Customer Service Surveys: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly!

Surveys help companies to measure satisfaction, identify unhappy customers and find potential advocates. Ultimately it’s a leading indicator of consumer repurchase intentions and loyalty.

By using surveys with both quantitative and qualitative responses a complete picture as to the true state of the customer experience will be gotten.

Surveys are created to get valuable feedback from customers about the way they think about the Services they got and ways to improve.

Surveys are designed in such a way that it forces customers to express how they feel one way or the other. Think about it – if you ask someone about a movie or restaurant and they respond with “Eh, it was alright.” Do you really have any insight as to how they enjoyed it or if they would encourage you to see that movie or go to that restaurant? No, it’s vague. It gives them the comfort of being vague and neutral… which really gives you no insight to their true feelings at all but with a well-designed survey, a qualitative and quantitative feedback or response is gotten

The Good, Bad and the Ugly

When asking for feedback, you have to be courageous enough to ask for the good, the bad, and – yes – the ugly. If you are looking to only get glowing responses to lull yourself into a false sense of tranquility, then you really are sticking your head in the sand and eventually you’ll be outpaced by your competitor that truly wants relevant feedback on how they can keep their customers coming back for more.

You’ll be much better off when you ask customers to tell you directly, no sugar coating it. You need to know what your customers like and what they don’t like. You need to know what will drive them away to your competition and what will bring them back to you. You need to find out what you are doing well and what is simply not working.

Now, here’s the thing – you must have a comment section included somewhere for customers to give comments in free form… meaning they can explain any of their reasoning for responding as they did for any of the questions, or to add any additional thoughts they feel you should know. This is actually the secret sauce… you are getting the customer to articulate exactly, in their own words, their thoughts on the way you do business.

Using customer surveys with both quantitative and qualitative responses gives you a complete picture as to the true state of the customer experience with direct customer input. Your customer is in the best position to tell you how you are doing, You’ve already marketed to them. They’ve already put their trust in you. Now is your chance to continue to earn it and reap the benefits by making improvements suggested by those that are already keeping you in business.