Bake your customer feedback surveys to perfection
In this season of thankfulness, we’re serving up this blog stuffed with Thanksgiving analogies because, darn it, we can. We can all agree there’s nothing like a home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner. When you use the best recipes and ingredients, everything works harmoniously together.
Creating customer feedback surveys should be handled the same way. You need to get your recipe just right to ensure you don’t overdo it or burn the dinner rolls. (Gasp, not the dinner rolls!)
Do your research before you step in the kitchen
Would you spend hours making a meal for a group of strangers having no idea what they liked, if they had diet restrictions, etc.? It doesn’t matter how hard you worked on the meal; there’s a good chance it may not go over well with your guests. Why? Because like understanding customer satisfaction, proper research matters.
Wait, what comes first, the information or the survey? While there may be some unanswered questions you hope to answer, you should be aware of the basic customer facts.
Customer basics that always apply
Let your experience as a consumer guide you when you start drafting your survey. There are basic areas you might want to understand when surveying your customers, including:
- How you are delivering against your organization’s mission
- Quality, price, and value of products or services rendered
- Pricing elasticity
- Problem resolution success and timeliness
- Suggestions for improvement
- Likelihood to recommend
- Overall customer satisfaction
Ten tips for cookin’ up customer feedback surveys
You’ve sat through the appetizers long enough. It’s time for the main course. Here are ten pointers to help you season your customer satisfaction survey the right way.
- Keep your survey questions short and sweet. If it’s not clear just reading it once, it’s not clear enough.
- Make sure the questions you are asking align with your goals.
- Refrain from overstuffing the number of questions in your survey. You don’t want customers to “abandon ship” halfway through the survey. (We’ve all done it.)
- Ask one question at a time. Remember, we want to keep this process as easy as pie for the customer.
- Avoid loaded and leading questions. If you truly want honest and helpful feedback, you show you aren’t biased.
- Simple yes/no questions are your friend. They’re easy to answer and provide clear-cut data on ways you can improve. If they wish to tell you more, give customers a space to type an optional message.
- Timing is everything. Selecting a time that is too late or early can greatly impact the response rate. Pick a proper time in the sales journey to send your customer feedback surveys. Research shows that survey response rates peak in the mornings between 9-11 a.m. and afternoons between 1-3 p.m. While weekdays typically perform best for B2B businesses, weekends can perform exceptionally well for B2C companies.
- Remember, customers are doing you a favor by offering free feedback on how you can be better at what you do. Rewarding them with a small gift, discount code, etc., is a-okay, but if the reward is too rich, it may sway your results.
- Consider using the Likert Scale for questions you feel need more of a range than the typical yes or no.
- Have fun. Implement your brand’s voice and tone when drafting your survey questions. If you don’t find the survey fun or interesting, the customer won’t enjoy it either.
