For any business to succeed, keeping customers happy and satisfied is the key. Loyal customers can help transform your enterprise and magnify your revenue. However, to make your customers happy, you need to understand their needs, wants, and pain points. So, what can you do to know what your customers are thinking? Take a customer satisfaction survey!
Now, let us understand more about customer satisfaction survey and how you can execute them.
What is a customer satisfaction survey?
A customer satisfaction survey has a list of questions that are asked to the customers to know what they think of your business. Surveys help marketers to know the loopholes and the scope of improvements in their business. Customer satisfaction survey let the marketers understand individual users’ experience and their concerns. This can help businesses improve their product strategically and enhance user experience.
To stay ahead of the competitors, it’s vital to keep up with the technological pace of the market. So, to offer an excellent user experience marketers must conduct customer satisfaction surveys.
4 Types of best customer satisfaction surveys
In this section, we will discuss the different types of best customer satisfaction surveys that can assist you in understanding your customers better. Once you get more in-depth information about your customers, you can plan, re-design, and revamp your strategies accordingly. Below we have given the most effective types of survey that you can utilize to know your consumers better.
1. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
Customer satisfaction surveys are the simplest form of survey. They contain simple questions with binary responses such as yes/no or happy/sad face, etc. You can ask product survey questions like, “Are you satisfied with our product?”
Usually, the customer satisfaction index scores are high (in the 90% + range) but in case you see negative results, that means there’s an issue that needs your immediate attention. Make sure to review the website user experience survey results to ensure customer satisfaction.
2. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Net Promoter Score surveys ask the customers how likely they are to recommend your product/service to their friend or colleague on a scale of 0-10. Once you get the results, you can compare and examine the answers from (0-6 answers) to that of (9-10 answers). It will help you know your customer expectations and where your company stands. The higher the score, the more satisfied customers are with your services.
3. Customer Effort Score (CES)
The Customer Effort Score refers to the efforts that a customer needs to put to use your service or resolve an issue through customer support.
An example of a CES question is, “How easy was it to solve your problem?” You can typically give a 5-point scale with choices like ‘very tough’, ‘somewhat difficult’, ‘somewhat easy’, ‘very easy’, or ‘effortless’. Based on the customer satisfaction survey results, you can analyze the scope of improving your customer support.
4. Milestone surveys
Milestone surveys are sent to the customers after a specific period of time to know their experience. It helps you understand the customers journey and experience. A milestone survey can be time-based or experience based. A time-based customer satisfaction survey is sent after a certain time (30 or 60 days of sign-up) or as per the marketing analysis. An experience-based survey is sent after a user has completed a specific action, such as the onboarding process.
Related: Customer Satisfaction Survey
How to create a customer satisfaction survey? 6 types of questions to ask
Here, we’ll explain how to make a client satisfaction surveys and the different kinds of questions you can include in it. While there are a wide range of questions to ask your customers, asking the right questions is very important. Below we have given the 6 different types of questions that you can consider using in your customer satisfaction survey.
Multiple-choice questions
Multiple-choice questions are very easy and quick to answer for the respondents. Additionally, its results are easy to calculate and most users attempt it as it’s effortless. They are easier to answer than the open-ended questions where the users need to enter their responses manually. There are various types of multiple-choice questions, such as rating scale questions, nominal questions, binary scale questions, Likert scale questions, and semantic differential questions.
We have explained all these different types of questions for satisfaction survey:
1. Rating scale questions
Rating scale questions are also called ordinal questions. The answers to these questions are mapped onto a numeric scale, for instance, customer support rating on a scale of 1-5 or likelihood of recommending a product on a scale of 0 to 10 (NPS question).
Example
Would you recommend our service [company name] to a friend or colleague? (0-10)
2. Binary scale questions
In binary scale questions, the respondents have only one to two options to select from. For example, you must have seen ‘yes/no’ or ‘thumbs up/ thumbs down’ questions. The binary scale questions can help marketers to derive more accurate conclusions than subjective responses or rating scale answers.
Example
Are you satisfied with the customer support service?
(Yes/No)
3. Nominal questions
Nominal questions for satisfaction survey have different categories of answers, and each answer is unique. Apart from that, you can’t add numerical value to them. We have given an example below to help you understand the nominal questions better.
Example
Which of the following statements best describes you?
- A happy and satisfied customer of [Company name]
- Not a customer, but thinking of becoming one
- Don’t have a plan to become a customer anytime soon
4. Likert scale questions
You can use Likert scale questions to evaluate how your customers feel about your product or service. The highest number is displayed at the top to represent the best experience, whereas the lower value is displayed at the bottom. The highest or the lowest number showcases one’s extreme view, contrary to the middle value that indicates a moderate view.
Example
Do you agree that [company name] is a one-stop solution?
- Strongly agree
- Somewhat Agree
- Neither agree nor disagree
- Somewhat Disagree
- Strongly disagree
5. Semantic differential questions
Semantic differential questions are quite similar to Likert scale questions, as both use a 5 or 7-point scale. However, the semantic differential questions are descriptive and ask the customers to select the option that best describes their attitude or opinion on a particular subject.
Example
Did you find the information useful?
- Very helpful and informative
- Helpful and satisfactory
- Fair
- Barely helpful
- Not helpful at all
6. Open-ended questions
An open-ended question allows the respondents to answer in their own way and write whatever they want to. These questions are great for gaining customer insights as well as their ideas or issues. However, the data is a bit more confusing and challenging to process. You can also use a variety of techniques to analyze the open-ended questions.
Example
Would you like to suggest anything to improve our process? If any, please elaborate.
Best customer satisfaction survey questions to ask
Now, let’s have a look at the best customer survey question that you can incorporate in your next survey.
Question 1: How would you rate our customer support service?
Question type: CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score)
CSAT surveys give respondents only one to two choices to select from and the scores are usually high (90% +). In case you see an immediate drop, then it means your services need instant changes.
Question 2: Are you happy with our [product name]? (Scale 1-5)
Question type: Milestone survey
You should send out milestone surveys at the crucial points of your customers journey. For example, after signing up, after a few months of them being a customer, etc.
Question 3: Would you recommend our service [company name] to a friend or colleague? (0-10)
Question type: NPS survey question
Net Promoter Score surveys are best to conduct after a customer has experienced your product or service. You can take NPS surveys immediately or after a certain period of time of onboarding (after 3 to 6 months).
Question 4: How simple was it to solve your problem?
- 1- Very difficult
- 2- Difficult
- 3-Neither difficult nor easy
- 4-Easy
- 5-Very Easy
Question type: Customer Effort Service (CES)
You can ask this type of question once you have resolved an issue or answered a query. This will help you to understand the complexity of the users’ experience and the whole support you provide.
Best customer satisfaction survey questions to include:
Here we have given seven more questions for satisfaction survey. The answers to these questions can help you in offering your customers a finer experience.
Question 1: Do you have any ideas or suggestions for us? We would love to know!
Question 2: How can we improve to give you a ‘Wonderful’ experience?
Question 3: Please describe your experience with [company name].
Question 4: What can we do to improve our service[company name]?
Question 4: Would you make your next purchase from us?
Question 5: What would make you purchase our product more often?
Got the response! Follow-up steps to take after a customer satisfaction survey
Once a customer has answered your survey, then what’s next? Well, we have given below the follow-up steps that you must undertake after a customer satisfaction survey.
Step 1: Thank them for their response
This is the most vital step after a client has taken your survey. You must thank them for their time and efforts. Your customers must know that their time and efforts are valued. This will encourage them to take the survey next time as well.
Step 2: Respond to the negative comments
You must follow up with the customers who have given any negative responses in the client satisfaction surveys. This way, you can start concentrating on the micro-level issues of individuals on a larger scale.
Step 3: Analyze the feedback
The feedback taken from the client satisfaction surveys is of no use if it is not utilized to address the concern of individuals. You must review the feedback and revert the customers with the answer for the same.
Step 4: Take every comment into consideration
For a business, every client is important, let it be a small or big budget client. Therefore, you must take into consideration every individual’s feedback and try to resolve their issue at the earliest. Once the issue is fixed, you can reach out to the customer and let them know about it. You can also request them to change their comment, rating or feedback.
Step 5: Pull the Andon Cord
As you know, any problem in the company setting can cause a negative mental effect on the employees and hurt them. According to a concept called the ‘Andon cord’ of the Japanese, if any employee is dissatisfied, they might pull the andon cord and affect the complete production.Thus, it is important that you pay attention to the problems of individuals. If you solve the problem of an individual, the entire production will start working effectively.
Step 6: Address the major issues
To start up with the evaluating process, you can segment the feedback as per their extremity. You can look up the issues that are more troublesome and fix them at the earliest. Try addressing the major issues first that are causing problems to maximum people.
Wrapping It Up
A customer satisfaction survey can help you understand your clients’ problems and requirements. Once you build a clearer understanding of your customers’ expectations, you can inculcate those and improve your overall user experience. Obviously, you won’t see the results overnight, but you need to be patient with your strategies. Make sure that your customer satisfaction survey scores keep getting higher and higher. A sudden dip in the client satisfaction surveys can indicate a macro-level issue. You must take the website customer survey periodically to identify problems that your customer might be facing.
If you’re looking to boost your website conversion rate, then you must focus on offering the best user experience. Taking smart surveys and polls can help you to know your target market better. Webmaxy customer satisfaction survey and polls feature can help you in getting the extra details of your visitors. You can get real customer insights and focus on their wants. Webmaxy Analyzer is trusted by many leading brands for achieving their business goals.
