Conducting a customer survey can be a valuable process for a business. It can help you get a better understanding of your customer’s needs and concerns so that you can improve your product or service offerings to fall in line. By taking note of your customer’s satisfaction and responding to any issues, you can improve loyalty and the profitability of your business.
Get Feedback
Let’s face it, if you don’t know there is a problem, then you can’t fix it. By regularly asking for feedback from your clients, you can get valuable information on the issues that are important to them. Ask questions about how well your product or service meets your customer’s needs and how satisfied they are with what you offer.
This feedback allows you to tweak your offerings, and to fix any issues that you weren’t aware of previously. You also have the opportunity to respond to your customers and build a strong relationship with them.
Prove You Can Listen
A satisfaction survey gives you the opportunity to really listen to your customers. Give them the chance to share their views in your survey, instead of all over social media – which is becoming the norm. Keep control of their feedback by asking your customers for their views on specific areas of your business like your products and your performance.
This shows that you want to listen to your customers, that you are interested in what they have to say, and that you value their opinions.
Understand Customer Perspective
Share the results of your survey with your customers to build a customer-focused attitude. You can even include feedback on areas that aren’t necessarily considered as customer interfacing. Ask about the accuracy of their invoices, or the length of time it takes to process an order they have placed to ensure the whole team gets recognition for their efforts.
By covering all areas of the business in your survey you can create an understanding of company operations from the customer’s perspective.
Prioritise Improvement
Conducting a customer survey will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of your business. You can prioritise how to improve the overall customer experience by focusing on your weakest areas first, as they will see the biggest area of change in a short period.
Remedy serious problems by improving your business practices, or by reviewing staff training. Invoicing or ordering issues might be fixed by introducing processes of automation to your business, whereas customer service issues will point to a refresh or revamp of your staff training practices.
Prioritise Loyalty
Customer satisfaction with your business can have an impact on whether or not your customers will remain loyal to you. It can cost up to 7 times more to bring on a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. That sounds like money down the drain if customers are deserting for something as simple as poor customer service.
Prevent your clients from defecting to your competitors by ensuring their satisfaction levels are high. The higher the satisfaction level of your customer, the more chance they will stay loyal to your brand.
Track Progress
Who says you can only send one customer survey? It is actually more valuable to send them on a regular basis. Don’t bombard your customer base with a survey every week, but send them annually or twice a year to track changes. You can compare the results of each survey to see if your improvements are working, or if there are other areas of your business that have dropped off. This will help you to maintain a high level of customer satisfaction at all times.
A customer survey can provide you with valuable insights that you would not have had otherwise. Use the survey process to improve the poor areas of your business, and to celebrate the parts that are working well. Without your customers you wouldn’t have a business, so it pays to listen to them!