How Satisfied Are Your Customers?

We have in our “interesting read file” a great article highlighting five important things you need to know about customer surveys. The article was written by Julia L. Rogers of The Huffington Post. She wrote it so well that we wanted to share the main gist of it with all of you. Julie hit it right on the mark, so we figured we wouldn’t reinvent the wheel. Here’s a bit of what she had to say....

Surveying your customers regularly and in a variety of ways is a critical part of running a successful business, regardless of your industry, product or service. Surveys measure satisfaction -- or dissatisfaction -- with your offerings, determine critical needs and offer an opportunity to effectively communicate and build truly personal relationships with your customers. And when you take both praise and criticism to heart in order to fulfill the true needs of these customers, you build invaluable loyalty that can create buzz around your business and bring in enthusiastic, highly qualified referrals.

Still, many business owners don't use regular surveys as an opportunity to reach out to their customers and really get to know them. For some reason, they fail to realize that satisfied customers are the key to staying in business for the long haul.

What's the best way to get started? Here are five things you need to know.

1. Focus on the narrative, not the number.
The most valuable part of any customer survey is the narrative. Make sure to include open-ended questions in any survey you launch that allow the customer to give you specific, actionable feedback.

2. Don't stack the deck.
Objective feedback from your customers and clients is more useful than good feedback. Therefore, you should make sure the structure of your survey, as well as the distribution method, promotes the flow of truly candid customer opinions. The point of surveying is to get honest reactions.

3. Choose survey methods that garner real information in real time.
Getting real information from real customers in real time is the best way for small-business owners to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their businesses, especially as their businesses grow. Many other types of self-serve and full-service survey solutions can be integral to helping businesses quickly build their email lists and businesses that meet their customers' needs well.

4. Close the loop by reaching out and following up.
The most enlightening customer feedback often comes from just picking up the phone and having direct contact with customers. Your survey feedback is worthless if you don't take action on it. You need to put plans in place to resolve issues revealed by surveys. Also, the mere act of surveying a customer can increase satisfaction.

5. Marinate in the survey feedback.
As someone trying to build a solid business, you need to immerse yourself in customer feedback. Don't stick survey results in a binder and forget about them without analysis. Share the results -- including verbatim customer comments -- and what these results have taught you with your entire staff. Take time to thoughtfully review survey responses and consider their implications.

The five points Julie Rogers outlined in her article are definitely worth thinking about relative to customer surveys and feedback. If you would like to know the level of satisfaction among your customer base, give us a call. We specialize in customer satisfaction surveys. We can help you Know More, so you can Do More. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).