Measuring customer satisfaction gives you insight into the extent to which you meet the expectations of your customers. This is of great importance for organizations that want to work in a customer-oriented way.
Creating an effective questionnaire is just not easy. There are so many things you need to take into account. And often you have to do it in addition to your other activities.
We are happy to help you make your customer satisfaction survey a success. In this blog you can read what a good customer satisfaction survey looks like, which is pleasant for your customer to complete and which is useful to you. And we also give you a few tips to make your research a success. Because what good is a questionnaire if no one fills it in?
Example short, but effective customer satisfaction questionnaire
To get straight to the point, an effective questionnaire is very short and looks like this:
Customer satisfaction survey questions
Question 1: How satisfied are you?
Question 2: Why are you (un)satisfied?
Question 3: What has been decisive for your experience?
You’re probably thinking: ‘Is this all, just three questions? Will this give me the insights I need?’ Yes, of course! But this needs some explanation.
Question 1: How satisfied are you?
The first question is a closed question and can be either relational or transactional.
Relational and transactional research, what’s the difference?
Relational focuses on ‘the relationship’ and is about general satisfaction. Is the customer satisfied with you as a company, with the relationship he has with you? Transactional, on the other hand, is about a concrete transaction, for example the purchase of a product or a moment of contact. You ask whether the customer is satisfied with a specific action.
You can use a scale of 1 to 5 for this question, which is often used in the United Kingdom, for example. But in the Netherlands, a scale of 1 to 10 is often used. The KPI that goes with this is CSAT, a KPI that excels in simplicity. Read more about this Customer Satisfaction Score here.
Question 2: Why are you (un)satisfied?
Question two asks for an explanation of the first question, which is an ‘open answer’. This information is very valuable and says so much more than the figure in question 1. By sharing this answer with employees and other layers in the organization, they gain in-depth insight into the customer’s story and emotion.
This question is of course not literally ‘Why are you (dis)satisfied?’, but responds to the score given by the respondent for the first question. For example: the respondent answers question 1 with a 10, then you want to thank him or her for question 2 and ask: ‘How nice of you to give us a 10! Why are you so pleased?’
Question 3: What has been decisive for your experience?
The third question is the Root Cause question. The Root Cause categorizes the customer’s story and is a valued method of mapping the drivers. The categories make it possible to get to the heart of the customer experience. A driver that is often chosen is very important for customer satisfaction. If it scores a high, then it goes well, if the score is (too) low, there is room for improvement. This way you can see at a glance what is going well and where improvement is needed to be more customer-oriented.
With the above three questions you collect all the insights you need to increase customer satisfaction. If desired, you could add a few more statements for more insights.
What requirements should a customer satisfaction survey meet
You now know which questions a good customer satisfaction survey contains. Now let’s look at a few tips to make your research a success. In addition to the fact that it is important that your questionnaire is short, there are a number of other conditions that it must meet in order to be successful.
Three simple tips:
- Make it personal
- Don’t ask unnecessary questions
- Use terms the customer understands
Tip 1: Make it personal
Address the customer by name and refer to the transaction. Let’s explain this tip with an example. Suppose you bought a used car from a brand dealer. Super happy you go with it. After a week – ping – an email if you want to indicate whether you are happy with the service. Of course, because you have been well helped and very happy with your car. You open the email and to your surprise it starts with: ‘Dear customer’. And the questionnaire is also general, it seems that it is not intended for you.
Immerse yourself in the customer and connect as much as possible with his or her experience. Make sure to make it personal, not just with a personal salutation, but also refer to the transaction and where it took place. The more personal, the greater the chance of a high response to your customer satisfaction questionnaire.
In addition, make sure that you personalize the invitation email (this can of course also be a text message or another means) and the questionnaire to the identity of your company. Use your own house style, so that it is recognizable and respondents know that the research comes from you. After all, customer feedback is also a step in the customer journey.
Tip 2: Don’t ask unnecessary questions
Back to your new car. You decide to complete the customer satisfaction survey, after all you are very happy with your car. You click on the link and the first question you see is ‘At which location did you buy the car?’ huh?
Do not do that! Nor whether the respondent is a man or a woman, or what he or she has bought. You should have this data in your CRM or ERP system. Link this, preferably automatically, to the results of your research. This makes your research so much more effective and you can also use this data in the report.
Tip 3: Use terms that the customer understands
One last tip: Do not use process terms, but translate them into terms that the customer understands. When preparing the questionnaire, you have to deal with two target groups, namely the person who completes the questionnaire and the person who receives the answers. The latter is used to process terms, but they mean nothing to the customer. It is important to realize that you have to build a bridge between ‘how does the customer think and ‘internal processing.’
One last tip: Do not use process terms, but translate them into terms that the customer understands. When preparing the questionnaire, you have to deal with two target groups, namely the person who completes the questionnaire and the person who receives the answers. The latter is used to process terms, but they mean nothing to the customer. It is important to realize that you have to build a bridge between ‘how does the customer think and ‘internal processing.’
Improve customer satisfaction
If you really want to be customer-oriented, it is not only important that you know to what extent your customers are satisfied and why. What matters is what you do with the collected insights and how you improve your customer satisfaction with it.
Therefore, pay attention to the following:
- Bring customer stories to life by sharing insights across the organization
- Share information quickly and specifically with the right people within the organization
- Enrich insights from your customer research with CRM and customer data
- Provide a clear and orderly overview of priorities per department, location or employee, so that you know exactly where what needs to be improved
- Avoid thick reports that disappear to the bottom of the drawer, but visualize data with attractive dashboards or real-time infographics
Get started right away
In the CYS software you will find a complete questionnaire to measure customer satisfaction, which you can fully adapt to your own organization or situation. You can add questions or statements and if that is valuable for your organization, you can add multiple languages or import your own language. In addition, you can adapt the questionnaire to your own house style for recognizability.
In addition, you can choose from various ways to conduct your research, for example a personal e-mail invitation or a link to place on your website or social media. Or download a QR code, which you can use in printed materials in, for example, your store or at a trade fair.
Want to know more?
Your customer satisfaction questionnaire is ready, so you can start collecting feedback! And then? Do you want to know how to analyze the insights and improve customer satisfaction based on this? You can read all about it in the customer satisfaction survey white paper.