Customer satisfaction surveys are a great way to gauge attitudes toward your brand. Are people receptive to your messages? Is the response positive, negative or neutral? The only way to truly find out is to ask. Through the answers your audience provides, you can discover happy clients to turn into promoters, unhappy clients and situations that need mending, and the overall level of satisfaction with your brand.
You’ve probably taken a customer satisfaction survey for brands you’ve had experiences with in the past. The survey either made you feel as if your voice was being heard, or felt downright pointless and unorganized. For this reason, asking the right questions is key to producing the best results and pushing your brand in the right direction.
Key Practices
When writing your customer satisfaction survey, there are some “do’s” and “don’ts” you should abide by to get the most out of this marketing technique.
- Don’t restrict multiple choices when selecting answers
- Don’t require responses to all questions
- Don’t ask too many questions (10 questions is a good guideline to follow)
- Don’t create long scenarios and ask your customer to type out a lengthy response. Their response should only require a simple click.
- Do remember why you’re sending this survey out. Make sure the questions on it reflect your goal
- Do offer a “mark all that apply” option for questions
Types of Questions
There are different categories of questions you can include with your survey. Which ones you pick will depend on the type of survey and what you wish to get out of the survey.
Dichotomous Questions
With these, you offer two possible answers such as Yes/No, True/False, Agree/Disagree. An example would be:
Multiple Choice Questions
Multiple choice questions are reserved for questions when customers may have several answers.
Likert Scale
The Likert Scale has five levels of responses ranging from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree.” You might phrase questions like this:
Open-Ended Questions
These questions let customers fill in their own responses, rather than selecting them. Be careful that you don’t add too many of these, and only use them if they’re needed to achieve the main goal of your survey. Remember, you want to make the survey experience as painless for customers as you possible can.
Why did you choose to purchase from [ Your Brand ] over alternative providers?
Semantic Differential
This rating scale is similar to the Likert scale, but it does a slightly better job of capturing customer attitudes. You get a better idea of who your happy customers are, and who your unhappy customers are.
Types of Customer Satisfaction Surveys
There are a number of approaches you can try when writing your customer satisfaction questions and survey. Keep in mind the goal, the types of questions, and the type of customer you’ll be targeting the survey at when deciding.
Product Surveys
These surveys ask questions about a specific product. More than likely, it would come in the form of an email workflow a few weeks after the user makes an online purchase. You might ask questions like:
- How would you rate the condition in which you received your product? (5 = Perfect, 1 = Poor)
- How would you describe your overall level of satisfaction with this product? (5 = Very Satisfied, 1 = Not Satisfied at All)
You might also ask questions more specifically related to the product and the user experience. Keep in mind the goal of the product survey. You want to ask questions that will reveal how your product is performing, and how your audience is responding to it.
Staff and Service Surveys
These are commonly found in restaurants, retail, phone stores such as Verizon, or any service-based company. For example, at the end of a meal in a restaurant, the server may ask you to fill out a brief survey on your receipt. It will probably ask questions such as:
- How was your service today?
- What was your servers name?
- Did your food arrive in a timely manner?
The goal of a staff and service survey is to see how well your team is representing you in front of your customers. You can get a good idea of how customers leave your business feeling. Do they feel respected? Did they have a good experience? Or are they feeling leaving grumpy and angry?
NPS® Surveys
The Net Promoter Score Survey℠ is a powerful tool for measuring customer satisfaction. Customers answer one question: “How likely is it that you would recommend our company (or product or service) to a friend or colleague?” Then the respondent gives it a score from 0-10, 0 being not likely at all and 10 being very likely. Respondents who fall in the 0-6 range are considered detractors, 7-8 are neutrals and 9-10 are promoters. You can use this data to get a good idea of customer attitudes toward your brand.
