Customer Service Training: Seven Customer Service Training Secrets of a Successful Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire

Customer Service Training:
Seven Customer Service Training Secrets of a Successful Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire

I'm often asked, "How can I get started writing a customer satisfaction questionnaire, if I've never done a customer survey and I know nothing about online survey software tools?"

Well... that's easy. Here are seven simple steps you can take right now, today, to get started collecting customer feedback.

1. Keep It Short

You only need a half dozen questions to get incredibly valuable information from your customers or clients. The trick, of course, is to choose the right questions. That means asking a couple of rating scale questions, an open-ended followup one or two classification questions with which you'll be able to look at your results based on subgroups as well as your total sample.

When customers or clients know that your questionnaire is brief, they're far more likely to agree to participate. And those that do participate, are far more likely to complete the entire satisfaction questionnaire.

2. Use Simple Language

In writing your questions, be sure to use every day language. Avoid industry jargon. Make sure that the answer choices can only be interpreted in one way. And adopt an informal and conversational tone to the greatest extent possible.

Your goal should be to communicate clearly -- and quickly -- and to leave little room for doubt as to what you're asking or what each of the answer choice means.

3. Choose an Appropriate Tool for Your Online Survey Software

Don't make it hard on yourself!

If this is your first time using online survey software, you'll want to choose one of the easier tools for your questionnaire. My recommendation is SurveyMonkey.com. It is quick and easy to learn, has good support, an adequate array of question types and offers several free and low-cost options.

For now, skip the more sophisticated survey sites and their steeper learning curves.

4. Use More than One Rating Question To Capture Satisfaction Data

Your first choice for a question should be along the following lines:

'How likely would you be to recommend [insert your brand, product or service here] to a friend or colleague?'

While I'm a fan Fred Reichheld's 'Net Promoter Score', as described in his book The Ultimate Question, current best practices suggest adding a second question to capture another dimension of loyalty, i.e.,

'How likely would you be to continue purchasing [insert your brand, product or service here] two years from now?'

Both questions use the same rating scale (see Secret 5 below). The two ratings can be averaged to create a stable score that should become a key customer metric for your business.

5. Use Easy-to-Understand Rating Scales for Your Questions

The ratings for your questions should be based on a 0-to-10 scale, with Extremely Unlikely to Recommend at the low end (0) and Extremely Likely to Recommend at the high end (10).

0 <-------1 ------- 2 ------- 3 ------- 4 ------- 5 ------- 6 ------- 7------- 8 ------- 9-------> 10

Similarly, the scale for your repurchase question should have Extremely Unlikely to Repurchase at the low end (0) and Extremely Likely to Repurchase at the high end (10).

0 <-------1 ------- 2 ------- 3 ------- 4 ------- 5 ------- 6 ------- 7------- 8 ------- 9-------> 10

The 11-point scales have been validated through extensive research, are easy for respondents to understand and are more likely to detect important differences than are the standard 1-to-5 scales employed by most customer satisfaction questionnaires.

6. Always Ask an Open-Ended Question

Be sure to follow up your ratings with an open-ended question that asks respondents to tell you -- in their own words -- just what it would take to get their ratings to a 10. (Employ skip logic in your questionnaire to ask the follow up of only those who rated you less than a perfect 10.)

It's often among the responses to these open-ended questions that your key insights will emerge. Insights that can lead you to a powerful customer product, service or program.

7. Ask Just One or Two Classification Questions

Finally, you'll want to include a classification question or two -- but no more.

These questions help you to analyze your data by subgroups. In choosing Classification Questions, you're looking for a way to divide your customer base into meaningful subgroups -- groups that would lead to significant differences in service requirements, product preferences or usage patterns.

For example, a dry cleaner might want to ask about gender, because the usage patterns for men and women are often very different. With the data broken out, it may turn out that one gender is more likely to be satisfied and willing to recommend the cleaner than the other.

The Final Secret

Follow these seven secrets to ensure your first customer satisfaction questionnaire will be a success.

The final secret is to understand that your first customer survey is only the beginning of a 'conversation' you'll conduct over a period of time. You can be confident that the process will get easier and as you gain experience collecting and working with customer data.

Source: Andy Perkins: link

Article Content: Customer Service Training

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