Build customer satisfaction surveys to master your market

Your customers are the ultimate authority on how they value your product, service or business. The best way to gain access to this information is to ask for feedback. Customer Satisfaction Surveys ensure that you gain a full understanding of your customer’s perception of you and that you are doing everything you can to make things right.

This journey of providing your customers with a positive experience starts from the moment they land on your website and extends beyond the moment they become your customer. Although it’s a never-ending commitment, encouraging them to become a loyal customer by retaining them is definitely considered a milestone of growth. Start with a free customer satisfaction form template.

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Table of contents

What is a customer satisfaction survey?

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys are used to understand your customer’s satisfaction levels with your organization’s products, services, or experiences. This is one type of customer experience survey and can be used to gauge customers needs, understand problems with your products and/or services, or segment customers by their score. They often use rating scales to measure changes over time and gain a deeper understanding of whether or not you’re meeting the customer’s expectations.

At AbcSubmit, we use customer satisfaction surveys to understand the micro-level experiences of individual users and address their concerns, but we always return to macro-level questions like “Where is the market form builder industry going?” and “Where do we need to improve our product?” as well.

Why is customer satisfaction important?

Successful business owners and managers quickly realize that keeping customers costs less than finding new ones. If certain practices drive customers away, a business repeatedly spends time and money on advertising and other efforts to recruit more. These business owners know that weaknesses in the production or delivery of goods lead to distressed customers, so they use online surveys to collect feedback. Customer satisfaction surveys can become imperative tools for improving your business and ensuring your customers are happy and loyal.

Build your brand with accurate info

Studies show satisfied clients tend to buy products more often and develop loyalty to a particular brand. They often spread the word by recommending products and services to friends and family as an informal referral process. Customer satisfaction surveys give firms specific information about positive and negative perceptions, which could improve marketing or sales efforts.

These perceptions are especially important because of the increased use of social media by people of all ages. One negative comment posted on a social media site could be seen by thousands of potential customers. Angry customers can use unfair criticism and untrue statements to harm a firm’s reputation. Repairing the damage or countering false representations could prove costly. Measure your results

Update your customers when you improve some area of operation

If survey results lead to a plan to improve weak areas of operation, a follow-up survey can be used to measure whether changes worked. Information can again be analyzed and compared to earlier feedback. It is also valuable to let your customers know you’re endeavoring to make improvements and to thank them for their help. Customer satisfaction surveys also reveal data that can be used to gauge the estimated customer satisfaction rates of competitors.

What is Net Promoter Score?

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a customer loyalty and satisfaction measurement taken from asking customers how likely they are to recommend your product or service to others on a scale of 0-10—but there’s a lot more to the story than that.

This guide covers what you need to know about NPS, including chapters on the Net Promoter System, what questions to ask as part of your NPS survey, how to calculate your score, and how to improve your NPS.

What is NPS?

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a customer loyalty score, ranging from -100 to 100, calculated by asking customers one question: “On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend this product/company to a friend or colleague?”

Why is NPS important?

NPS can be used as a predictor of business growth. When your company’s NPS is high (or, at least, higher than the industry average), you know that you have a healthy relationship with customers who are likely to act as evangelists for the brand, fuel word of mouth, and generate a positive growth cycle.

NPS is a valuable metric on a strategic level, but by itself, the score is not enough to be useful or paint a complete picture. The overall NPS system is important because it allows businesses to:  

  • Ask follow-up questions as part of the standard NPS survey. By asking customers why they’ve given a specific score, organizations of any size can understand what they’re doing well and where they could be improving
  • Track and quantify a score over time, creating internal benchmarks
  • Rally all employees around one mission-critical objective: earning more enthusiastic customers

When Should Customer Satisfaction be Measured?

Proper timing of customer satisfaction surveys depends on the type of product or service provided, the type and number of customers served, the longevity and frequency of customer/supplier interactions, and the intended use of the results.

Three very different approaches to measuring customer satisfaction exist. Each produces meaningful and useful results and are appropriate for different situations, uses, and needs.

1. Measuring Customer Satisfaction with Post Purchase Evaluations

Post-purchase evaluations reflect the satisfaction of the individual customer at the time of product or service delivery.

This type of satisfaction survey is typically used as part of CRM and VOC systems. Each focuses on securing a long-term relationship with the individual customer.

2. Measuring Customer Satisfaction with Periodic Satisfaction Surveys

Periodic satisfaction surveys provide an occasional snapshot of customer experiences and expectations and are conducted for specific groups of consumers on a periodic basis.

3. Measuring Customer Satisfaction with Continuous Satisfaction Tracking

Benchmarking satisfaction as a Net Promoter Score would be an example. You can base tracking on post-purchase evaluations or a succession of regular customer satisfaction surveys (conducted daily, monthly, quarterly, etc.).

4 Ways To Improve Customer Satisfaction

Here are four proven ways to improve customer satisfaction by finding out what they value, what they care about, and what they really want:

1. Ask them!

Whether in print, in person or over the phone,  nothing is better than asking customers exactly what they want and how they want it. (Ask them what they don’t want, too!) Use feedback sheets, mail-back forms, comment cards, telephone scripts and more.

2. Conduct focus groups.

Bring a group of customers together for an open-ended chat session. Set them at ease and get them talking about what they really like, don’t like and wish they could get from your business.  Don’t defend, justify or argue. Just ask questions and take good notes. Follow up with a sincere ‘Thank you!’

3. Study complaints and compliments.

Every message from a customer presents an opportunity to improve customer satisfaction. Compliments show you what to reinforce, while complaints point to new ideas and action steps for improvement.

4. Set up a customer hotline.

Some customers will tell you what they think, but they want an ‘anonymous’ way to do it.  Fine! Set up a special voice recording ‘hotline’ for customers only. And don’t worry about receiving any strange messages; just sort through them for the gems that will give you specific information about the way to improve customer satisfaction!

Essential Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions

Measuring customer satisfaction is incredibly important because satisfaction is a strong predictor of future behavior (e.g. the probability of buying again and/or the probability of your customers referring to others). You can find bellow some essential customer satisfaction questions examples.

1. Overall Satisfaction Question

It is a good idea to include a general satisfaction question, which will serve as an overall measure of how well your company is pleasing customers across all aspects of the business.

Example
Q: What is your overall satisfaction with (insert company name)?

2. Attribute Questions

The general question shown above is a nice measure of overall satisfaction to track over time, but you will also want to measure specific aspects of satisfaction in order to obtain more actionable data. 

Example
Q: What is your satisfaction with our cleanliness?
Q: What is your satisfaction with the taste of our food?
Q: What is your satisfaction with the cleanliness of our restaurant?

3. Behavioral Questions

There are two commonly asked behavioral questions used in customer satisfaction research surveys:

Example
Q: How likely are you to recommend (company/product/service) to a friend?
Q: How likely are you to buy from (company) again?

4. Demographic Questions

It is usually useful to slice and dice your data by customer type.  Customer type could be males vs. females, young vs. old, new customers vs. long-time customers, heavy users vs. occasional users, etc.  These demographic questions will be specific to your company and industry, but it can be very useful to segment satisfaction scores in order to see if there are any notable differences in the data. 

Examples of common demographic questions include:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Income
  • Geography
  • Familiarity with product
  • Familiarity with industry
  • Duration of customer relationship
  • Sales channel 

5. Open-Ended Question

Finally, don’t forget to include an open-ended question in your customer satisfaction questionnaire.  This is an opportunity for customers to explain why they gave the ratings they’ve given. 

If you have a lot of respondents, these open-ended responses will not be easy to summarize or report, but do take the time to read through each one.  In many cases, the most insightful data will come from these free-form comments.

Example

Customer satisfaction survey form templates

Free Customer Satisfaction Survey Form Templates

If you want your business to grow, it’s critical that you keep your existing customers happy. To do so, you’ll need to measure and understand customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is defined as a client’s overall level of satisfaction from using your product or service.

Our expert-written customer satisfaction template was written by experts to help you get started. From convenience to professionalism, customer satisfaction surveys let you effectively gauge customer satisfaction and build a stronger business strategy.

Did your customers find what they were looking for? Are they satisfied? Are you asking the right questions? Our template can help you find and select customer satisfaction survey questions that solicit actionable feedback you can turn into meaningful customer loyalty.

Our template gives you questions that will help you quickly survey users, so you can discover bugs or confusing features, understand why customers aren’t checking out or upgrading.

You can modify this customer satisfaction survey template by adding Likert scale question, multiple-choice questions or any other feedback question to gain insights using pop-up form embed, feedback button lightbox or just add it inline in your website.

You can also create types of customer satisfaction surveys from scratch using our survey form builder. Build any type of survey with AbcSubmit today!

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Jotform’s Customer Satisfaction Survey Form Example

Jotform says that knowing the overall satisfaction of your customers on your provided services helps improve your services.

This customer satisfaction survey form allows for getting feedback from your customers. By using this feedback form, you can collect your customers’ comments.

All Jotform satisfaction form surveys are highly customizable. You can apply your desired form theme, add and remove fields and you can store the details in a centralized database.

Jotform editor is easy to use and you can create survey forms in minutes by adding multiple types of questions, real-time form editor and many more features to help you publish your customer service survey online.

Client Service Feedback Survey Form From Zoho

With Zoho forms, you get unlimited survey form creation with 15 questions per form, drag and drop customer satisfaction survey builder, share surveys, advanced reporting, and improved responses.

Zoho Survey is a straightforward, decent online survey tool that addresses basic survey needs and requirements. The platform proves to be an adequate option for companies and organizations that want to conduct surveys in customer satisfaction, education, human resources, marketing, marketing research and other business areas with a variety of custom or pre-built templates.

Zoho Survey provides users with a wide selection of built-in reports and interactive charts to help them analyze and comprehend the survey results and derive intelligent, actionable insights. Users can also export survey data in standard formats (.cvs or .xls) for a more traditional spreadsheet viewing. Zoho Survey offers integrations with other Zoho tools as well as leading business applications including MailChimp, Google Apps, and Sheets.

Customer Feedback Form From Typeform

Think about all the customer feedback you’ve given. Screens stuffed with text—where’s the exit button? Smiley push buttons—is that all my opinion’s worth? Typeforms are different. They invite interaction through a one-question-at-a-time approach and smooth interface designed for frictionless responses.

Customize the experience by creating an environment that’s tailored to your audience’s interests, expectations, browsing habits, and favorite device. Incentivize by throwing in some relevant quiz questions—and the promise of a big reveal at the end. Add intrigue with behind-the-scenes photos of your business, latest product, or new feature. Put enough love into creating your typeform and you’ll get love back.

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