Customer Satisfaction Survey: Proven Tips for HONEST Answers

Getting a read on customer satisfaction can be extremely hit or miss. Think about the last time you had a peek through your Yelp reviews, or check out the Google reviews of a restaurant you were thinking of trying out. I'm betting that you saw some pretty polarized opinions. Some of them were probably like, best lasagna of my life, don't even bother going anywhere else. And others were probably like, yo, literally, a bowl of SpaghettiOs would have been better than what I got. To which I say, don't be hating on Chef Boyardee saved my life many times as a young man, so you get the picture. What's the deal? Well, in a nutshell, it's because people tend to choose to leave feedback only when they're either over the moon or really upset. And that's not really helpful, to be perfectly honest, because most of your customers, they'll probably fall somewhere in between that the people who've had a decent experience but aren't likely to rave about it unprompted. You need a way to bring out their voices. And that's where customer satisfaction surveys come in. Today I'm going to show you how to create and deliver surveys that pull honest feedback out of a larger subset of your customers so you can unlock a gold mine of valuable insights which will help you improve your business and keep customers coming back for more more SpaghettiOs, everyone's favorite. And hey, if you want to follow along, check out our free customer satisfaction survey template linked in the description below. It's super easy to use, and it'll give you a head start on the most important basic questions, which you can then refine to better suit your business. Fantastic. So let's dive straight into our top tips for getting a response, because surveys are pretty useless without a reliable way to get people to, you know, actually take the survey. So first, keep your surveys short and sweet. While it can be tempting to ask every question under the sun, shorter surveys tend to have higher response rates. So focus on the most important questions that will give you the insights that you actually need. For example, say you own a clothing store. You might want to ask, did you find everything you needed, or was the selection of sizes adequate for your needs? Also, let people know how long the survey is likely to take to answer. And no cheating on this one. Be honest. This can be a great motivator for time poor customers. If they don't know how long the survey will take, they're more likely to ignore it. But if you can say, hey, we'd love it if you let us know how you felt and this survey will only take about five minutes of your time, they're more likely to give it a go. Another thing you can consider is offering incentives like a small reward for completing surveys. Little sprinkle on top can go a long way towards encouraging people to respond to surveys, which in turn will improve the quality of your data. So for example, you could offer a discount code for 20% off the next time they visit and added bonus that'll tempt them back again. It's a win win. Finally, and this is one that loads of people tend to forget, Ask for feedback at multiple touch points. Don't just rely on post purchase surveys. These moments can happen after a support interaction or a week after delivery. This can help you capture more detailed feedback and identify areas for improvement across the entire customer experience. You know, customer service, product quality, even availability of products and inventory. All those good things. Happy customers may also be open to having their testimony used in marketing, which can be a huge boost for young businesses. Don't forget to actually get permission before you use any of those reviews as testimonials, though an email would totally be enough. The important thing is to get their explicit permission down in writing. You should also tell the customer how you plan to use their testimonial, whether it be on social media, in a promotional video, or on your website or something else. Let's look at a real life example. Say you're a fashion retailer with an E commerce platform. What are some of the things you really need to know? Obviously you'll want to know whether people are happy with your products, but it's not just that, is it? As a retailer, you don't just want to know if folks enjoy your products, but also insights on the end to end customer experience. From ease of finding the desired product to checking out, the way you pose your questions affects the kind of answers you'll get in return. There are different types of survey questions and each is designed to prompt a different kind of response. The first is the binary scale question. These are simple yes or no questions. Are you happy with your new dress? Was the checkout process simple? Would you shop with us? Again? These questions are simple and fast to answer and they give you a quick barometer of customer sentiment which then can be used to optimize, for example, your webpages. Hopefully one of those webpages is about your new spaghettios dress as spaghetti straps. Literally. The straps are literally made out of spaghetti. I'd buy it. Say if people tell you they struggled with your checkout procedure, that's something you really need to know and fix. The next kind of question is multiple choice. You may remember these from all your favorite standardized tests in school. With these you offer three or more mutually exclusive options. This is useful to collect variables within a set list. For example, you might ask how often do you normally shop? What do you value most from your fashion brands? You can compare the customer satisfaction scores of various ages or buyer preferences, which can help you identify where you're succeeding or failing with different target demographics. Third, we have scale questions. Most customer satisfaction surveys use these. They're the ones that sound something like rate your buying experience on a scale of 1 to 5 or it was easy to find the item I was looking for on a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree. It's an intuitive and standardized system. Since these results come in a nice little numerical score, they can be useful for getting a quick idea of how customers feel and for tracking changes in customer satisfaction over time, which, as we all know, time is money. Next we have semantic differentiation scale questions. These are great for getting more nuanced feedback for for a particular topic. Rather than a simple yes or no answer, customers can choose from a range of options to indicate how they feel. They're similar to scale questions, but instead of the agree or disagree scale, you can label each end of the spectrum in a way that suits a specific need. For example, if you ask about pricing, they can slide a bar between great value for money and expensive. And finally, we have open ended questions. These are the ones that have a text box for people to type their own answers into and these are great for giving you a deeper understanding of the respondent's motivations and perspective. By asking questions like what could we do better? Do you have any additional feedback? Do you like the new Spaghettios dress? You can gather valuable insight into what drives customers behavior and identify other pain points that you may have missed. Just be careful not to overwhelm customers with too many open ended questions in one survey because that can lead to survey fatigue. Now you could have the best survey in the world let's literally on the globe. But it's absolutely useless if you can't get people to slow down and answer it. Once you've collected survey responses, it's time to analyze the data and make those results work for you. First, look for trends and patterns in the responses. This can help you pinpoint areas where your business is excelling and areas where there is room for improvement. This will help you focus your resources and efforts where they'll have the greatest impact. Then take action. Make changes to your business processes, products and services using the relevant feedback as a guide. This shows your customers that you value their feedback and are committed to improving the experience for them. Finally, thank customers and follow up to let them know their feedback was used and what changes are happening as a result. This helps to build trust and loyalty. It makes them know you're listening and committed to improving. Remember, collecting customer satisfaction server data is just the first step. The real value comes from analyzing the data and taking action to improve your business. So there you have it. Our tips for creating and delivering effective customer satisfaction surveys. If you found this video helpful, please drop a comment below. We read all of them and are always super excited to hear from you guys. Got something you want us to cover? Yeah, let us know pretty please. And don't forget to check out our free customer satisfaction survey template to get started. The link is in the video description below. Now if you'll excuse me, me and Chef Boyardee got some got some whipping up in the kitchen to do. You know what I'm saying? It's just gonna be a bunch of marinara fun everywhere. Pizza sauce. You already know what it is. Until then, I'll see you next time. I can't find this client info.

Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned. No out of sync spreadsheets or dueling databases.

HubSpot grow better.