Customer satisfaction is essential to the success of a business. Without satisfied customers, you’ll constantly be having to chase down new customers, which could be an even harder task with all those negative comments flying around from dissatisfied customers.
But how do you know whether or not a customer is satisfied with your service? You can’t just guess or assume when it comes to customer satisfaction. It should be an empirical measurement of satisfaction levels. Read on for some different methods of measuring customer satisfaction as well as some useful questions you can use in your customer feedback surveys.
How to measure customer satisfaction
It may sound too simple, but the best way of figuring out how satisfied your customers are is to ask them. Surveys and questionnaires are simple for you to create and for your customers to fill in, making them a great method of collecting customer feedback.
Single question surveys
There are some popular feedback methods that use just a single question, such as Net Promotor Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction Rating (CSAT). By using just one question, you increase your response rate as customers can complete the surveys in a short amount of time. When you collect multiple responses, you can start to see trends in the satisfaction levels of your customers.
Longer form surveys
The other option is to create a longer survey with multiple questions. With this, you can collect more data and richer data on different aspects of your business and the customer experience you provide. But then, the risk is that people won’t complete the survey or will rush through it, giving inaccurate responses. So, it’s important to keep your surveys short and engaging.
9 questions to include in your customer satisfaction survey
Whatever type of customer survey you decide to use and how often you decide to send it, you’ll need some questions that will get you the most valuable insights possible without discouraging customers from completing it.
Surveys that are too long and complicated are likely to be abandoned. So, although we’re going to list 9 great questions you could ask, we’re not saying you should necessarily ask all of these in one go. Pick a handful of questions that are most relevant to your customers and their experience with your business.
1. How satisfied were you with your experience today?
It can be easy to overthink this kind of material, but it’s best to go straight in with the straightforward questions. You want to find out how satisfied your customers are with their experience, so ask them. This question can be asked on a scale from 1-10, with 1 being completely dissatisfied and 10 being completely satisfied. Or you can ask it using text responses, such as the following 7-point scale:
- Completely satisfied
- Satisfied
- Somewhat satisfied
- Somewhat dissatisfied
- Dissatisfied
- Completely dissatisfied
2. How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?
This is the key question used in a Net Promotor Score survey and is typically measured on a scale from 1-10. It’s an incredibly useful question because it measures both satisfaction and loyalty levels. If a customer is satisfied with your service, then they are likely to recommend you to others. So, a high score for this question is extremely positive and tells you a lot about your customers.
3. How easy is it to navigate our website?
Since customer satisfaction is based on the entire customer journey, it is important to assess various touchpoints your customers have with your brand. This includes your website, whether or not you use it for selling your products. This is a straightforward question that can be asked using a number or a text scale, ranging from very easy to very difficult. You should aim for a user-friendly website to make customers’ interactions with you as easy as possible.
4. Did you find everything you were looking for in-store today?
A negative response to this question could point towards shortcomings in a number of areas. It could be that your stock is too low, the layout of your store is too confusing, or there weren’t any staff on hand to help the customer find what they’re looking for. So, it’s a valuable question that can help you improve your in-store experience for customers.
5. How helpful were our staff today?
Here’s another useful one for companies with physical stores. It could also be used to assess customer service staff after an interaction online or over the phone. Your staff can play a big role in customer satisfaction levels, so make sure you find out how well they are doing in their positions. The option to provide additional information for this question can also be good, so that customers can specify a particular member of staff that helped them, if applicable.
6. How satisfied were you with our prices?
Prices might not always be the top deciding factor when making a purchase, but they can have a big impact on customer satisfaction. So, it’s a good idea to find out your customers’ opinions on the value of your products compared to their prices. If there is a largely negative response to price or value-based questions, then it may be time to re-evaluate your prices.
7. How would you describe our product/service?
The quality of your products or services themselves obviously plays an important part in satisfaction levels. There are lots of different ways you can ask for feedback in this area. This option allows you to get descriptive feedback to assess your products. The best way to do this is to provide a list of options, perhaps from adjectives that have previously been used to describe your products (both positive and negative ones). You should then also include an “Other” option, which allows respondents to fill in their own words or phrases to describe your product.
8. Do you have any additional feedback?
It’s always a good idea to include at least one open question such as this in your surveys. This allows customers to provide additional information about their satisfaction or dissatisfaction beyond the simple scale answers. You can then act on this information to improve your business. A question simply asking for any additional feedback gives the customer free rein to talk about any positive or negative aspect of their experience with your business.
9. What could we have done to improve your experience with us today?
This is another open question but with more focus than the previous one. Whether the customer was satisfied or dissatisfied, this question allows them to give constructive criticism that could help you improve your service. As well as helping to gather valuable information for you, it also shows the customer that you care about improving the customer experience for them.
What to do after collecting customer feedback
If you collect lots of valuable responses from your customers and then do nothing about the data you’ve gathered, then you’ve simply wasted everyone’s time. You should collate and analyse the data you receive and take action to improve the customer experience based on their feedback.
This will improve future customers’ experience, helping to boost satisfaction levels. It can also help to encourage loyalty in existing customers. If a customer left specific criticism or advice and sees that this issue has been addressed the next time they buy from you, then they will feel valued as a customer and think more highly of you as a brand.
