Do you know what your customers really think about your business? Are you aware of their needs, preferences, and pain points? A well-designed customer satisfaction survey can help answer these questions. These are insights that can help you identify a customer’s perspective and new competitive advantages. 

In this blog, we will give you tips on designing and publishing an effective customer satisfaction survey. 

What is a Customer Satisfaction Survey?

A customer satisfaction survey is a tool to collect customer feedback on their experience about certain products and services. The goal is to identify need gaps, make data-driven decisions and create better customer experiences at touchpoints. 

A customer satisfaction questionnaire can be pushed out at different points of interaction between the customer and the brand. It is the only tool that can give you detailed insight on how your customers feel.   

Why use customer satisfaction surveys?

Customer feedback surveys are like a goldmine of information like their emotions, thoughts, feedback, paint points and in some cases, competitive advantage. Here is why you need customer satisfaction surveys:   

• Assess experience levels: There are two types of customers— brand advocates and potential customers. Opinions of both types of users can keep a balance. Brand advocates will catch a slippage in service. New consumers will offer feedback on their first interactions. Both can give you an overview of need-gaps and improvements. 
• Prevent potential customer churn: Satisfaction surveys can be a source of heads-up for brands. You can detect the probability of customer churn, dissatisfaction and close the feedback loop with feasible solutions. You can keep a tab on an unhappy user base and prevent churn rates. 
• Identify brand advocates: Most positive word-of-mouth marketing is done by happy consumers. It seeps into the offline and online world creating a brand presence for your organisation. While attending to happy consumers, you can find ways to cross-sell and up-sell your business offerings. Make sure that your new offerings are in line with the standard customer expectations.
• Focusing on increasing revenue:  Investing in increasing brand advocates is worth every penny. This will in turn help you increase revenues with greater ROI. Happy customers come with repeat purchases and referrals. They are also more likely to purchase other products in your offerings. Keep a track on the analytics and double down on increasing revenues.

Who should use a customer satisfaction survey in a company?

Customer satisfaction surveys should be used by all teams within an organization that interacts with customers-sales, customer support, and marketing teams. Use the customer data to make informed decisions about product development, marketing strategies, and customer service initiatives.

How To Design a Good Customer Satisfaction Survey?

Crafting an effective customer satisfaction survey requires marketers to make note of certain factors. This includes survey fatigue, research goals, survey mediums etc. 

• Define Clear Objectives: Determine who you wish to survey and what you aim to learn from the survey responses.
• Keep Surveys Concise: Avoid lengthy questionnaires to prevent respondent fatigue. Reduce drop-off rates by keeping questions objective and in-the-moment. 
• Use Simple Language: Ensure questions can be understood even if you translate the questions in a local language. Avoid jargon or complex words in phrasing. Take help from Merren’s pre-designed questions for every industry here. 
• Add a Mix of Question Types: Combine numerical-scales and open-ended questions to gather both quantitative and qualitative data. Standard scales of NPS, CSAT and CES use both numerical scale and open-ended questions. 
• Test Before Publishing: Find a sample of respondents to take your survey before publishing a full scale satisfaction campaign. This can help you detect errors and add corrections if needed. A larger campaign should aim to give you real-time yet genuine data.
• Medium of Distribution: Use omnichannel mediums to push surveys. Use WhatsApp push, Facebook messenger, dynamic emails, chatbots and interactive SMS. These are in-moment mediums that bring a high response rate.
• Survey Frequency and Timings: Surveys can be pushed post-purchase or after a customer service interaction. In-moment surveys are critical for a high response rate. However, do not overdo it. Too many surveys can cause survey fatigue and lower response rates

Common Types Customer Satisfaction Metrics

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures the likelihood of customers recommending a product or service to others. The scale segments respondents into promoters, passives, and detractors. This measurement was conceptualized by Bain & Company. 

Passives are people who are neither satisfied nor dissatisfied. Promoters are people who are brand advocates. Detractors are people who are unhappy with the company and have a high probability of churning. 

However, note that NPS should not be used in isolation. Businesses should conduct other types of surveys as well to gain a comprehensive understanding of customer satisfaction.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) surveys ask people to rate their experience on a 1-5 point scale or 1-10 point scale. It is important to ask specific questions related to the product or service in question. CSAT surveys are best used for measuring short-term satisfaction and tracking improvements periodically. CSAT surveys can be implemented at short term purchases on in-app surveys or after a quick transaction. 

Customer Effort Score (CES)

The Customer Effort Score (CES) score measures the effort a customer has to go through to solve a problem. The main aim is to understand if the brand-customer interaction needed maximum or minimum effort. High effort indicates that the CX team should identify high friction touchpoints and avoid pain-points.

The Customer Effort Score formula is calculated based on the sum of effort rating to the total number of ratings.

Choose the Right Question Types

Depending on your market research goals, choose the right type of question for your audience. Keep in mind that different people have different capacities to respond. Certain touchpoints need a certain type of questionnaire. So it has to be touchpoint specific. 

• Rating and ranking questions: Ranking and rating scales are popular for in-app ratings that collect experiences based on a certain transaction or a product. It is a part of a closed-ended question.
• Multiple choice question: MCQ question type can be mainly used to assess multiple product features that a user prefers. A customer will choose their preferred response from a list of options. 
• Emoji rating scale: This scale also comes in star ratings or emoji rating scale. Emojis can be used to gauge effort in customer effort score scale or CES. 
• Open-ended response option: With every quantitative question, you need to include a qualitative response option. Include a text box to allow people to share their expressions.  

Question Examples For Your Survey

• Overall Satisfaction: “How satisfied are you with our [product/service]?”. This is a rating scale question under 1 to 5 rating scale. 
• Feature Evaluation: “Which features do you find most valuable?”. This question comes under multiple choice questions.
• Improvement Suggestions: “What features or services are we missing?”
• Effort Assessment: “How easy was it to navigate our website or use our service?”. This is a typical question for customer effort score (CES metric). 
• Comparative Analysis: “How does our product compare to competitors?”

Common Mistakes To Avoid in Customer Satisfaction Surveys

1. Survey design and question errors

Avoid leading questions that can steer customers towards a particular answer. Keep questions clear, and easy to understand. Avoid jargon that people may not be familiar with. When designing from scratch, maintain the order of the questions to maintain survey logic.

2. Survey distribution errors

Common errors include sending surveys only to select customers, over-surveying customers, and using outdated contact information. This also includes over-surveying people to the point of survey fatigue. 

Additionally, avoid platforms that take multiple tabs to open a simple survey. This means that people click on a click which directs them to a new browser that takes more time to load. To avoid this issue, opt for faster and more reliable platforms like WhatsApp messenger or Facebook messenger. 

3. Analysis and interpretation errors

Interpretation errors can lead to incorrect conclusions about customer data. Batch processing feedback can delay resolution times. This can also increase the backlog of support tickets. 

Open-ended questions need a manual or a humanized view for interpretation. People have a varied way of expressing themselves. So using AI for every aspect may not always be the best bet.

How to Analyze Customer Feedback the Right Way?

Collect customer feedback via omnichannel platforms. Using Merren, you can systematically analyse and act on survey data.

1. Quantitative Analysis: Standard metrics like NPS, CSAT, or CES have a pre-determined formula. The scores can help you understand detractors to promoters ratio. To calculate NPS, use the NPS calculator here. 
2. Qualitative Analysis: Review open-ended responses manually to identify recurring themes or specific issues. Word cloud analysis can help you find out common requests among respondents. Qualitative data can undergo sentimental analysis and a bit of manual assessment for human-related assessment. 
3. Segment Data: Break down results by customer demographics or behavior to uncover targeted insights.
4. Develop Action Plans: Focus on areas for improvement and implement changes based on real-time feedback. This can help you capture potential churn and offer feasible solutions to retain customers. 
5. Close the Loop: Inform customers about the actions taken in response to their feedback. People will feel valued and will look forward to sharing their feedback for future surveys.

Conclusion

To create your own customer satisfaction survey, sign up for a 14 day free trial here. Use Merren CX to upgrade your market research with our easy to use tools.You can also use our AI survey builder here for instant feedback surveys.