Regardless of where in the world the companies with the best customer satisfaction and positive feedback are located, they all have one thing in common that make them successful: they place high value on their customer satisfaction. In order to improve your customer satisfaction, you need to listen to and understand your customers. The best way to gain those insights is by getting it directly from customer feedback. But in order to measure customer satisfaction effectively, you will have to ask the right questions.
Customer Satisfaction Survey
As said above, feedback is key to understanding customers. A customer satisfaction survey is the best way to find out just how satisfied your customers are. It can also tell you if you need to improve your product or service and what you need to do to meet your customer’s’ needs and requirements. You are also able to identify the customers who really love your product and therefore are possible advocates.
Keeping customers satisfied can increase customer loyalty (and therefore your retention of existing customers), attract new customers (through positive word of mouth), and help you improve processes internally. In order to reap these benefits, it is vital to choose a customer survey software, through which you can incorporate a CSAT survey tool into your larger CX feedback strategy.
Wondering why you should have a larger CX feedback strategy in place? Check out our Future of CX 2023 report here!
It is not just about the right software, however, you need to make sure to ask the right questions to measure your customer satisfaction.
What are the right questions to ask in a customer satisfaction survey?
This depends entirely on your business and the services or products your offer. If you run a brick-and-mortar store with camping gear, your customer satisfaction questions will be different from an online store selling pet accessories. Your CSAT survey tool should allow you to focus on your individual needs and personalise your surveys. There are some universal customer satisfaction questions, however, which you might find useful for guidance:
- Are you satisfied with the quality of our product/service?
- How easy to navigate is our website?
- Why do you choose us over the competition?
- What do you suggest that we improve?
As you can see these questions cover various bases: from satisfaction with a product/service, to user-friendliness of the website, and suggestions for improvements to help avoid negative reviews and increase customer retention. These are only examples. You should make sure to ask questions that catch customers at different touchpoints along their customer journey: i.e. providing feedback after a purchase, or evaluating customer service after an interaction.
CSAT is only one aspect of CX. Different metrics will also allow to cover different bases of your overall customer experience, so have a look at our guide on CSAT, NPS, and CES: Your guide to choosing a CX metric.
General Guidelines
You can also see that questions can be posed differently. You can ask for feedback on a scale with close ended questions (How satisfied were you with the product on a scale from 1-10?) or invite free text answers with open ended questions (Do you have suggestions on what we can improve?). If you want to find out more about different question types, have a look here: Open vs. Close-Ended questions.
When it comes to surveys, well-written questions are key to collecting useful feedback and conducting proper measurements. Other than tailoring questions to your individual business, there are a few general guidelines:
1. Ask only questions that serve a purpose. Avoid unnecessary questions. The fewer questions you have the better the chance that your respondents will take their time to answer your questions.
2. Use clear and understandable words. There is a risk that your respondents won’t finish your survey if you use language that is too complicated or technical. Or they just give a random response as they haven’t actually understood the question.
3. Try to be as neutral as possible and avoid leading questions. Don’t ask “how do you find our professional sales team?” Instead, ask how the respondent finds your sales team. Period. No “professional”.
4. Ask your respondents to rate their answer if you want a better insight. Instead of using a yes or no question to ask if they find your staff friendly, you could ask them to rate the staff’s friendliness on a 0-10 scale. This way you get more detailed information about overall customer satisfaction.
Did you know that it is 7 times more expensive to get new customers than it is to keep an existing one? Furthermore, 78% say that they have left a company because of poor service and chosen a competitor instead. So start asking right questions to measure customer satisfaction with surveys and stay on top!
