To improve their products and services and build customer loyalty, companies frequently organize customer satisfaction surveys. These usually take the form of questionnaires that are integrated into a chatbot or distributed by e-mail. A successful survey gives companies a better idea of the experience they offer their customers, and how best to improve it. But to get to this stage, you need to make a success of your survey. How do you go about it? All the answers in this article.
Determine the purpose of your satisfaction questionnaire
The first step in any customer satisfaction survey is to clearly define your objectives. It’s important that the questionnaire serves a specific purpose for the company. Otherwise, it’s highly likely that your questions will go off in all directions, and that your study will end up being of no real interest to you or your customers. The clarity and precision of your questionnaire’s purpose will have a direct impact on each customer’s responses and on your results.
Generally speaking, when conducting customer satisfaction surveys, companies have a number of specific aims in mind. The first is to gain a better understanding of the customer base. Getting to know the people to whom you’re offering your service or product is the first step to better understanding their expectations and needs.
The second type of objective in a satisfaction questionnaire that often comes up is measuring the level of customer satisfaction with the experience offered by the company. This enables the company to assess not only the impact, but also the performance of a product or service.
Another type of objective is the search for dissatisfaction. In this type of survey, the company solicits the help of its customers to improve its service. It tries to question the user experience in order to identify areas for improvement.
Finally, a customer satisfaction survey can be carried out with the aim of understanding customers. That is, to gather their perception of a service or product, and their use of that service. Be careful not to combine all these objectives in a single survey, especially if you’re using a conversational robot for distribution.
Define the main headings of your questionnaire
Once you’ve established the purpose of yourcustomer satisfaction survey, you can now define the main ideas around which your customer satisfaction questionnaire will be structured. These can cover a wide range of subjects or company departments on which you’d like to obtain more information. From reception and product delivery to after-sales service, experience and quality of service, it’s up to you to choose what suits you best.
Once the headings have been defined, it’s much easier to determine which questions should be included in the customer satisfaction questionnaire. All you have to do is break down the main ideas into sub-sectors of the company. This will make it easier for your customers to answer, and give you more relevant results.
Write your questionnaire
Drawing up a customer satisfaction questionnaire is a delicate stage, since it’s the very thing that will enable the company to carry out its survey. The success of a good questionnaire generally depends on three main factors:
- Types of questions
- Types of questions
- The rating system.
Types of questions
In a customer satisfaction questionnaire, there are several types of question. There are open-ended questions such as “What is your opinion of our X service? These forms of questioning allow customers to express themselves freely. They are free to answer any question relating to the company’s product or service.
Then there are closed questions such as: “Have you ever used our product or service X? These are questions that customers can only answer yes or no to, in customer satisfaction surveys. Then there are multiple-choice questions. These offer a choice of answers.
Types of questions
They are directly related to the survey objective and headlines mentioned above. Depending on the type of questionnaire, there are demographic questions that give a better idea of who the customer is.
You also have questions, about a product or service, which allow you to gather as much information as possible about what customers think, and how they use the item. There are also dissatisfaction questions, to record customer complaints and much more.
The rating system
Several rating systems are generally used in satisfaction questionnaires. The first is a verbal scale, used in many cases, with response modalities such as: “satisfied”; “very satisfied”, etc. The problem with this type of question is that customers have some difficulty in providing answers based on their feelings. The problem with this type of question is that customers have some difficulty in providing answers based on their feelings.
What’s more, the results are far too variable, making it difficult to evaluate the data. The second is a rating scale. This is much more widely used because it’s easier to understand. The customer is asked to give a score from 0 to 10, or from 0 to 5. The final rating system uses pictograms. These are usually smiley faces.
Define a distribution method for the survey
Designing a survey questionnaire is all very well. But you still have to decide how to submit it to your customers. There are a number of ways in which companies can easily achieve their survey objectives. A company can propose a questionnaire using a paper form to be filled in, carry out the survey by telephone, or send the questionnaire by e-mail to some of its customers. These are widely-used methods of distributing surveys, but they are not always effective because they are time-consuming.
The most recommended way to conduct a survey quickly and reliably is to use a chatbot. A chatbot is an instant messaging robot that enables companies to improve their customer relations. A bot is able to submit a questionnaire to thousands of a company’s customers simultaneously. Once the questionnaire has been distributed, the chatbot is able to help the company analyze the results of the customer satisfaction survey.
