Why Are Customer Satisfaction Surveys Important?

Customer satisfaction surveys allow businesses to find out what their audience thinks about the services they provide. With a survey, you can better assess how your customers feel about your product, services, or general business processes. Customer surveys can be completed online, offline or on both fronts.

At the end of the process, you will discover information that will help reposition your business for more growth and success. Here is a closer look at why customer satisfaction surveys are important.

Measure Customer Satisfaction

There is a connection between customer satisfaction and business performance. If your customers are happy, you will generate higher revenue and reallocate customer-retention costs elsewhere. In order to reap the benefits of a strong brand identity, you have to offer your best quality products and services that are accessible from various devices and also ensure your customers are satisfied.

A customer satisfaction survey is the best way to achieve this. Using rating-based questions in the survey, you can find out the collective opinions of your customers—and draw conclusions on your brand’s prospects. A simple survey asking your customers to rate a product or service from 0-10 (0 being extremely negative and 10 being extremely positive) is a common example of a rating-based survey.

Discover Product or Service Improvement Opportunities

The most comprehensive market research is not enough to tell you exactly how your customers will receive your products or services. The average customer can quickly detect flaws in your products or business processes. Additionally, the needs of your target market will change from time to time.

Customer satisfaction surveys make it easier for you to get an idea of what is working and what isn’t regarding your products and services. Using the customer insights generated, you can learn more about the advantages and flaws of your products and services. This will help you to better solve the problems of your customers and meet their needs.

Make Your Customers Feel Valuable

When you ask your customers to take part in surveys, it communicates the fact that you value their opinion. It also shows you want them to play a role in shaping your business which can make them feel more connected to the brand.

Additionally, asking people what they think about your service or product makes them feel that you are not just after their money, but rather very much concerned about meeting their needs. This is an excellent way to convert your customers into brand ambassadors.

Improve Customer Retention

Unhappy customers will take money that should have gone to your business elsewhere. Satisfied customers will remain loyal for as long as possible. By using customer satisfaction surveys, you can increase the number of customers that stick with your brand.

Remember, you may spend five times more to replace every customer you don’t retain. By finding out what your customers feel about your brand, you can react to possible triggers that will make you lose a customer’s loyalty. If you listen to a customer’s complaints and act on it, they are more likely to remain loyal compared to a customer that has never had any issues with your business in the past.

If you are operating in a competitive space, you need to always keep in mind that your customers have chosen you in the midst of dozens of other options. Use customer satisfaction surveys to make sure your customers never have a reason to leave.

Generate Social Proof for Your Brand

More than ever, people are relying more on the recommendations of other consumers as a guide for their decision-making process. A publicly available customer satisfaction survey that paints your brand in a positive-light can do a lot for your customer-acquisition drives.

Additionally, a happy customer is generally good for your brand’s social image. Gathering social proof for eCommerce business is crucial because when a satisfied customer mentions something positive about your brand on social media, the thousands of impressions generated can help you get more leads and paying customers. In the same vein, negative comments will make people wary about patronizing your business—including people that have only just heard about your business through that review.

This is why you need to use customer satisfaction surveys to keep the number of happy customers as high as possible. Remember, those happy comments can serve as testimonials for your business, and they will remain valid for years to come offering you an evergreen way to promote your brand.

The situation is the same when it comes to word-of-mouth marketing. Here’s an example. Let’s assume you are traveling to a new city for a few days and you are on the hunt for an affordable hotel. Who will you trust more, the reviews on Google and opinions on social media or the recommendation of a friend who just came back from the same city a couple of weeks ago?

If you chose the latter, you are not alone. Many people will do the same. Now if the word-of-mouth on the hotel options was negative, you’d remove them completely from your list of prospective hotels to patronize.

This is why customer satisfaction surveys are more important than ever. With an army of customers happy with your business, you will enjoy positive social proof and word-of-mouth advertising—both of which can lead to more quality leads, and ultimately, faster conversions.

Generate Data for Business Decisions

In a highly competitive market, you can’t afford to make business decisions on a whim. Customer satisfaction surveys offer you an excellent way to generate actionable data that can guide your future business strategies. What are the parts of your business that should see more budgetary allocations?

Should you launch a new offline store? Should you spend more money on your digital or offline marketing? With the data from your customer satisfaction surveys, you can take decisions that will generate the most return for your brand.

Personalize Customer Experience

In a highly competitive business space, the customer experience is one of the most powerful unique selling points for most brands. How do your customers feel about patronizing your business? Is there a personal connection?

Think about how Apple users can happily go hours talking to anyone that cares to listen about why they love the products. Can your customers ever get to that level with your brand? It may be difficult to command Apple-level of loyalty, but with personalized customer experience, you can get really close.

Properly segmented customer satisfaction surveys help you to connect with your audience on a more personal level. This will increase their connection to your brand and also simplify customer retention.

How to Carry Out Successful Customer Satisfaction Surveys

To ensure your customer satisfaction survey generates enough response from your audience, here are a few things you should do:

Choose the right customer feedback survey channel

Are your customers super social? Are they a bit more open to deeper surveys? The first group may prefer a simple poll-styled survey where it will take only one or two clicks to complete the survey. In this situation, a social media poll or an email may be the best channel for the survey.

The second group, on the other hand, will only feel a survey is serious if it contains 5-7 questions. The preferred channel may also be email, a web form, or even an offline form. Find what works for your brand based on the demographics you are servicing.

Keep survey questions short, simple and relevant

Regardless of the survey channels you choose, it is important to keep everything short and simple. Attention spans are lower than ever today across all demographics, so any question that is longer than a few words will bore people quickly. In the same vein, the questions must be relevant to the customer satisfaction campaign. You don’t need to ask customers to help you choose a brand color in such a survey, for example.

Use A/B Testing to Find What Works

There are lots of factors that can affect the success rate of a survey campaign. The design of the survey content, the ease of access, and the delivery channel are only a few. Test various campaign styles using different combinations of these factors to find what works best.

Don’t Ignore the Customer Journey

A customer that has just landed on your website for the first time or one that has completed their first purchase may not be in the mood to take part in a customer satisfaction survey. This is why you need to think carefully about the customer journey when running your survey campaigns. Additionally, you will most likely get better insights from customers that have been with your brand long enough to have an opinion about your brand.

Consider Incentives

You may have to offer rewards to get customers to spend the few minutes required to complete the survey. This could be discounts, promo codes, a chance to enter for a grand prize, etc. Most people will ignore a survey unless they are nudged towards completing it.

Freebies are the best way to achieve this. It is important, however, that you put checks in place to ensure that survey answers are as honest as possible and not just filled for a chance to win something. Two good tips here:

• Make sure only customers with a purchase history can take part in a survey
• Include a minimum character limit for open-ended responses

Conclusion

Customer satisfaction surveys are a must for any brand in today’s highly competitive business landscape. They are your best bet to finding out if your product and services are leaving the right level of impact on your target audience.

It is also an excellent way to generate actionable insights about your customer’s behavior. However, the success or failure of your customer satisfaction survey campaigns depends on your execution. Don’t forget to always thank your customers for their feedback, even when it’s not positive!

About the author: Vipin Nayar is the founder of Aviv Digital, an institute that offers digital marketing courses in kochi. He’s a Social Media, SEO & SEM expert with over nine years’ experience in Digital marketing. He keeps himself updated about all the latest trends in the world of Digital Marketing and shares his knowledge with us through his blogs and articles.