In order to improve their products and services as well as to develop customer loyalty, it is common for companies to organize customer satisfaction surveys. These are generally conducted in the form of questionnaires that are integrated into a chatbot or distributed by email. Successful completion of this survey gives companies a better idea of the experience they offer from their customers’ perspective and how best to improve it. But to get to that point, you have to be successful in your investigation. How to proceed? All the answers in this article.
Determine the purpose of your satisfaction survey
The first step in any customer satisfaction survey is to clearly identify your objectives. It is important that the writing of the questionnaire serves a specific purpose for the company. Otherwise, your questions are likely to be all over the place and your study will be of no real interest to you or your clients. The clarity and precision of your questionnaire’s purpose will have a direct impact on each client’s responses and on your results.
Generally, when conducting customer satisfaction surveys, companies have specific goals. The first one concerns a better knowledge of the clientele. Knowing the people to whom you are offering your service or product is the first step to better understand their expectations and needs.
The second type of objective in a satisfaction questionnaire that often comes up is to measure the level of satisfaction of customers with the experience that the company offers. This allows the company to know the impact, but also the performance of a product or service.
Another type of objective is the search for dissatisfactions. 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 determine where to improve.
Finally, the customer satisfaction survey can be carried out in order to understand the customers. That is, to collect their perception of a service or product and their use of that service. Be careful not to target all your objectives together (in a survey), especially if you use a conversational robot for broadcasting.
Define the headlines of your questionnaire
Once the purpose of the customer satisfaction survey is well established, you can now define the main ideas around which your customer satisfaction questionnaire will be structured. These can be grouped into various topics or departments of the company that you would like more information on. From the reception to the delivery of the products, through the after-sales service, the experience and the quality of the service, it is up to you to choose what suits you.
Once the headlines are well defined, it becomes much easier to determine which questions to include in the customer satisfaction questionnaire. To do this, you will simply break down the big ideas into sub-areas of the business. This will make it easier for your customers to respond and will allow you to have more relevant results.
Write your questionnaire
The writing of the customer satisfaction questionnaire is a delicate step since it is precisely what will allow the company to carry out its survey. The success of a good questionnaire usually depends on three main factors:
- Forms of questions
- Types of questions
- The rating system.
Forms of questions
In a customer satisfaction questionnaire, there are several types of questions. You have the open-ended questions such as “what is your opinion of our X service?” These are forms of questioning that allow the client to express themselves freely. He has a great deal of freedom to answer the question about the company’s product or service.
Then you have the closed questions like, “Have you ever used our product or service X?” These are questions that the customer can only answer with a yes or no in customer satisfaction surveys. Also, you have the multiple choice questions. These offer a choice of response.
Types of questions
They relate directly to the purpose and headlines of the survey discussed 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, that allow you to gather as much information as possible about what customers think, and how they use the item. You also have the dissatisfaction queries that allow you to note customer complaints and many others.
The rating system
Several scoring systems are commonly used in satisfaction questionnaires. The first is a verbal scale that is used quite a bit 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 providing answers based on their feelings.
In addition, the results are far too variable, making it difficult to evaluate the data. The second is a scale of grades. This one is much more used because it is easier to understand. The customer is asked to give a score from 0 to 10 or from 0 to 5. The last scoring system is the use of pictograms. They are mostly smiley faces.
Define a dissemination method for the survey
Conducting a survey is good. But you still have to choose how to present it to your customers. Within this framework, there are several possibilities that companies can use and that could allow them to easily reach the goal of their investigations. Indeed, a company can propose a questionnaire with 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 survey delivery methods, but they are not always effective because they are time consuming.
The most recommended way to conduct a survey quickly and very safely is to use a chatbot. The chatbot is an instant messaging robot that allows companies to improve their customer relations. A bot is able to submit a questionnaire to thousands of customers of the same company simultaneously. Also, it should be noted that after the questionnaire is distributed, the chatbot is able to help the company in the analysis of the results of the customer satisfaction survey.
