How to Create an Effective Customer Feedback/Experience Survey
Knowing what’s on your customer’s mind is very crucial for the future of your organisation. A properly created Customer Feedback Form or Survey can always bring you the much required brownie points in forms of increased customer satisfaction and therefore more customer retention or loyalty. Remember, you can only sell, resell, up-sell or cross-sell your products or services to your customers till the point you keep doing the way they like (no pun intended)!
With the right Feedback from your customers, your organisation can gain the insights that can prove to be really very handy to create the most satisfying experiences for your customers, thus, retaining your old customers and attaining many new ones. So, it is all the more important to create a proper, insightful customer experience survey to capture the response of your customers, perfectly.
Given below are some of the best techniques using which you can create just the right Customer Feedback Survey to know your customer satisfaction to the truest extent:
Create a Digital Survey Form:
‘Pen’ & ‘Paper’ have time and again proved their worth for the real feel that they give to the user while expressing his or her thoughts. Having said that, in today’s day & age, pen and paper are the tools of the man from the ‘mediaeval era’. In modern times of smartphones, PCs, tablets, etc. you cannot really meet your goals if you ask your customers to ‘pen down’ their feelings about you. With digitally created surveys, which are easy to fill and share, you can not only get more people to respond to your questions, but also get all those reports & analysis results right away.
Don’t Give a Miss to the ‘KISS’ Formula:
“Keep it Short and Simple” is the real rule to follow for any feedback form. While creating your form, make a mental note of the fact that nobody wants to spend a good 20 – 30 minutes discussing what you might improve in your product so that people can like it more (or you can sell it more). If your survey is going to look like some serious work, all you will be able to get out of your customers is incomplete or hurried answers. So quite obviously, you must ask them only a few well-drafted questions, typically between 5 to 10, to get any ‘real’ answers.
Ask Only What you Need:
Well, as difficult as it may sound to keep your questionnaire short, it can actually be achieved with one simple tip. Use only the questions that give you the right metrics to use for your products/ services. In other words DO NOT ask a question that doesn’t serve a purpose and that your business can manage to live without. Save any time you can on extra questions and instead, focus on fewer, tighter and clearer questions which get you to the decision you’ve been planning on the basis of the survey, right on!
Use a clever Combo of Open- & Close- ended Questions:
While neither you can allow your customers to go on & on with their appreciation or criticism (yes, be ready for that too) about one specific feature of your product; nor they will, considering the time issues. So, yes, you might need to use a handsome amount of rating scales & multiple choice questions to get those precise answers. But, it is your customers’ reason for a particular response that might actually surprise you and help you at the same time. And therefore, dear research comrades, using a combination of both close-ended and open-ended questions is the perfect strategy for winning the game.
Say Yes to Pre-selected Answers and No to Compulsory Fields:
One of the things devised after online surveys or digital surveys came into being, which has helped increase the survey response rates is – pre-selected answers! It saves time for both you and your responders therefore, making life a little more easy. It won’t work with everyone, for sure, but, you are sure to get more responses & feedback when majority of questions have pre-selected answers. Also, while looking for reasons for a response through text fields, try not to overdo it by making them compulsory. It will simply turn off your responder for good, so you better do your homework so that you serve them the right mix!
Don’t Forget to Split Up:
Now, you understand that you need to ask your customer only the relevant questions example about the quality of your product and after sale services. So, far so good! But also get this – the feedback form should reflect the bifurcations of the questions explicitly. You must ask them about their satisfaction with the product and the services in two distinguished questions, so that even your analysis reports clearly show what your customers like better in you. Also, note that the nature of the questions needs to be changes based on the user experience. For instance, you can’t obviously ask a customer about your After Sale Services, who has just purchased stuff from you.
Act and React on Customer Feedback:
When you go by the books to create a customer satisfaction survey, you are sure to get responses that count. And when you do get the right kind of answers, you can take actions so as to correct all the ‘wrongs’ in your product and reinforce your customers’ faith in your brand. But do not forget to convey to them that you heard them, in the first place. A customer who knows that someone is willing to listen on the other side will always be more willing to give honest feedback. Not many surveyors take care of this, but responding to your customers’ response and hence ‘closing the loop’ is the key to a successful customer survey.
