10 Fundamental Rules for Creating Effective Customer Surveys

Strong competition and more power in the hands of the customer mean it is no longer possible to differentiate based on product or service alone - customer experience is now what sets brands apart. In-depth understanding of your customer’s viewpoint and a dialogue centred on your customer’s needs are both essential in creating a positive customer experience. It is important to seek customer feedback on a regular basis, at different stages of the customer journey, using a range of techniques - on and off-line, qualitative and quantitative.

We have looked previously at different ways to measure the customer experience, including Net Promoter Score - how likely a customer is to recommend you, Customer Effort Score and NetEasy Score - how easy it is to do business with you. Whilst these metrics allow you to identify pain points and areas for improvement in the customer experience, they don’t tell you what action you need to take, or what needs to change. They provide useful benchmarks, but a deeper level of insight is needed to really understand how your customer feels about your business.

Telephone interviews and other more qualitative research methods allow you to dig deeper into quantitative results and understand the ‘why’ behind your customer ratings. A telephone survey will not only increase response but, speaking to your customers over the phone reminds them that you’re not just a faceless business.

In a world dominated by digital communication, a human connection is in itself a differentiator, one which shows you really value your customer and actively seek their opinions. A one to one conversation gives you the opportunity to fully explore and understand their viewpoint, asking fundamental questions, gathering information and using these insights to build customer-centric strategies from the ground up.

In simple terms, the best way to find out how a customer feels about your business is to ask. Undertaking customer research to inform your customer centric strategies may be daunting if you aren’t experienced in designing and implementing surveys. There are, however, some simple rules you can apply in developing an effective customer survey, and we have put some of our top tips into our latest infographic.

If you feel you need to make a stronger human connection with your clients, or need support in gathering feedback and insight from your customer base, get in touch with our research team today.

The Telemarketing Company