Customer Satisfaction Surveys

“There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the Chairman on down simply by spending his money somewhere else.” Sam Walton

While there is some disagreement about which metrics are the most important for organizations to monitor to ensure business success, Customer Satisfaction appears on nearly every “Top 5 Metrics” list. Because customer satisfaction impacts profitability, brand strength, ease of new product introduction, and so many other aspects of your business, conducting regular measurement of your customer satisfaction levels yields critical management information.

Never underestimate the importance of customer satisfaction: it is the lifeblood of your company. After all, customer satisfaction can impact every aspect of your business from earnings to stock profits. Your business’s very survival, as well as its ultimate success, is clearly dependent on customer satisfaction.

That is why customer satisfaction surveys are so important. Customer satisfaction surveys measure and evaluate the attitudes, opinions and satisfaction levels of your customers and clients. Customer satisfaction surveys identify areas of your business that do not meet customer expectations, so that you can make improvements before you lose customers.

Not only are customer satisfaction surveys crucial for your business, they are quick, inexpensive to produce, and yield invaluable information about your customers, your products and services, your brand, and even your competitors.

Surveys designed to gauge customer satisfaction can be an important first step towards achieving the ultimate goals of exceptional customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention. They provide a foundation in which you can start building upon your customer relationships.

A customer satisfaction survey encourages your clients and customers to give you vital feedback on important business issues, including:

• Overall satisfaction
• Product-specific satisfaction
• Brand perception
• Pricing
• Timeliness of delivery
• Customer service satisfaction
• Returns and exchange process satisfaction
• Interest in new products and services

What Type of Satisfaction Survey?

The first question to consider when developing a customer satisfaction measurement program is which of two types of measurement you want to use. The first is the transactional survey that evaluates recent customer transactions with your business. These surveys are typically administered very soon after the transaction, so that the experience is fresh in the customer’s memory, and they focus on aspects of the experience, such as how long you waited, whether you were greeted when you entered the business, whether the company representative was knowledgeable about your problem, and so forth.

The second type of customer satisfaction measurement is the relationship survey. The relationship survey focuses at a higher, more emotional level, asking questions about overall satisfaction, repurchase intent, and willingness to recommend your business to others. This survey is administered to customers less often than transactional surveys, often only one time per year.

Customer satisfaction surveys often have transactional and relationship elements in the same survey, so they are not mutually exclusive. However, the timing and methodology of the survey will be determined by the primary purpose of measuring your customer relationship, or the more tactical issues that are addressed by the transactional survey.

Whether you need a customer satisfaction questionnaire designed from scratch, or have an existing survey ready for data collection, Infosurv takes extraordinary measures to ensure validity, reliability and bias reduction. Our goal is to help get sound and valid conclusions that will help you deliver improved business results.