Why should you bother?
The life blood of any business is good customer service. Although you should try and attract new customers good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and encourage repeat business. With each satisfied customer your business will secure many more customers through word of mouth and you should always keep in mind that if you are not taking proper care of your customers there is always a competitor that will.
A Customer Satisfaction survey will help you not only identify problem areas but will also 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 - In addition to the objectives consider how you will analyse the answers having completed the survey.
Keep in mind that ‘closed’ questions (where the respondent is asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are easier to analyse than ‘open’ questions (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).
A lot will depend on the 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 advertise aspects of your service that your customers may not be aware of.
Before you publish the survey confirm that the questions you have asked will provide you with market research data that when analyzed will help you make informed decisions.
Then, from a marketing view point read through the survey, confirm 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?
In asking this question the store will hopefully not only receive useful feedback on the baby changing facility but they will also promote the store as being child-friendly even beyond the customers who actually require the facility.
Warts and all – to benefit most from a customer survey you need to avoid the temptation, in any way, of attempting to sugar coat the survey.
A well designed customer satisfaction survey will enable you to identify problems so that they can be addressed; regular customer satisfaction will prevent complacency and give you early warning on where you might be losing out to your competitors initiatives.
What are the questions you should ask?
Although 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 - Do you make it easy for the customer to contact you?
When a customer telephones is their call answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services handled properly? A good business 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 helpful, courteous and knowledgeable.
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 an internet business it is important to ensure that your website is easy to use and aesthetically pleasing.
Regardless of the store being a bricks and mortar or purely online web based store, is the store properly laid out and can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient detailed 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 rarely 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 you can to avoid any delay?
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 where do they live and what is their age group?
The more knowledge you have of your customers the more information you will have to better target your business.
For customers who have specific problems allow them to provide details and contact details.
What is next?
Analyze the results once the survey has been completed.
Trends – Look for common and specific areas where the service needs improving.
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 employee training programmes have been implemented have they made a positive contribution to the business and improved the customer service?
Follow-up – If a customer has raised a specific issue through completing a survey ensure that they are contacted and that their complaint is properly addressed.
Don’t waste an opportunity to resolve a problem and keep a customer.
Continuously Monitor - Make changes and then 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
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