According to Customer Contact Week, only 33% of consumers, feel that their typical customer experience has improved over the past year.
While there could be many reasons for this, a large part can be attributed to businesses not understanding what to improve or that improvement is needed at all.
This is where collecting customer feedback comes into play. By asking customers key questions about their experience, you bridge the gap between what customers want and what you’re currently offering.
So what questions can you ask them to ensure you’re improving your customer experience? Let’s take a look.
4 Must Include Questions For Your Customer Feedback Survey
Example: What could we improve about [product/service]?
The innate purpose of a feedback survey is to identify areas of improvement.
This question gives you exactly that.
The insight from this question type keeps you ahead of the curve and can be shared with staff and product development to consistently enhance your offerings. It helps you evolve with preferences, industry trends and expectations that are constantly in flux.
Question Type Tip: An open text or a radio button with open text is ideal for this question.
Example: Rate your satisfaction with our team in resolving your issue.
It’s crucial that service is always up to standard and that employees are working diligently to provide the best service they can.
While this question can help pinpoint specific employees who require improvement, it can also bring attention to operational processes that require fine-tuning or adjustment.
We find that this question works phenomenally with a customer experience solution that is already collecting key insights such as; facility location, date of experience, staff working, trending topics, etc. Using these insights in addition to having this rating allows you to pinpoint over-performing/underperforming employees, rush hours, staff shortages, location performance, manager success, and more. It’s insight you can use in the future to be proactive and set your daily operations up for success.
Question Type Tip: A smiley or star rating is ideal for this question.
Example: How likely are you to recommend our product or service to a friend, family or colleague?
An NPS question is a foundational question type, used in almost every industry to help understand how influential your brand is.
Using this question you can determine if you’re actively creating brand promoters or detractors. More promoters mean a better experience and a solid reputation, whereas detractors can negatively impact business growth.
When asking this question, pair it with other foundational questions such as CSAT and CES to extract the most insight.
Question Type Tip: A 1-10 sliding scale is ideal for this question.
Example: Can we follow up with you again?
While the experience with the customer may be over, that doesn’t mean the relationship has to end. A follow-up question is crucial for businesses looking to carry the conversation beyond the final stage of the experience.
If a customer agrees to a follow-up, you can further work towards adding them to your marketing stream for future promotions, resources and timely updates. Just remember, a follow-up isn’t an invitation to spam. The content you send at any point in the journey should be relevant and sent in a timely manner.
Question Type Tip: A radio button or multiple choice is ideal for this question.
In addition to these questions, you also want to leave room for the customer to fill out any final thoughts about their experience.
This gives them the opportunity to elaborate on an idea from the survey or share thoughts on their experience that doesn’t pertain to the questions asked. We commonly think of this field as an opportunity for the customer to get vulnerable, so really take the time to read these and follow up if necessary.
Best Practices for Sending A Winning Customer Feedback Survey
Keep it on brand
Any time you send a survey, the customer should open it and immediately know that it’s for you. Your logo should be present, the colour scheme should be on brand, and the wording should reflect your voice.
If it seems daunting trying to keep up with all of these nuances, we suggest a customer experience solution to make customization simple and automate redundancies, through saved message templates.
Don’t ask too many questions
While we highlight 4 crucial questions to ask, you’ll likely want to (and we encourage you to) include more specific questions to extract the most data.
However, while you’re building out your survey keep in mind the length and the time it takes to fill it out – after-all your customers are busy people. A best practice is to stay below the 10 question mark and avoid overuse of open text question types. The customer should be able to fill out the survey in a 10-15 minute time frame.
Take a neutral friendly tone
You never want to persuade a customer in a particular direction with your surveys. Not only is it highly unethical, but it doesn’t give you authentic insight into areas of improvement. Your questions should be both neutral and unbiased allowing your customers to feel comfortable sharing positive and negative sentiments.
Sent it at a relevant time
The timing of your survey is crucial to whether you receive a response or not. For example, a customer is less likely to remember the experience months after it happened versus sending a survey 10 minutes after.
Best practice for sending a feedback email is within an hour of the experience ending, but the sooner you send it, the better.
Switch up and test questions
Just like your experience with change over time, so will your survey. Some questions will become irrelevant as your product/services evolve, and some questions you’ll learn won’t be as engaging.
Keep in mind that surveys are fluid. To ensure you’re drafting the most engaging survey, take note of any trends in open rates, popular question types, questions left blank and so on. Using the insight from past surveys can help you create engaging surveys in the future, that draw powerful, relevant insight.
