What Makes a Customer Satisfaction Survey Successful
The need for a customer satisfaction survey could originate out of need for solutions to known problems or it could be conducted to ensure that a business’s customer base are indeed satisfied with their experiences and if not, then look for solutions to the problems the survey unearths.
Businesses have two choices when conducting a customer satisfaction survey – create a survey and conduct it themselves or to leave the responsibility in more capable hands. It’s the latter that’s generally the wiser choice of the two, and although there are some very small businesses with very small client bases that could feasibly handle the creation and conduction of a survey themselves, this however, is generally unfeasible for most business organisations.
Why leave customer satisfactions surveys to a customer intelligence agency
To illustrate why a customer satisfaction survey should be left in the capable hands of a customer intelligence agency, a successful survey should be created with attention paid to the following:
1. The survey’s audience
2. The survey’s cost
3. The survey’s definition
4. The survey’s timeline
5. The survey’s value
6. The team carrying out the survey
As you can see there’s a lot of work involved, though that’s far from the only reason why surveys should be carried out by an experienced customer intelligence agency.
Objectivity and neutrality
Objectivity and neutrality are issues that need to be addressed here because if a customer satisfaction survey was neither objective nor neutral it would be a failure, and perhaps a costly one.
For example, if you had your staff members asking your customers for a moment of their time to complete a quick survey, this would generally not prove to be at all objective or neutral, since the customer would naturally hold back when completing the survey because the survey is conducted by one of your staff members.
Therefore if you really want to know what your customers think about their experiences shopping or doing business with your organisation you need to have a neutral party conduct the survey.
Access to a variety of survey methods
Seeing that each and every business and its customer base is different to a certain degree, another key element of a successful customer satisfaction survey is access to a variety of survey methods.
This is a prominent reason on the part of business managers and owners for having a customer intelligence agency carry out their surveys for them because they’re simply unable to arrange for methods such as IVR (Interactive Voice Response) surveys, online surveys, paper surveys and SMS surveys to be used.
Continuous feedback
If a customer satisfaction survey is to be successful continuous feedback is required and this is yet another reason why business organisations find that it’s advantageous to leave the responsibility in the capable hands of an experienced customer intelligence agency.
A customer satisfaction survey should be a continuous endeavor because there’s a need to identify a problem, implement changes/solutions and then gauge the effect of these changes/solutions over time. Most business organisations don’t have the manpower required to carry out a customer satisfaction survey for any extended period of time.
Survey length, question balance and response rates
These are three of the most important aspects of a customer satisfaction survey and three prominent reasons for leaving the survey in the capable hands of an experienced agency, because it takes experience and in-depth knowledge to create surveys of a length that are going to achieve favourable response rates whilst still containing an effective question balance.
Short surveys achieve the best response rates but they still need to contain a favorable question balance so that they elicit responses which can be analysed and then answered with changes and solutions that address the issues identified.
A final word on successful customer satisfaction surveys
Due to the scale and scope of what is involved and required, the need for neutrality and objectiveness, along with the right survey length, question balance and response rates, it’s advisable for business managers to visit online websites to gain a better understanding of what’s involved in carrying out a successful customer satisfaction survey, one that results in the business successfully implementing changes/solutions that improve their customers’ experiences.