In today’s sluggish business climate, customer satisfaction is critical for any company’s success. Even if employees are tripping over themselves to try and please customers, there’s no way to know for sure if the extra efforts are effective unless you do one more thing: Ask! Yes, the best way to find out if customers are satisfied is to ask them.
But wouldn’t you already know if customers were unhappy? Wouldn’t someone have told you? Not necessarily. Some customers don’t like confrontation and will just stop doing business with a company that has not met their expectations rather than complain. Employees might not be passing along the complaints they receive because they think it would make them look bad. Also, they are viewing every job and customer interaction from their side — the provider side.
You want to get the customers’ view because one of the biggest advantages you can have over your competition is strong customer relationships. Strong relationships are built through dialogue, and surveys can get that ball rolling.
SURVEY METHODS
How you gather information from customers is up to you, but make the most of whichever method you choose:
Phone: When a customer is signing a contract for your services, ask permission to give them a call at a later date to ask how satisfied they were with the service.
Mail: Send a printed questionnaire and a postage-paid return envelope to customers.
E-mail: To avoid breaking spam laws by randomly blasting out surveys via e-mail, ask customers if you can send them a customer satisfaction survey to complete and e-mail back to you.
SURVEYS THAT WORK
For a customer satisfaction survey to be of use to your company, it has to be conducted in a way that persuades customers to take the time and thoughtfully complete it. It has to be well thought out and clearly written so it will uncover the type of information that will really be of help to your company performance. Follow these suggestions to make a survey work for your company:
A good survey has a goal. Companies use surveys for different purposes. Some want to evaluate the perceptions and performance of a specific product or service, while others want to gather general information about the overall customer experience.
You may want to get a feel for customer satisfaction with regard to the cleanliness of your portable restrooms before deciding to change cleaning products, deodorizer fragrance, cleaning frequency or methods used for cleaning. In that case you’d stick to questions relevant to cleaning but you wouldn’t ask if customers like your billing policies or delivery practices.
Having a goal in mind before implementing a survey will help you write good questions, and allow you to set expectations within the company around the results of the survey. If you can explain to staff exactly what you are trying to find out through the surveys, they are more likely to support the idea of surveying.
Don’t waste time asking about things you are unwilling to change. Choose question topics based on what you could really change based on the answers. If you are unwilling or unable to purchase softer toilet tissue, what’s the point of asking customers if they are satisfied with the softness of the tissue currently placed in your units?
Word questions well. You want to draw out how customers think your company has met their specific needs through your product or service. You don’t want their opinion on portable restrooms in general; but your restrooms and service specifically.
Make sure the survey is easy to respond to. Customers will not respond to a survey that requires too much effort. Filling out the survey is a courtesy to your company, so keep the convenience of your customer in mind. E-mailing a survey or sending a link to a Web form reduces the time it takes to answer your request. However, if your customer base is less technology-oriented, you may get better results surveying by telephone or mail. The key to success is to keep the time spent on the survey brief, but meaningful.
Ask good question(s). Ask basic customer satisfaction questions like: How satisfied are you with your decision to hire Oscar’s Portable Restrooms? How satisfied are you with the service you received?
Also ask customer loyalty questions: How likely are you to buy from us again?
How likely are you to recommend our company to others?
Ask what the customer liked and didn’t like about the products, the service and the company.
Vary your questions. Consider how long the questions will take to answer. It is best to mix the types of questions you ask. If every question is open-ended, customers might decide it will take too much time to compose responses and quit the survey before they complete it. If every question is a multiple choice, yes/no or a rating, the survey may not take long to fill out, but the quality of information you receive may not be helpful.
Make it timely. A monthly satisfaction survey sent to a small group of your regular customers allows you to chart your progress over shorter periods of time and shows any impact your changes have made. A sharp decline in satisfaction serves as a red flag. A steady increase is something you can tout in your marketing efforts.
Sending a brief survey following a sales transaction, event or interaction gets immediate feedback while the experience is still fresh in customers’ minds. This type of survey gets the customer’s gut reaction.
Don’t over-survey. Don’t survey every customer every time. But if there have been changes in your company that may affect responses since the last time you surveyed a particular client — or responses may for some reason change seasonally — ask again.
Act on the results. Once you have completed and evaluated the surveys, use the results to improve your business. If you ask people for their time and opinions and do nothing with responses, the customers will get annoyed and won’t bother to help you out again. Accept criticisms with an open mind and try to solve the problems or change customers’ perceptions. One benefit to being a small business is the ability to turn feedback into immediate changes. The big guys can’t move as fast.
BE POLITE AND SHARE
Share survey results with staff so they can contribute ideas for improvement and share in the credit for successes. And, finally, you may want to send a thank-you gift to customers who complete a survey and share how their feedback has impacted, or will impact, the company.
Customers expect a lot from the companies they do business with these days and retaining your customer base is critical to your success. By conducting a short, effective survey, you can learn what your customers view as your strengths and weaknesses and what makes them stay loyal to your company.
Asking customers for feedback through a survey says you appreciate them. It acknowledges their importance to your company. In return, they will provide you with valuable information you can use to improve your service and bottom line.
