“If you’re competitor focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer focused allows you to be more pioneering.” – Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon.com
We all say we’re customer focused. None of us would be in business if we weren’t. But there are different levels of understanding customer interests and needs, from superficial to thorough. It’s the difference between having satisfied customers and loyal customers. It’s also the difference between making a sale and making a fortune.
How do you (really) know what your customers are thinking? And why should you care?
Customer Listening … Starts with Asking Questions
“Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.” – Steve Jobs, Apple
Customer-focused business cultures are adept at actively listening to customers at every touchpoint – before, during and after a sale. They research and validate customer and market need. They monitor customer behavior during the buying process. They routinely check in throughout a service engagement. And they stay in touch with customers once the product or service is delivered.
Staying in touch with customers is smart business. It won’t give you everything you need, though. One important tool for understanding feedback is a customer survey. Whether it’s a customer comment card, an online survey, or structured phone interviews, there is tremendous value in asking a wide variety of customers the same questions and looking at all the answers in one place. If you ask the right questions – in a way that customers feel compelled to answer candidly – you’ll get insights that don’t pop from a single conversation or a single customer segment.
What Do You Want to Know?
“The first step in exceeding your customer’s expectations is to know those expectations.” – Roy H. Williams, Author & founder of the Wizard Academy Institute
Before preparing your survey questions, decide what it is you want to know. The most common survey types gather feedback in one of these three areas:
- Customer Perceptions: Discover what customers think about your company. How do customers describe your company to others? When do customers think of you first vs. when does a competitor come to mind? What strengths do customers identify?
- Customer Satisfaction: Effective surveys can capture customer satisfaction with your products and services, customer service, ease of doing business, etc. The most candid results come from confidential or anonymous surveys.
- Product/Service Development: Feedback helps companies gain a better understanding of customers’ requirements and concerns, so products, services and customer service standards may be better aligned to customers’ needs.
Survey Monkey says that 60% of businesses conduct customer satisfaction surveys. And 95% of those companies use the feedback to make strategic decisions.
Who to Ask
“Your most unhappy customers are your biggest source of learning.” – Bill Gates, Microsoft
Think about which customer contacts are best suited to answer your questions. If you want to know how your organization is perceived in the marketplace, you’ll want to ask executive customers who are aware of market trends and players. Satisfaction is best measured by those who are close to the product or service you deliver. Technical users can weigh in on product and service roadmaps.
Be sure to reach an array of customers – not just your favorites. The best customer listening includes customer champions, disgruntled customers – and everyone in between. You owe it to your business to listen well to all customers. As you start to see trends in the collection of responses, truths emerge. Customers often confirm things that business leaders expect. Usually, there are surprises as well. Customers may identify overlooked strengths, perceptions, areas for improvements or ideas for what’s next that are invaluable to a business leader who really wants to know.
Benefits of Customer Surveys
“Loyal customers, they don’t just come back, they don’t simply recommend you, they insist that their friends do business with you.” – Chip Bell, Customer Service Expert/Speaker
The short answer to “why should we do customer surveys?” is that you’ll get information you want to inform business decisions. By monitoring customer satisfaction, you can identify concerns and opportunities – and respond in time to improve customer loyalty and company revenue.
When you act on customer feedback, it’s good for your business:
- In one experiment, financial services customers who were surveyed were more than three times as likely to open new accounts, less than half as likely to defect, and more profitable than the customers who hadn’t been surveyed. (Harvard Business Review)
- Companies that conduct customer surveys are 28 percent more likely to describe themselves as successful as those that do not survey. (Survey Monkey)
- In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 71 percent responded that they found a customer satisfaction metric very useful in managing and monitoring their businesses. (Marketing Metrics: The Definitive Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance)
Surveys are also good for your employees. Share results of the surveys with your workforce, so your team is aligned on what’s next and why. Positive customer feedback gives employees a boost of confidence that the business is on the right track.
Conducting effective customer surveys takes time to get the questions right, engage the customers, and analyze feedback. But the results are worth it! We rely on brand perception surveys among our clients’ stakeholders (internal and external) to help capture the essence of each brand. If you’re looking for support in conducting your customer survey, contact us. We’re always happy to help!
