason. When the problem is in the quality of your product or service, discuss it with the responsible department and identify the steps which can improve the issue. The greatest advice is to be open not only to nice feedback but especially to constructive criticism which aims to make you a better company.
Conclusion
Your research is a great opportunity to find out what customers really want. Customer satisfaction surveys help to find out if your offer is relevant and competitive enough on the market and what should be improved. If you want to know your target group’s real needs, you have to ask them and work with this information. Do not underestimate the feedback, because loyal customers are the most valuable unit for any kind of business.
