PMcrunch

Why 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 is likely to win many more customers through recommendations and remember, if you are not taking care of your customers, your competition will.

Online customer satisfaction surveys 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 – When the survey is complete 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).

Much 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.

After you have drafted your survey read through the survey from a market research view point and check that you are asking the right questions in the right way and that with the feedback information you will be able to properly analyze the data allowing you to 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 be prepared to accept criticism.

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 should you ask?

Depending on their own particular size and makeup each business is likely to have unique factors in relation to providing good customer services however there are common areas relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online store or a service industry. The following are key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication – Are you confident that you make it easy for your customers to contact you?

When a customer telephones is the phone answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services properly handled? 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 customers 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 courteous, helpful and knowledgeable.

Location – Do your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical store, is it conveniently located with good access?

Making it pleasant, making it easy – For an internet business it is important to ensure that your website is aesthetically pleasing and easy to use.

Regardless of the store being a bricks and mortar or purely an online internet store, 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 make sure 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 equate your business with value for money, if not, why not?

Speed and attention – Regardless of the type of business most customers will want to be dealt with quickly but attentively.

Are you doing everything you can to avoid delays?

Good businesses will try to treat each customer as an individual, does yours? Customers appreciate attention but only if it leads to a quick and satisfactory resolution of the query.

Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example what is their age group and where do they live?

The more you try to understand your customers the better you will be able to target your business.

For customers who have specific problems allow them to provide details and contact details.

What is next?

Having completed the survey analyze the results.

Trends – Look for common and specific areas where the customer service is found wanting.

Ask yourself honestly if any criticism that you receive is valid and if there anything that can be done to resolve or minimise the problem?

Training – Are all employees properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?

Where customer service training programs have been implemented have they had the desired effect and improved the customer experience?

Follow-up – If a customer who has completed a survey has raised a specific issue ensure that they are contacted and their complaint addressed.

Don’t lose an 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 interested in tracking customer satisfaction and would like to see a sample survey for a store that demonstrates some of the above advice please view the following example that can be used as a customer satisfaction survey template.