Customer experience surveys provide businesses with a better way to communicate with their customers and gauge their satisfaction with the services. Some companies take on a more direct approach to their surveys, directly asking the customer to rate their satisfaction. On the other hand, a lot of companies take to asking their customers for reviews to determine their customer experience. There are many survey formats available for use, and companies can customize them to fit their company’s customer satisfaction goals. Customers play a vital role in the growth of a business in 2023 and the next coming years.
What Is a Customer Experience Survey?
It is exactly as its name suggests. It is a survey that gives you insight into the customer’s experience with your products or services. Their experience with you will affect their connection with you and their feelings of loyalty toward your business. If your customers have a positive experience with you, they will continue to do business with you. This positive feeling toward your company will drive them to recommend your services to their friends and family. However, gaining your customer’s loyalty is not as easy as it sounds. You need to invest time and effort into getting to know your demographic by building long-term relationship. Once you know your customers, you can then provide them with personalized services to enhance their experience with you.
There are times when a customer might be doubtful about answering a survey online for fear of security risks. You have to reassure your customers that your surveys and any information collected in them will remain safe. This means that you won’t use the data collected for anything outside your company. Share your privacy policy with your customers and earn their trust. Likewise, as a business entity, you must not betray your customer’s trust so you can earn their loyalty.
No matter what industry your business is in, a positive customer experience can increase revenue, satisfaction, and retention. How do you make that happen? By collecting the customer’s insights through surveys. These surveys contain valuable information about your customer’s needs and preferences, which you can use to enhance their customer experience.
How Do You Get Customers to Answer Surveys?
Believe it or not, customers are eager to share their reviews or feedback about your business. If their experience is a good one, they’ll share their experience through reviews, testimonials, and yes, surveys. The same goes if they have a bad, or less than ideal, experience with your company. Both types of feedback are equally important, and we’ll be discussing that further on in this article. For now, let’s read about the ways that you, as a brand, can help your customers answer surveys.
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Via emails
If you provide a service or product to your customers, chances are, they’ve provided you with their email addresses. With their permission, you have the option to send them customer experience surveys to check up on them. This also provides your customers with a reason to engage with your company. What’s more, you can give your customers the freedom to choose whether or not they want to keep receiving surveys.
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Through in-app surveys
Let’s say that your company has an app that your customers can download to do business with you. You can take advantage of this app and send notifications about a survey that they can answer through the app. Since a lot of people prefer to do things on their phones, having this type of survey is an advantage. You may even have the option to let your customers answer surveys about future business improvements.
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Redirect to a website after chatting online
Many businesses have online websites, and a lot of those websites have online chats to engage with customers. One way that you can determine your customer’s experience with your company is to have a survey after the chat. Customers chat with your representatives because they have a concern or need help. If their concerns have been addressed, then they’ll most likely leave positive feedback. You can have the chat send a link to where your customers can answer the survey online.
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Printed surveys
If you own a physical establishment for your business, then you may want to have printed surveys available. This way, when a customer is willing to answer a survey in person, they can do so with ease. This is especially suited for customers who express doubts about the security of online surveys.
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Phone surveys
Customers who contact you over the phone can also answer quick surveys after you address their concerns. You can ask them to rate their customer experience after the call and listen to their feedback about your company. Your customers won’t hesitate to let you know about their thoughts, especially if their recent experiences made a lasting impression.
What if you get negative feedback in your surveys? What happens, then? Don’t give up! Treat the negative feedback as a learning curve. Most customers provide you with feedback because they want to help you improve. They want to provide you with suggestions on how you can enhance the quality of their customer experience. Sure, the feedback may sound negative, but you have to remember that consumers expect quality from the get-go. Listen to your customers, analyze the areas that you need to improve on, and work toward making them better. Your customers will appreciate your efforts in making their experience with your company as exceptional as possible. With that being said, we now need to look at which types of surveys you’ll need to invest in. You can’t just have your customers answer random questions about your company. You will need to formulate targeted questions that are designed to address your customer’s needs.
Different Types of Customer Experience Surveys
You can use different questions to gain the most accurate customer feedback. Some of them are simple yes or no questions. While some will require your customers to describe in detail what their experience with your company is like. It’s important to collect the data that your customers provide to help your business grow. Different people will give you different answers depending on their needs, which you can use to improve your business’s services. The types of surveys that you can use include:
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Surveys about product usage
You can ask customers if they find your products useful or if they think the product is easy to use. This can give you insight into how often they use the products that you offer. You could also ask if they are likely to recommend your products to a friend or family member.
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Demographics survey
When you want to learn more about your customers or target demographic, you can use a simple demographic survey. This includes easy-to-answer questions, such as their age, the gender they identify as, country of residence, and so on. This type of survey is beneficial for your marketing strategies to help you target a specific group of potential customers.
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Psychographics survey
Surveys like this one will help you determine your potential customer’s values, lifestyle, and other psychological criteria. This is used by your marketing team to help you align your brand’s values with your customers a little better. You can ask them how they feel about your products, brand, or the services you provide.
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Survey about customer satisfaction
With this survey, you can make use of a type of scale to determine your customer’s satisfaction. You can let your customers select which one best describes their level of satisfaction using numbers on a scale. This is the most common type of survey that customers can answer after reaching out to a customer support representative. Your customers can answer this survey, be it through a phone call or a live online chat. You can use questions like, “How would you rate your customer experience on a scale of one to five?“
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Open-text boxes
This can be added at the bottom or the end of your survey questions. This box gives your customers the freedom to write in detail about their customer experience. You can use this to gather their comments and suggestions about your business. Open-text boxes can also be triggered if a customer responds a certain way to help them explain their response. Having this feature in your surveys shows that you are willing to listen to your customers. It shows that you respect and value their thoughts and opinions.
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Longevity survey
Measure your customer’s likelihood of staying as a loyal customer. You can determine possible reasons why your customers would want to switch companies or their retention duration. Try asking questions like how long they’ve been a customer or how long they’ve been using your products. You could also try asking which aspect of your business they are most satisfied with the most or the least. This will then help you take steps toward preventing the loss of your customers.
The Importance of Investing in Customer Surveys
It should come as no surprise that the ultimate goal of customer surveys is to improve customer retention. You ask your customers specific questions to know which areas of your business would push them to look elsewhere. Customer surveys give powerful insight into you, and your customer support team can exceed their expectations. When you fully understand what your customers need and value, you can take necessary action. Take steps to improve customer satisfaction and generate better sales and business values. Using their suggestions and feedback can generate new ideas for services, products, and customer solutions.
Try investing and forming a plan to regularly check your customers’ satisfaction. This can help you identify potential indications of future concerns or problems concerning your business. Your customers are willing to share their concerns and problems through surveys. By openly listening to the negative feedback in your customer surveys, you have a lot of improvement opportunities. Formulating a solution to their problems will improve your reliability and gain their trust in your company.
How Can You Achieve a Positive Customer Experience?
There are various trends that you can try to make your customers feel valued and heard. Make sure that you understand exactly what your customers are saying about your brand. Even the most seemingly innocuous comment or review may be interpreted differently by others. This is exactly why you need to collect data when it comes to what your customers feel about your business. Your contact centers must be optimized to provide the best customer experience for existing and potential customers. Your customer service representatives are at the frontlines of your business ventures, and you should ensure that they are well-equipped. Using surveys to get to know your new and existing customers will prepare your own employees should any problems arise. With that being said, here are some examples of how you can achieve a positive response in your surveys:
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Self-Service Help
Having self-service options is a growing trend this 2023. Most customers prefer to look for the answer to their inquiries themselves before speaking to a company representative. It’s essential that you have an available knowledge base online, such as an FAQ page. Other companies use automated AI to help provide self-service options tailored to their customer’s needs. The fact of the matter is, most customers won’t tell you outright that they’re having problems. They’ll first look for answers online, using the tools that you provide or by searching for solutions in search engines. When they do contact your representatives, they’ll most likely feel frustrated with the lack of self-service options for their concerns.
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Utilize omnichannel customer service
There are many ways to contact your company’s customer service team, and you should take advantage of all of them! Customers will have preferences on which mode of communication they want to use. If your customers are highly active on social media, then you should have a social media account for your business. Other customers prefer to use email or chat when contacting customer services. For customers who don’t have access to the internet, you can have them contact you over the phone. Engaging with them through different channels, online and offline, will boost their customer experience.
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Optimize your business for mobile users
Your brand stands to gain a lot with a mobile-friendly website. If you put more time and effort into making a stellar website optimized for mobile, your customer experience will grow. You could even have a team of experts create an amazing app where you can engage with your customers. A huge percentage of internet traffic comes from mobile users. As such, customer-centric companies should focus on enhancing the customer experience for mobile users. You’ll be putting your company’s growth at risk if you neglect the mobile experience of your customers. Having an app also allows you to offer exclusive deals or share important company events. By doing so, your customers will feel valued, and their loyalty will increase. Common issues that a mobile customer faces include load times, navigation, and site search optimizations.
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Fast Response Times
Perhaps the most important attribute your customer service team needs to have is faster response times. Customers contact you because they need immediate answers to an issue or concern that they have. You could provide stellar products and services, but if you don’t address their concerns right away, you’ll lose their loyalty. Without your customers, you’re putting your business at risk, and that’s why customers deserve your quick responses.
That’s not all. Aside from responding as fast as possible, you also have to be proactive in how you handle their concerns. Sure, you’ve provided a solution for their concerns, but how about for future issues to come? You should reassure your customers that they won’t be facing any more issues going forward. Utilizing the trends that we’ve listed may take time to plan and manage properly. You have the freedom to mix and match the methods to see which one works best for your business. Think about employing the assistance of professionals to ensure that your online website provides the best customer experience possible.
We Can Help!
Do you need assistance with ensuring that your website can provide the best customer experience online? Look no further! Proweaver has the know-how and expertise to bring you online success and help you achieve your business goals! Our team of professionals will ensure that your business’s website is optimized to provide a positive customer experience online. We provide you with options on which interactive features you can use to boost your website’s performance. Additionally, our user-centered designs provide a smooth and efficient experience for online users, both on mobile and on the computer!
Our completely customizable website designs will enable you to try different approaches to how you can deliver high-quality customer service. We keep you up-to-date with new trends and provide expert advice on what trends work for your industry. Furthermore, our team will help you come up with the best business strategies to generate positive results in your online surveys. Would you like to know more about the scope of our services and how we can support your business? Reach out to us at +1 (877) 216-0852. Grow your business with us!