What to Ask Your Customers: Find Out How to Get Real Answers
According to the experts, the way your questions and answer options are worded is what determines the feedback you'll get from your customers.
There’s a saying that the clearest thing is the most honest thing, and when it comes to satisfaction surveys it fits like a glove. The truth is that sometimes we have a clear idea of what we want for our business or company —we may even be getting good results— but the moment we want to survey customers about our progress or our weak spots, we stumble a little and don’t know where to start.
As we’ve shared in earlier posts, the customer is the most important thing and is always right. They also like to be recognized, valued —to feel taken into account— and that’s exactly where the much-talked-about satisfaction surveys come in.
We should be clear that, beyond knowing what type of surveys we run for our customers, we shouldn’t forget that their very purpose is to help us gather valuable insight into how customers perceive us. They let you identify areas for improvement and opportunities to strengthen your business.
Read: 5 common mistakes when building a survey
But how do you create them? What do you ask? And how do you get them to the customer? According to the experts, the way your questions and answer options are worded shapes the information you’ll get.
Another key point is the direction and goal of your survey, since that’s where the essence of the questions comes from. For example, if your survey is aimed at the quality of your service, you should ask, “How would you rate the quality of our customer service?” or “How long did you have to wait?” See? That changes things and gives us a whole different picture.
Remember to avoid questions that force respondents to answer in short words like yes, no, sort of, better, and so on. If what you really want is their opinion, ask them to expand on their answers. That’s where an open-ended question comes in, so the customer can share —with confidence and precision— their opinion about some situation involving the service or the product.
Also consider segmenting your target audience, since asking a young customer isn’t the same as asking an older one, or asking a first-time buyer versus someone who’s already a loyal customer. Adapt the language, tone and complexity of your questions to each segment to get more precise and relevant insight.
That’s why, once you have your survey results, it’s essential to analyze them carefully and take action based on them. There’s no point in running a survey if you’re not going to use what you learn to improve your business.
Read: Why it’s better to survey at the moment of purchase
In their answers, customers can offer you more than you expect, because many of them express feelings —how they felt when they first encountered your company, product or brand— and they even share experiences and emotions.
But be careful! We don’t want them telling us their life story. The important thing is to steer the direction of the survey so the customer doesn’t drift away from your goal.
Another important point is staying neutral. What does that mean? It’s FORBIDDEN to put adjectives on your own work with questions like “What do you think of our excellent service?” because that would be completely out of bounds.
Read: The best time to run surveys
The great thing about successful satisfaction surveys is that, if you know how to make the most of them, they can drive big changes in your company’s evolution and even secure its success. Now, if you don’t know where to start improving, you can ask your customers what they consider to be your main weakness —that question is like hitting the bullseye or scoring a goal in the final minute.
If you manage to identify it and work on it, success! But if you don’t reach the goal, don’t worry —keep going and you’ll get there.
Something very important that can make your survey a success is not overwhelming the customer with long, hard-to-understand questions. As we said at the start, the clearest thing is the most honest thing, because you don’t want them answering without really thinking about their responses. Don’t overwhelm them!
Read: The importance of satisfaction surveys
A very common mistake when running surveys is wanting to ask the customer about everything and gathering information that seems interesting but that you don’t know what to do with. So you ask how they feel about every aspect of your service you can think of. That’s the same as hundreds of data points you’ll have to chart and file away —something very tedious!
So remember: map out the goal of your survey and build your questions around the answers or information you want to obtain. This makes it much easier to read the results, chart them and process them to grow your company.
Remember: a well-defined survey with relevant questions will give you valuable insight you can use to drive greater results.