Improving the Customer Feedback Experience

Gaining Survey Satisfaction with Best Practices

Like many marketing campaigns, it’s best to define your end goals, maintain the purpose of the survey, and aim for the target audience. You are ultimately collecting results that will lead to action on your part, as noted by Touchpoint in its blog, “8 Customer satisfaction survey examples and best practices.” The power of feedback, after all, will help build strong relationships and a loyal customer base.

Just what is a customer satisfaction survey? Qualtrics in its customer service survey blog defines it: “A customer service survey is more than a questionnaire. It’s a useful method for listening to your customers, to understand if they’re happy or not with your brand, product or service. When you analyze the results, you can use this customer data to drive better business decisions that ultimately impact the overall customer experience.”

After choosing a type of customer satisfaction survey, one must design the survey, decide on the method, best format, and timing. Finally, one has to analyze the feedback and take action. As Touchpoint relates, “Conducting customer satisfaction surveys without taking action is a waste of time and money. The feedback you gather from your customers should give you a clear direction about things you need to prioritize and the next steps you should undertake to improve the customer experience.”

There are many types of surveys that can be used, depending on the measurements and metrics you are looking to gain. These include the customer satisfaction score (CSAT) and the net promoter score survey (NPS). These can measure how satisfied a customer is with their experience, to how likely they are to recommend that product to others. Other surveys include the customer effort score survey, five-star satisfaction surveys, post-purchase surveys, product-market-fit surveys, user experience surveys, well, you get the idea. Clearly, keeping a pulse on customer satisfaction is key for business growth and for healthy assessments of your business. Happy customers, after all, could be your biggest advocates in the future.

Measuring the Customer Experience

In “Defining Customer Value to Enhance the Purchase Journey,” All Things Insights looked at how customer value can sometimes be a tricky measurement to determine. Ultimately, customer value measures a product or service’s worth and compares it to possible alternatives. This establishes whether the customer feels like they received enough value for the price they paid for the product/service. So is it just all about dollars and cents? There is also the factor of the emotional journey behind the purchase, as well as any buyer satisfaction, or remorse, after the purchase. Still, understanding customer value can help the business price products in a fair manner while reducing some of that bad friction in the customer experience.

All Things Insights also examined the customer experience in “Creating Synergy by Improving Customer Experience.” Customer experience (CX) is the impression your customers have of your brand based on all of the interactions they’ve had with your business. User experience (UX) is specific to how people use and perceive your products. These key components, customer experience and user experience, work together, create synergies and benefit the marketer in improving the overall experience, which in turn increases customer value.

Finding Value in Collecting Customer Feedback

Ultimately, customer satisfaction surveys are just good business sense and a good return on investment. Just how important is it to ROI? Qualtrics lists a few reasons why surveys are just good business:

1. They help you to protect your revenue: Your customer service and overall customer experience can significantly impact your brand’s success. Qualtrics research has found that 80% of customers said they have switched brands because of poor customer experience. Poor customer service was the most cited reason for switching, meaning that gathering data on experiences through customer surveys is a vital part of ensuring your revenue is protected.
2. They help you build your revenue: Qualtrics also found that customers who rate a customer experience 5/5 stars are more than twice as likely to buy again, with 80% of satisfied consumers likely to spend more. Understanding what makes a great customer service experience and what doesn’t from a customer’s own mouth allows you to make improvements that deliver better experiences, helping you to encourage greater spending.
3. They help you to continuously learn: Hearing directly from customers about how your product or service can be improved is gold. You get several ways to gain more sales from the people you want to target. Or they may point out improvement areas, which can help overcome wider customer challenges to purchasing. Either way, you gain valuable information that can help you continuously learn, and improve.
4. They help you to prove that a reciprocal relationship is important to you: Loyal customers are looking for signs that brands are willing to improve, and customer feedback surveys are one way of proving this. Closing the loop means not only fixing an issue, but asking about the experience and taking action to improve.
5. They help you keep an eye on trends: Customer surveys can be used in a flexible way to keep an eye on the market and your current customers’ views. They’re a simple way to gather valuable feedback that is relevant to your specific customer base. You could use one to carry out market research at times when you need to know what your customers are experiencing, or what challenges they face. Alternatively, customer surveys can be used periodically to check in for customer feedback and improvement ideas.
6. They help you to build your brand image: When you ask about what a customer thinks, you are perceived as caring about your customer’s experience, and the continued improvement in your product or service quality. Both perceptions help your brand image and lead to customers experiencing positive feelings towards you. It helps to create a relationship with the consumer—and it humanizes the brand.

Following Data to Insights

Clearly, customer satisfaction surveys are a foundational topic that is near and dear to the hearts of many in the market research field. Just how technology has shaped the survey discipline, and just what the best practices are for shaping surveys, is for a different time. But it all leads to gathering data and following that up with actionable insights.

As Qualtric notes, act on your information in a structured, customer-centric way: “When you have the customer data analyzed, turn this information into actionable customer intelligence. This combines multi-channel information with a 360° view of the customer’s context and behavior patterns, to help you understand why your target audience behaves in the way they do. This creates opportunities for better business decisions so you can act on what you learn. Without taking action, issues are left unaddressed and customer experiences can suffer—don’t let your data go to waste.”

Video courtesy of HubSpot Marketing