Client satisfaction survey

The chance an unsatisfied customer results in to negative publicity is a lot greater than a satisfied customer recommending your company. Therefore, run a client satisfaction survey on a regular base to identify the wishes, needs and aspirations of your customers.

Monitoring customer satisfaction is important to improve company procedures and methods. Your organisation learns which aspects your clients are satisfied with or not, so that you can make targeted improvements.

This all contributes to the level of customer centricity of your organisation. Aspects which you can assess are for instance complaisance and/or expertise of the employees of your store, satisfaction with the product or the service itself, after sales service, etc. Make sure that your employees are involved and that they get access to the results. They provide valuable input for potential improvement actions.

Besides the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Net Promoter ScoreSM (NPS®) is a popular metric to measure client satisfaction. NPS measures satisfaction with one question: “How likely are you to recommend Company X or Brand X to a colleague or friend?”. The answers are divided in three categories of respondents; promoters who give a score of 9 or 10, passives who give a score of 7 or 8 and detractors who give a score between 0 and 6. The Net Promoter Score is calculated as the difference between the percentage of Promoters and Detractors. Net Promoter Score’s biggest advantage is its simplicity. This makes it easier to get everyone in your organization involved, and it goes beyond the classic ‘overall satisfaction’ question. Don’t miss our Net Promoter Score article, with over 100,000 views, that is used as a source around the globe.

Make sure to organise follow-up and win back at-risk customers by setting up notifications when a customer is unsatisfied. Identify disappointed customers automatically, based on an NPS or general customer satisfaction question, and push an e-mail alert to their account manager for immediate follow-up. Our notifications page tells you everything you need to know to set up your own automated cycle.

Try to repeat the survey periodically to measure evolution. This allows the management and the employees to measure the effect of their efforts.

Tips

  • Measure continuously and not once a year.
  • Gather socio-demographics of your respondents which you can use for your customer database and in the analysis afterwards.
  • Offer your clients a small gift in exchange for their cooperation, for instance a discount on their next purchase.
  • Divide your survey into conveniently arranged sections, by using subtitles and matrix questions.
  • Consider using the NPS question.
  • If you use satisfaction scales, they should all be oriented in the same direction.
  • You can for instance work with 5-point scales or 7-point scales, but be consistent.
  • Use a neutral answer option in rating scales, and/or a ‘Not applicable’ answer option.

 

Net Promoter and NPS are registered service marks, and Net Promoter Score and Net Promoter System are service marks, of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc. and Fred Reichheld.

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