A good survey can help improve customer service

Q:    I want to develop a survey to establish a benchmark to improve my company’s customer service. How can I build a good survey?

A:     There are six steps to developing a good survey:

Decide on your objectives.

What do you want to know from the survey? Be specific. Your objectives will form the basis from which your survey questions will be developed. Limit your objectives to just a few. You probably need to know about your target customer’s demographics (age, educational background, ethnicity, income, etc.) to market your products effectively, but don’t ask about personal details that you don’t need or that you can get from publications rather than surveys.

Determine who should complete the survey.

Know who your customers are and which are appropriate to survey. As obvious as this sounds, it is not so obvious in practice. If your market is large, you may have different segments of customers. Or, depending upon the industry, you may have different levels of customers. Nevertheless, your survey objective(s) will usually determine which customers you should survey.

Develop the survey.

Formulate questions so that answers will help you decide what needs to be changed to achieve your objectives.

Consider what you know and what you want to know regarding customer perception of each factor you consider to be significant. Then shorten the list to just significant factors that you would be willing and able to work on to increase customer loyalty or attract new customers.

Determine the level of importance for each question. You can’t improve everything, nor should you expect to. If you know what is most important to your customer, it’s only logical that you should start there first, especially if your customer is not satisfied with your performance level.

Develop an introduction to your survey. Keep it brief. Explain the purpose of the survey and include any instructions that are needed to complete the survey. Customers are more likely to complete a survey if they know why you need it and how to complete it. You may also want to collect information such as name, function, or company so you can segregate the data further. Explain in the introduction that while this is optional, it allows you to follow up on issues that individuals cite.

Test the questions on a select number of people before you send your survey out. This will flag potentially confusing questions. Either have some of your employees complete the questionnaire, or sample a group of customers.

Set a deadline to complete the survey. Don’t extend it too long because it’ll never find its way out of your customers’ in baskets.

Clearly identify who should receive the completed survey. Include this in your introduction. If it is to be returned to you directly, include a self-addressed stamped envelope to facilitate the return of the completed survey.

Thank all who participated. Everyone is asked to complete surveys these days.

Administer the survey.

You may want to contact the people you intend to survey before hitting them with questions, and ask them if they will help you by responding.

Analyze the results.

Once your customers return the completed surveys, you are ready to compile the data and analyze the results. In most cases, competency with a computer spreadsheet program is all you’ll need.

Communicate the results.

After you have analyzed the data, it’s time to communicate the results to your staff and customers.

First the staff: Remind everyone that customer satisfaction is essential for continued prosperity. Emphasize the importance of keeping the customer wants and needs in mind whenever decisions are made – especially in product design, marketing and customer services.

Then the customers: Communicating survey results and resulting action is absolutely necessary if you want to continue to receive feedback from your customers. If they feel that the survey results do not get the proper attention, they’ll be reluctant to provide you with feedback in the future.

Get your customers involved whenever you can. This gives them ownership of the issues, makes them part of the solutions, and allows them to experience firsthand your dedication to satisfying their needs.

Once you’ve identified your customers’ needs, your strengths and weaknesses, and the priority for improvements from the surveys, pick a few areas on which to concentrate your organization’s efforts.

If there are some simple, quick fixes then, by all means, make them, but focus the majority of your efforts on those “vital few” that will achieve the biggest gains in satisfaction levels. Identify some key performance indicators for customer satisfaction, develop goals, and measure your progress against those performance indicators.

Windsor resident Russell Disberger is a founding member of Aspen Business Group, a Northern Colorado-based specialty consulting and venture capital firm. He can be reached by e-mail at russell@aspenbusinessgroup.com, or at (970) 396-7009.

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