Customer satisfaction surveys are excellent ways to gather information about customers, their perceptions, and their interactions with the product or service.
An organization can work hard on a product or service while taking all the steps necessary to ensure customer satisfaction. But intent and execution don’t always align. It is crucial to take the time to gather information from customers to gauge their satisfaction with a product or service.
A customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey is a good way to understand that level of satisfaction. An organization can ask a series of questions or provide statements to gather data about all around satisfaction, as well as suggestions or additional points of clarification.
Customer satisfaction surveys are also a great way to test customer engagement and experience—a holistic look at products and services from the perspective of an end user. The aspects of customer engagement include:
- Proactiveness: If a customer engages on their own, without any prompting.
- Volume: The degree of interaction of a period of time.
- Repetition and frequency: Whether there are multiple engagements, or more sporadic engagements with a brand.
Customer engagement can take place offline or online, depending on the engagement offerings from an organization. Sometimes it can show integration with the use of a product, like a comment on social media, a review, participation in an internal program, or providing feedback on an organization’s site.
CSAT surveys are more than just tools for measuring how customers feel about a product or service; they are strategic assets that can offer a range of benefits to organizations looking to excel in today's competitive marketplace. Some of the most prominent advantages associated with using customer satisfaction surveys include:
CSAT surveys are direct channel of communication with the customers. By analyzing responses from real buyers, organizations can uncover what customers expect from the product or service, what they value the most, and what they feel is missing. This gives companies the insights they need to tailor their offerings to align more closely with customer expectations.
By understanding what customers love and where they face challenges, organizations can double down on the aspects of their products or services that meet customer expectations, while making any necessary adjustments or enhancements to their weak points.
A satisfied customer is likely to stick around, make repeated purchases, and even increase their spending over time. By consistently gauging satisfaction and making informed adjustments, companies can enhance the lifetime value of their customers, ensuring they remain profitable for a more extended period.
The cost of acquiring a new customer is notably higher than retaining an existing one. With CSAT surveys, organizations can spot potential churn risks and take proactive steps to retain those customers. By showing customers that their opinions matter and that the business is committed to improving based on their feedback, companies can foster greater loyalty.
CSAT surveys provide data-driven insights that can guide decision-making processes. Whether it's launching a new feature, adjusting pricing, or entering a new market, the insights from these surveys can help businesses make decisions that are in line with customer needs and preferences, and backed by reliable data.
Beyond even the products or services themselves, customers value the overall experience they have with a brand—everything from the buying process to how helpful and efficient customer support is. CSAT surveys can shed light on how customers perceive their entire journey with the company. With this knowledge, businesses can then optimize each touchpoint, ensuring a seamless and satisfying customer experience.
Satisfaction indicates the degree to which a customer likes a business’s activities and services.
An organization may have created a negative experience for customers. A disengaged customer would not indicate that to the organization but may spread their negative experiences to other individuals. Positive experiences can strongly influence customer retention, encourage repeat purchases, and greatly enhance the customer's lifetime value. A proper customer satisfaction survey can dive deeper into a customer experience and gather detailed information that can help in the revision or continuation of products and services, which is ideal for a bottom line.
Improved engagement can help an organization achieve business goals like positive customer feedback, increased sales, loyalty, strong branding, and word of mouth marketing. Using customer satisfaction surveys, organizations will be able to:
Provide experiences that are better than a competitor.
Understand user interactions across the customer journey.
Fix problems that were otherwise not seen by members of the organization.
Build a better picture of target audiences to better market and advertise to them.
Discover customer needs.
Optimize ideas based on survey feedback to ensure a better product in development.
Make informed decisions
A way to measure the total satisfaction of a customer with a product or service that they have used. The perception of satisfaction is measured in extent of fulfilled needs, overall quality, and perceived reliability of the company from the perspective of a customer or user.
A good experience doesn’t always indicate a repeat customer. Assess whether the customer has plans to recommend the product or service to other people, and whether they have intent to use the product and service again.
CSAT is a metric commonly used to gauge customer service satisfaction and general product quality. A common question would be “how would you rate your satisfaction with (product or service)?”. The respondent would then provide a score, usually with corresponding feedback ranked between 1-5. The scores are then calculated and averaged to find an all-around score that indicates customer satisfaction.
NPS is a measure of customer commitment to a product, service, or company. There is only one question: “How likely is it that you would recommend (product, service, company, etc.) to a friend or colleague?” There are usually rating options available between 0-10. Depending on the answer, the respondent falls into three categories:
Promoter (9-10): customers who are loyal and enthusiastic about the product, service, or company.
Passive (7-8): satisfied with the product, service, or company, but not satisfied enough to proactively promote the product.
Detractors (0-6): unhappy customers who likely won’t use the product or service again and may even actively discourage others from using the product or service.
The NPS score is typically calculated by subtracting the average detractor score (0-6) from the average promoter score (9 or 10).
Relational NPS surveys are sent out regularly and tend to measure perception of the company and the health of the customer’s relationship with the company.
Transactional NPS surveys are sent out after a customer completes a purchase or interacts with a member of the team. This is a way to measure more specific feedback after interaction with the organization.
CES measures how much a customer must exert effort to get something done, such as an issue resolution or request fulfillment. A typical question would ask how easy it was to interact with the organization, ranking from very difficult to very easy. An organization can implement measures to help a customer achieve satisfaction with the least amount of effort and stress:
Self-service tracks to navigate issues quickly
Provide multiple points of contact for feedback
Customer workflows speed up resolution time and improve the communication process.
These surveys are sent out at important moments of the customer journey. The goal is to gain a better understanding of the customer's experience. Automating surveys after key points can enhance customer experience and improve usually on a scheduled basis, 60 days after a customer interaction or after an onboarding is complete.
As with anything, there are correct ways to conduct customer surveys, and there are incorrect ways. Consider the following.
Do:
Gather an all-around company rating as the first survey question.
Optimize for mobile use.
Allow open responses.
Keep the survey short and focused.
Ask open-ended questions.
Speak the customer’s language.
Utilize the results.
Don’t:
Use jargon that a customer may not be familiar with.
Ask questions that touch on more than one thing at a time.
Require a response to every question.
Attach opinions to the questions.
Get stuck in the hypothetical.
Write complicated questions.
Ask for repetitive information.
Require demographic information.
Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys incorporate a broad spectrum of question types to encourage specific and diverse responses. The choice of question often correlates directly with the specific type of information a business seeks to capture. Among the most widely used question types are:
Typically taking the form of yes/no queries, binary questions present a straightforward approach where respondents are limited to only two possible answers. These questions are excellent for obtaining clear-cut feedback on particular aspects. For instance, a question like “Did the product meet your expectations?” can quickly gauge a customer's immediate response. However, binary questions don't allow for nuanced or detailed feedback.
Multiple choice offers more depth than binary questions. By providing respondents with several predetermined answers to select from, businesses can gain insights into specific areas without overwhelming their participants. An example of this could be a question like “Which feature do you use the most?” accompanied by a list of features.
Moving beyond pre-defined answers, open-ended questions allow respondents to share detailed feedback in their own words. These questions can unearth deeper insights and highlight issues or sentiments that might not have been previously considered. Examples might be: “What improvements would you suggest for our product?” or “What could we have improved on today?” While this approach can lead to valuable insights, these questions also require more time from respondents and a more in-depth analysis by the organization.
Rating scales allow respondents to quantify their experiences on a number scale (commonly from 1-5 or 1-10). For example, the question “On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you with our service?” can provide a direct measure of overall satisfaction levels that can then easily be compared, visualized, and tracked.
By capturing a respondent’s feelings between two opposite adjectives, businesses can determine the intensity of feelings about specific product or service attributes. For instance, a customer might be asked to rate a product's durability, describing how they feel about the product in relation to the terms “Fragile” and “Sturdy.”
Using the Likert scale, respondents indicate their level of agreement or disagreement with a specific statement. So, for the statement “I feel valued as a customer of this company,” the customer would then choose their response from options ranging from “Strongly Disagree" to “Strongly Agree." Some CSAT surveys also include emojis to describe possible customer sentiment. Likert scales can provide deeper insights into customer sentiment about their treatment and value.
While it’s important to have the right format to the CSAT survey questions, it can be just as important to go after the right information. It is the questions themselves that provide depth to the survey and make it possible for the organization to uncover specific insights. Some additional question types to consider include:
These questions are very straightforward, simply asking whether the customer would be willing to have a customer service agent follow up with them about the survey. This can be included as a form of support should the customer identify any pain points, or simply to try to gain more in-depth insights.
Understanding the demographics of a customer base can offer insights into their specific needs, preferences, and pain points. Questions could cover age, gender, location, occupation, etc., but should always be optional.
Not every circumstance of piece of feedback can be neatly accounted for by selecting or even expanding upon predetermined responses. Open text questions include a text box where the customer can provide detailed responses on any topic or area of concern.
Psychographic questions go beyond the 'who' and delve into the 'why'. These could include questions about lifestyle, values, attitudes, and even fears or aspirations. Psychographics can offer a deeper understanding of what drives customers to choose a product or service over those offered by competitors.
These questions aim to capture how often a customer interacts with the product or service. Usage frequency can provide insights into how integral the product is in the customer’s life and can also be an indicator of user satisfaction.
Understanding customer perspectives and gaining insights from their feedback is invaluable, and a CSAT survey can be a game-changer in making this happen. However, the effectiveness of these surveys greatly depends on how they're executed. Here are some best practices to ensure the maximum positive impact from CSAT surveys:
Before deploying any survey, it's crucial to identify its goals and objectives. Is the survey intended to generate general feedback about the product or service, or is it there to gauge reactions to a specific feature or event? Different survey types such as NPS, CES, or CSAT can provide different types of insights. Selecting a survey format that aligns with the organization's objectives ensures that the captured data is both relevant and actionable.
Overly complex or lengthy questions can lead to respondent fatigue or confusion, compromising the quality of the results. Clear and concise questions not only increase the response rate but also ensure that respondents understand what's being asked, leading to more accurate feedback.
Before sending out the survey to the entire customer base, it's wise to conduct a pilot test with a smaller group. This helps identify any ambiguous questions, technical glitches, or areas of improvement within the survey. Making necessary adjustments post the pilot phase helps ensure a smoother experience for the larger audience, likely increasing the overall response rate.
Ideally, surveys should be sent out when the interaction or experience is still fresh in the customer's mind. When seeking feedback on a recent purchase, it is generally best to send the survey within a few days of the transaction. Moreover, consider the day of the week and time of day when sending out surveys, as these factors can influence response rates.
Customers don't need to take surveys; they have a choice, and if they choose to share their valuable opinion then it's a good idea to thank them for it. Expressing gratitude—in the form of incentivization (such as a coupon) or even something as simple as thank-you message—not only acknowledges the time and effort the customers put into providing feedback but also fosters goodwill and reinforces a positive relationship between the brand and the people it serves.
Once the data has been monitored and analyzed, take the time to move toward improvements.
Identify the key factors in satisfaction: All-around satisfaction is ideal, but there may be individual factors that contribute more than others. Take the time to identify as many individual factors as possible and figure out how to expand on the success of certain factors.
Focus on employees: Customers are frequently in direct contact with employees. Customers are more satisfied when the employees they interact with are satisfied, so take the time to focus on employee satisfaction as a core strategy for better customer experiences.
Close out with dissatisfied customers: An unhappy customer can turn into a promoter after a positive reconciliation. Contact dissatisfied customers and collect more feedback. Get the issue settled and provide means for reconciliation.
Identify problems: Feedback accurately marks the problem areas or consistent failures that can cause a reduction in all around customer experience. Mitigate these issues and work on turning them into successes.
Done right, customer satisfaction surveys can uncover hidden problems, highlight the strengths in a product or service, and significantly enhance customer lifetime value. That said, not every survey is entirely effective, and how a business manages their CSAT surveys can make a major difference in its effectiveness. ServiceNow has the solution: Customer Service Management (CSM).
CSM makes it easy to create and follow up on detailed customer surveys. Additionally, CSM’s automated workflows, real-time analytics, and omnichannel support ensure that once you know what your customers expect, you can provide it with unmatched service and support.
Interested in turning today’s one-time customers into life-long advocates? CSM has the tools and resources to make it possible. Demo CSM to learn more!