Customer surveys are nothing new. Businesses run them all the time as a way to measure customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, many businesses still neglect to maximize the benefits of running customer surveys, and there is a simple reason for that.
Most of the surveys on the market are designed to gather general insights. They measure customer satisfaction in an abstract, non-specific way. In reality, you can understand more things about your customers with a highly targeted and well-crafted customer survey.
So, how you can sharpen the surveys you do run and gather more insights from customers? These next several tips and tricks we are about to discuss in this article will help you.
Focus on a Touchpoint
A touchpoint or a micro-moment can be very important in customers’ journey. While the whole journey is designed to be holistic and equally pleasant for the customers, paying close attention to certain micro-moments will help you fine-tune that customer journey on a whole new level.
Running surveys about your checkout process, for instance, can help you understand the different ways that process can be improved. You may think that shortening the checkout process is the way to go, but some customers – and several market segments – actually prefer a more detailed, more thorough checkout process that incites confidence.
This is the kind of details that cannot be uncovered using a generic customer survey. It is also exactly why you need to focus on a part of the customer journey or a touchpoint you are trying to improve.
Be Product-Specific
Aside from running surveys about your brand and the services you deliver, don’t forget to run surveys on specific products or services and how they affect the customers. This is a strategy you need to incorporate if you want to push customer satisfaction further.
A bank, for instance, can identify ways to improve their mortgage loans department by running a mortgage survey. The survey will help identify areas of the customer journey that are causing pain for customers. The same survey can also reveal top-performing staff members based on how happy their customers are at every stage in their journey.
Yes, a survey can be that detailed. More importantly, it can be multidimensional. All you need to do is craft the survey to reveal details and insights that you really need.
Listen
There is one last thing to understand about running customer surveys: you need to listen. Running surveys and then not acting on its results is a mistake that you don’t want to make in today’s competitive market. You risk losing a lot of potential customers this way.
Actually listening, however, brings even more benefits to the table. When you have specific insights to act on, you can improve parts of your processes that actually affect customer satisfaction. This, in turn, amplifies your quality of service and brings more customers to your door.
It is easy to see why your next customer survey needs to be specific. With these tips and tricks in mind, you can do more than just get insights on customer satisfaction the next time you ask customers to fill out a survey.
