If you are a business, you have customers. Are you a small, medium, or large business? Do you sell to businesses, consumers, or both? Guess what. It doesn’t matter – you still have customers.
Another thing you have if you are a business: the desire to be successful. But what’s the best way to be successful?
That’s right – to have happy and satisfied customers. Satisfied customers do three very important things:
- purchase your product and/or use your service
- eagerly try your new products and services
- tell everyone else about you, bringing you new customers
Dissatisfied customers do none of those things and, at best, you lose their business. At worst, they take away potential business by “bad mouthing” your company.
So how do know if you have satisfied customers?
You take surveys:
face to face surveys- phone surveys
- online/email surveys
People like to talk about themselves and the things they do, like, and dislike, and since surveys offer people this opportunity, they work well. One thing to remember: the best time to ask your customer questions is as soon as possible after the customer transaction. That allows the customer to respond to your questions with more detail, giving you more valuable information.
While you can ask any questions you’d like on a customer survey, there are certain basic questions whose answers will benefit you the most. Some ideas are:
- How satisfied are you with the good(s) or product(s) you purchased?
- How satisfied are you with the service you received?
- How satisfied are you with the company as a whole?
- How likely are you to make another purchase from the company?
- How likely are you to recommend the good(s) or service(s) the company offers to friends/family/coworkers/etc?
- How likely are you to recommend the company to friends/family/coworkers/etc?
These questions typically offer answers that fall on a scale; for example:
- How satisfied are you with the good(s) or product(s) purchased?
- How likely are you to make another purchase from the company?
You should also give your customer the opportunity to make further comments or suggestions and remember that the longer a survey is, the less likely someone is to fill it out.
Survey data is, of course, useless to you unless you do something with it. In order to improve your customer service or your product or your business, you must compile and tabulate the data from the customer satisfaction surveys.
Don’t feel like you have the time or resources for in-depth surveys? Check back next week for a post about how to use a shorter one called the “Net Promoter Score” instead.
