7 Tips for Better Customer Feedback
26 June, 2007 - General Business - 10 Comments
Soliciting customer feedback is the single most powerful method of improving your business or Web site. The feedback you receive is from a targeted group of people who already know your product like they know the back of their hand. Best of all, your customers don’t have tunnel vision which most business owners have, so they are able to provide invaluable suggestions for improvement which you and your staff won’t see.
Don’t ask. Don’t get!
A customer will very rarely let you hear that gem of a suggestion unless you ask them for it. That’s where the dreaded “customer survey” comes to the table. Many people associate customer surveys with a piece of pointless paper with very little impact on the product or business. That may be true for the corporate fat cats, but not for us. No, when it comes to customer service and satisfaction, we (the small business owners) are far better than the Trumps and Sugar’s of this world.
However, it’s pointless taking feedback if it isn’t taken well. Here are my tips for getting the most out of a customer survey.
- Keep it short and sweet! Five questions would be ideal. Anywhere over eight and you’re going to scare away your customers.
- Presentation is everything! Treat the presentation like you treated your Web site. It needs to be easy on the eye with plenty of spacing. The last thing you want is for a customer to feel like closing their browser window as soon as they hit your feedback page.
- Make it easy! Nobody likes to write their answer. Give your customers several options (Good. Very good. Average. Bad. Very bad.) or even use a rating system of one to five (Don’t use one to ten. It takes too long for a customer to decide whether they should rate you six or rate you seven).
- Let them talk! Always give them the option to add more comments. I have lost count of the times I have completed a feedback form and I have wanted to write something extra or even provide a testimonial and there wasn’t anywhere for me to write it.
- The killer question! Ask them if they would refer your company to a friend. It only needs “Yes” and “No” options, and is a great initial indicator to see how well you’re performing.
- Follow up! People like to know you received their feedback. Give a personal follow up (none of this auto responder rubbish!). Address any concerns they presented, and tell them exactly what you are going to do to address their concerns.
- Follow through! Don’t just file away the feedback in to the closest file system. Act on it! Once you have acted on it, make sure the customer(s) who mentioned the specific concern you just addressed, know you have acted on it. Send them an email or give them a call. Customers like to see they were actually able to impact your business in a positive way.
No such thing as failure!
There’s no such thing as failure. Only feedback.
As a customer, have you ever completed a customer feedback form, and if so, how were you treated throughout the process? As a business or Web site owner, have you used customer feedback forms to improve? Let us know with your comments.
This was part one of my customer feedback series. Next, I’ll be discussing how to react to negative customer feedback.
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Posted on 26 June, 2007 by Jamie Harrop
Filed Under General Business |
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Jamie,
Have you built your surveys from the scratch or did you use a service such as surveymonkey.com? I’ve been thinking of trying them out.
I always build my surveys from scratch, Nick.
Does SurveyMonkey host the survey on their site? If so, that would be a killer reason to create your own.
I’m not sure, but I would assume they do host it on their site.
I just checked, and it seems they do host it on their own site.
I couldn’t think of anything worse than sending your customer to a different Web site to fill in a customer survey about *your* business. It sends shivers down my spine.
It’s pretty common though, a lot of large corporation seem to do that. Atleast the surveys I have filled out.
Seriously? Ugh. I couldn’t imagine doing that. It just doesn’t seem right to take a customer to a different site. Maybe I’m just too picky, but to me, if I was referred to an external site, I wouldn’t feel like my expectations were exceeded, nor would I feel very compelled to complete the survey (I mean, why would I if the company in question cares so less about their customers thoughts that they openly send them to a third party?).
Like I said, maybe I’m just too picky and too hard to please.
Would it be possible to see an example survey Jamie? I’ve been thinking about building one.
I’m going to put one online which I have used in the past, Tyler. We generally take the surveys down within a few weeks of requesting the feedback (if the survey stays there forever, less people are likely to submit their feedback because they will forget about it).
I’ll post the URL tomorrow in my second post of the customer feedback series.
I’ve built up a pretty good relationship with four clients I’m working with right now, and I hope to get a survey online for them to complete anonymously as soon as their projects complete.
The “Would you recommend” me question is certainly very important to me, and I’ll probably be asking my clients things such as;
“Was the end-product better or worse than you expected? Can you give any non-specific reasons as to why you think this was the case?”
“Where there any areas where you feel I could have performed better, such as, for instance; communicating during the project life-cycle?”
“Do you personally have confidence in me as a Web developer / Designer? Could you explain your reasons?”
“Would you recommend me to your contacts if the opportunity arose?”
I think this would give me a pretty good idea as to how clients perceive me, and how I can improve. I think I would have to make some effort in getting them to answer the questions, and make sure they know it is completely anonymous.
Please let us know how it goes, Tjobbe.
My only suggestion would be to change the way the questions are worded. Try and keep to a rating system as much as possible. It makes it so much easier for your customers, and increases the odds of receiving completed surveys. By using a rating system, you are also able to control what answers you get. Rather than receiving a sentence that doesn’t make much sense, you receive a number on a rating system. A rating system which you created and control.
For example, rather than “Was the end-product better or worse than you expected?”, use “Please rate the end-product from one to five, with three being average” (or minus two to plus two, with zero being average).
Then you could have a “sub question” asking them to explain what the problems were if they rated below average.
Again, I would change the following question slightly. Rather than having “Were there any areas where you feel I could have performed better, such as, for instance; communicating during the project life-cycle?”, I think it would be better to define three or four areas (such as communication, pre-sales support etc) and then have a rating question for each, such as “How would you rate my communication throughout the project?” (1-5 again) and “How would you rate my pre-sales support?”).
It may be a little extra work for you, but it saves the customer a lot of time. The more time you save the customer, the better the odds are you will receive completed surveys (people often find it surprising how low their conversion rate is for customer surveys, so you need to make it as easy as possible for the customer)