Customer satisfaction surveys are effective tools that measure the quality of your company’s customer experience.
From your support team to your website to your products and services, your customer experience should be consistent, seamless, and fine-tuned to ensure that everyone who engages with your business feels good about it, regardless of the channel. But before you start slinging surveys left and right, there are important best practices you should know.
With every move you make, you’re either building or detracting from a valuable relationship with your customers. It is important to keep that in mind as you craft your surveys. If 20 questions on a first date is a dealbreaker, why wouldn’t it evoke the same feeling on the first visit to your website? While these surveys are ultimately for the benefit of both your company and your customers, it’s vitally important to take a 100% customer-centric approach to the manner in which you solicit and collect their feedback.
4 Customer Satisfaction Survey Rules to Follow
#1. Don’t overdo it.
Of course, you want to get feedback on every single aspect of your customer experience, pronto. But that’s about you, not your customers. While it’s tempting to attach a pop-up survey to every page on your website, your attempt at bringing your customers into the loop will ultimately fail. In fact, a recent survey from OpinionLab revealed that 72% of customers say surveys interfere with their website experience.
The trick to getting the info you need without annoying your customers is to ask one or two questions about one aspect of your business once in a while. Consider segmenting your email list to target customers who frequently use a feature that’s ripe for feedback. You can also swap out aggravating pop-up functionality for a question in your website’s navigation bar or eye-catching ad that invite customers to engage in a quick survey without disrupting their website experience.
#2. Keep it short.
Your customers don’t want to spend time answering a plethora of questions about your business, but they probably won’t mind answering one or two, especially if they can answer with a quick tap of their phone or click of their mouse. Think you can’t gain insight from a single question? Think again. Below, you’ll see 8 single-question surveys that cut right to the chase for you and your customers.
#3. Design for mobile.
In the same manner as your website, your customer satisfaction surveys should be tailored to accommodate the increasingly mobile engagement habits of your customer base. Cut off questions or cluttered CTAs will not enable your customer to accurately complete your survey. Even worse, a bad mobile experience can cause them to abandon your content entirely. Before launching a survey on any channel, make sure it has the ability to fully function on a mobile device.
#4. Follow up and reward.
Customers who repeatedly respond to your surveys are enthusiastic about helping you improve your products and services. This group of customers can be your go-to when it comes to beta-testing, focus group initiatives, and content marketing reviews. Consider inviting these loyal survey-takers to serve on a customer advisory board and show you appreciate their time and insights with rewards they will actually value like gift cards, exclusive discounts, and access to private sales and events.
8 Single-Question Customer Satisfaction Survey Templates
Check out these 8 single-question customer satisfaction surveys that provide you with the feedback to move forward without disrupting the stellar customer experience you work so hard to create, maintain, and evolve.
Some customers will want to elaborate, and you won’t want to miss out on what they have to say. For every one of these surveys, add an open text box below the question with an optional prompt like, “Feel free to submit additional feedback here.”
How Was Your Chat Support Experience?
Answer Format: ☆☆☆☆☆
Goal: This survey can help you gauge the effectiveness of your multi-channel customer support strategy, keep tabs on employee performance, and ensure that the onboarding of new employees is equipping them to succeed.
Rate Our New Look.
Answer Format: ☆☆☆☆☆
Goal: This survey can assist in the rollout of a rebrand. Try showing your newly-branded homepage to a limited number of customers before applying a new look and feel to your entire website to see if the direction you’re headed will delight or disappoint.
Is Our New [Website/Feature/Dashboard] Easier to Navigate?
Answer Format: YES NO
Goal: This survey is crucial to any update you make. An overwhelming amount of negative feedback can help you take a step back and better implement changes for the benefit of your company and your customers. Sure, inertia can cause customers to thumbs-down a feature tweak that they’ll later love, but giving them the opportunity to contribute to its implementation and evolution will assure them that you have their best interests in mind.
What Types of Content Would You Like to Receive?
Answer Format: Checkboxes
Goal: This survey can help segment your customer communications based on content preferences. This information should directly influence your content program, because it reveals which content formats and topics are worth delivering regularly, along with formats or topics you should consider paring down or cutting entirely.
Suggested formats for your survey could include emails, blog posts, social media posts, white papers (10 pages or less), e-books (10 pages or more), and infographics. To avoid sounding flat or confusing the survey respondent, suggested topics should be specific, rather than category based. Rather than “Seasonal Trends”, use “4 Floral Patterns That Are Making a Comeback for Spring.”
Rate This New Feature.
Answer Format: ☆☆☆☆☆
Goal: Much like “Rate Our New Look”, this survey is best utilized during as a test prior to rolling out a feature for all of your customers. You can expand beyond your beta pool with a limited amount of customers to gauge their initial reaction and adjust your rollout accordingly.
Set Your Email Preferences.
Answer Format: Checkboxes
Goal: Email fatigue is real, so don’t drive customers away by over-communicating. Allow them to opt for daily or weekly emails, as well as the content those emails contain. Content options can include steals and deals, product updates, helpful how-tos, and company news. Let their replies reveal the value behind the types of emails you send and bump up the types that tend to perform the best.
Submit Your Ideas!
Answer Format: Text Box
Goal: Invite your customers to contribute to the future of your business in a big way by collecting their ideas and suggestions for improvements, additions, products, or services. For the ones that make the cut, follow up and let them know you’ve heard them and delivered. This will make your company stand out as one that truly listens to its customers.
What Are Your Goals for This Year?
Answer Format: Text Box or Checkboxes
Goal: When you base your products, services, content. and sales on meeting and exceeding the goals of your customers, you’ll always win. Find out what they want to achieve and develop your customer experience to equip and encourage them to succeed.