Customer Survey – Definition, Types, Importance and Uses

Achieving customer satisfaction is as important as measuring it. If you don’t measure it, how can you know whether the customer is happy with your product, service, or support? 

And when it comes to measuring the overall customer experience with your brand, nothing feels as inclusive as surveys. You send them out regularly to better understand how your customers feel about your brand. 

One of the great things about customer surveys is, they give you access to customer data and insight. You can then use those data to improve customer problems, eventually ensuring good experiences. 

More importantly, the use of satisfaction surveys is also quite helpful in turning negative experiences into positives by working on the product and service. This is how you boost customer retention and loyalty. 

In this blog, we will discuss customer satisfaction surveys, their importance, types, and many other things.  

What is a Customer Satisfaction Survey? 

Customer satisfaction surveys are a method of collecting feedback. They help in understanding customer satisfaction levels with various aspects of the business, from products to services or overall experiences. 

The real purpose of customer feedback surveys is to gauge customer needs, assess satisfaction, and measure engagement. Companies often use surveys to gauge expectations and then perform market research. 

Using a satisfaction survey is also a good tool to gain valuable insights into what excites, motivates, and irritates customers. Any organization can use a survey to gain key customer data with a view to boosting the overall experience with the brand.  

Importance of Customer Survey 

For any business, it’s very important to not only understand but also regularly measure customer happiness levels. After all, 9 out of ten consumers share bad experiences with others. That’s why surveys are always quite an effective way to know how customers feel about the business and then take appropriate steps to improve their experience. Sending a survey is also helpful in knowing the various measures that can add to customers’ happiness levels. 

A customer experience survey holds huge importance for any business for more than a few reasons. 

• Improving customer satisfaction levels –  A business that uses surveys is always in a position to know customer needs and expectations, which eventually helps in boosting the satisfaction levels with the brand.
• Monitoring changes in customer sentiment – Gathering feedback via survey is an opportunity to show customers how you care for them. And brands that do gather it regularly are able to monitor changes in customer sentiment and then take action to remove pain points. 
• Creating chances of better customer retention – Measuring satisfaction level and then working on the data is always a good step towards accurately knowing what customers expect and delivering on those expectations. All this creates chances of better retention. 
• Understanding your customer journey – You should always have to know how your customers feel at each stage of their journey with your brand. A well-timed survey can be a wonderful tool to know what makes customers feel good or bad about your products/services. 

Types of Customer Experience Survey 

As a business, you should understand that measuring customer satisfaction levels is easy as there are a few surveys for help. You can choose the one that suits your business needs and then gauge the experience. With each of the surveys, you can modify or customize the questions and get the answers in tune with the metrics you have in mind. 

Some of the most commonly used types of customer satisfaction surveys are –  

• Net Promoter Score (NPS)  – It’s the most popular survey when it comes to measuring the levels of customer satisfaction towards your company. The purpose of this survey is to ask “How likely are customers to recommend the company or product or service to a friend” and measure the response on a scale from 0-10. 
• Customer Effort Score (CES)  – This survey is used to gauge how hard customers felt in interacting with your company or reaching your agent or using a product or service. This survey is mostly used for measuring post-interaction responses. 
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) – This survey is very useful in measuring how happy customers feel with the products or services they purchased. It asks customers to rate their satisfaction level on a scale between 1-5.   

Types of Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions 

Building survey questions is an art in itself. The type of question you choose can create a huge difference in the understanding you get about customer satisfaction with your brand. In fact, these questions can help you bring deep insights into how customers see your brand and what you can do to improve their overall experience.  

There are various types of customer satisfaction survey questions that you can ask and get relevant responses from customers. 

• Five-point Survey Questions– These types of questions are often simple and their purpose is to gauge customer response from one extreme to another. With five questions ranging from one extreme to another, this survey is very helpful to get quantifiable satisfaction data.
• Binary Survey Questions –  These types of questions are easily the best ways to get a general sense of understanding into whether customers have got what they want/ed. Plus, it offers the quickest response with a yes/no binary question. 
• Multiple Choice Survey Questions – A binary customer survey does not give a deep insight into what customers exactly think about your business. For that, you need a multiple choice survey as here questions are more inclusive with four options.   
• Open-ended Survey Questions –  Customers often avoid spending much time with surveys and maybe that’s why open-ended questions are not an ideal choice for them all. However, these questions are quite useful when you want customers to use their own words to describe your products and services.  

Customer Survey Best Practices 

Surveys may not often be the best predictor of customer satisfaction levels but nonetheless can help in spotting an overall trend. And if you use them judiciously, they can be a great tool to know more about customers than you’d imagine. After all, happy customers spend 17% more and surveys can help you know whether or not they are happy. The trick is to frame accurate questions and get the timing right. 

Some of the best practices in regard to customer experience surveys include – 

1. Ask questions that serve a specific purpose 

Having a well-defined purpose is a key thing when you want to use a customer survey. When you have a goal in mind, you’d know exactly where to head and what to ask. With a survey, your goal can be met when you ask specific questions only. So, you first need to strategize and then run the survey. 

You need to make sure that only relevant questions are included in the survey that neither irritate customers nor ask too much of them personally. And even when you have a goal in mind, make sure the questions are always in the comfort level of the customer else they might not bother to respond at all. 

And always respect the time of your customers while framing the questions as the less you ask the better it will make them feel about everything. 

2. Keep it short and simple 

Customers would hate a survey if they were made to spend a lot of time with it. They might see it as time wasted. Worse still, lengthy surveys often fail to capture the attention as shorter ones do. 

So, you should focus on keeping it short and simple – simple in the sense that questions are never long-worded and then are often point-to-point. A good customer survey does not include character counts that feel like a drag. 

If the customer survey is not short and simple, it will cause customers to ditch midway or not approach it at all. Keeping all this in mind, make sure the customer satisfaction rating you prepare not only serves the intended purpose but also does without consuming too much of the customer’s time. 

3. Avoid phrasing questions to get favorable responses 

The real purpose of a consumer survey would stand defeated if it were prepared with the goal to get only favorable responses. Despite that, many marketers do mistakes and frame the questions in a way that leads respondents on an expected line. 

This won’t ever fetch you accurate feedback. Neither will it ever give genuine responses that you might be seeking. 

You should rather never hesitate to ask questions that give respondents ample space for poking holes at your product or service. A good survey has to get honest feedback and this could only happen when you phrase the questions accordingly. 

You have the power to put questions in a way that can get the desired response but doing this means you are not benefiting from the vast potential that a survey can bring.  

 4. Get the timing right 

Timing is everything when it comes to getting the most out of a customer survey. 

If you don’t get the timing right, you’re never going to leverage the full potential of a survey that you worked so hard for creating. It’s also equally important to understand the days and time slots when a survey gives the best open and click-through rates. 

Apart from the timing, you also need to be judicious with the frequency of the survey. You can’t afford to run a survey every once a year as a lot can change in a customer’s mind in that much time. 

In all, the survey you intend to send must reach the customers when they are most likely to grasp it as only this can get the value you seek. 

5. Incentivize the survey respondents 

Incentive works wonder most of the time in luring customers into participating in a survey. If you’re ready to reward the respondents, be sure the survey would enjoy good response rates compared to not having any reward at all. 

Even if you’re not in a position to offer a big reward, it never hurts to give away something small yet valuable like a free download of e-books or case studies or sending out free coupons. For a SaaS company, giving a free trial could be a great way to get the survey done with amazing response rates. 

So, it’s all up to you how you reward someone showing interest in your survey but do make sure you incentivize them so that they could get value for their time, and you, the value for your survey. 

Make Your Customer Feedback Survey Effective with REVE

A customer satisfaction survey is very powerful in reaching out to your audience and understanding how and what they think about your product, service, or support. 

We, at REVE, believe that sending a survey in a timely manner can help you not only know the customer better but serve them as well. 

Thanks to our top engagement tools such as AI-powered chatbots etc, you can now easily tie the satisfaction survey with technology and boost the efficiency of the response. 

You can also benefit from some of our other tools such as co-browsing software, and video chat, and add value to customers at various stages of their journey. 

In addition, our live chat software could be the best tool for running a customer feedback survey and getting a peek into customers’ preferences. 

Redefine Customer Service Surveys and Stand Out with the REVE Platform 

Surveys add the best value when they reach out to the intended audience in the channel of choice and with the touch of new-age technology.

With the REVE platform, you not only get the right tools to send out the timely survey but also get plenty of other equally valuable software to engage the customers better. 

So, you should start a free trial of our chatbot and other powerful tools and start adding value to your target audience of the survey.