Customer Satisfaction Surveys:
Tips and Insights

When you survey your customers, you are sending a message not only to customers, but also to your employees. Both customers and employees know that you are focused on the quality of your services and/or products when they see that you are paying attention to customer satisfaction. In fact, you can even improve customer satisfaction before the survey results are tabulated. If employees know you are monitoring customer satisfaction, they will pay closer attention to the customer service they provide. Customers will also see that you are listening to their concerns, which can give them an outlet for any frustrations they might have. There are 3 very important keys to getting the most out of this process and making sure it does not backfire on you:

1. Planning - Take time to think about what you want to learn from the results and construct questions that will gather these data. Broad questions like "How satisfied are you with our customer service" are of little use since they do not tell you what you might be doing right or wrong. Be as specific as possible when constructing questions. You should also include a few "write-in" questions that allow respondents to provide comments. Even though these qualitative data are more time-consuming to analyze, they can reveal invaluable information.
2. Communication, communication, communication - You must communicate to both your customers and your employees that you are interested in customer satisfaction. Get the message out and make sure both customers and employees know that customer service is a priority in your organization. This is your chance to match words with actions!
3. Follow-up is critical - You must manage the customer satisfaction assessment process through to completion. If you fail to do this, customer frustration can increase. Once a customer has told you what you are doing wrong, he or she has an increased expectation that you will do something about it. If employees do not see any outcomes from the survey, they will quickly note that you are not "walking your talk" and realize that customer satisfaction is not a priority in your organization.