Without customers, you wouldn’t have a business. It’s important to check in with them every once in a while to ensure their needs are being met and that they’re having a positive experience. The easiest way to do this is with a customer satisfaction survey. Regardless of how large a company is, the insight gained from a customer satisfaction survey can be the key to its continued growth.
Twelve benefits of customer satisfaction surveys
Customer satisfaction surveys are often perceived as critical to assessing the general customer experience and there are many benefits to using them. Here are the top 12 benefits of customer satisfaction surveys:
- Gain valuable feedback.
- Give your customers a voice.
- Determine your company’s priorities.
- Retain more customers.
- Gain an advantage over competitors.
- Maintain loyal customers.
- Better understand your customer’s perspective.
- Track feedback about changes.
- Establish more word-of-mouth advertising.
- Maintain a positive reputation.
- Identify trends.
- Determine the company’s success.
Conducting customer surveys is a great way to gain an understanding of consumers’ needs and improve the customer service you provide. There are multiple advantages of customer satisfaction surveys and asking customers their opinions can benefit everyone They can provide valuable insights into how customers view the products and services you provide. Encouraging customer participation through surveys helps establish a relationship between your company and its customers, which encourages customer loyalty.
Let’s dive into more details about the advantages of customer surveys.
Gain valuable feedback
It should be no surprise that gaining valuable feedback is the first of the many benefits of customer feedback surveys.
A customer satisfaction survey allows customers of all types to be asked pertinent questions. You can receive feedback about every area of a business, ranging from specific products to customer service. By including open-ended questions in your survey, customers have an opportunity to dive deeper and share detailed opinions or experiences they’ve had with your company.
The answers that come back through a customer satisfaction survey might expose operational problems or product and service issues that you didn’t know existed. You might also discover aspects of your business that are doing well that can be capitalized upon.
It’s important to gauge the importance of specific customer feedback. Not every customer will have the same experience or opinion. Some may offer great suggestions, while others are just getting the opportunity to vent to pass the time. Feedback surveys provide valuable information—as long as you use it to your company’s advantage. Customers will appreciate the effort as long as it is shown that you’re listening to their concerns.
Give customers a voice
Every customer wants to feel heard—especially if they’ve had a bad experience. If you believe the customer is always right, a customer satisfaction survey will help them feel special by providing them a way to be heard—and that is one of the greatest benefits of customer feedback surveys that you can utilize.
If a customer has a bad experience, then providing them an opportunity to air their grievances may prevent them from making their opinion known publicly. Voicing their frustrations through a private customer satisfaction survey instead of on social media or a review website can help save your company’s reputation. Simply asking customers for feedback shows how much you care about their experience and how willing you are to improve it in the future.
Determine company priorities
Results and insights from a customer satisfaction survey can help you discover which aspects of your business need to be prioritized—that is one of the greatest advantages of customer surveys. Find out how well customer service, certain products, billing practices, order processing, your website, and other issues are from customers’ perspectives.
To discover areas of the business that need attention, include questions that ask customers to rate their satisfaction level regarding specific areas on a scale. Once you pinpoint particular areas, send a follow-up customer satisfaction survey that asks more specific questions to help determine the specific problems that need to be addressed.
A customer satisfaction survey can also ask such scale-rating questions individually. Use question branching so that, if a respondent answers with a low number to a question, follow-up inquiries can be made about the specific area to gain deeper insight. Learn exactly what your company needs to prioritize in order to keep customers happy.
Retain more customers
The more satisfied customers feel with services and products, the more likely they will come back for more. Customer satisfaction surveys are the perfect way to pinpoint what customers love about your business and what needs to be improved. They also help gauge customer satisfaction progression over time.
If you send out a survey every quarter, the results can be compared to see if the changes that were made based on previous feedback are paying off. The happier you can make customers, the more likely they remain customers. High customer retention is the key to a successful business—and one way to achieve it is to understand the benefits of customer satisfaction surveys.
Gain an edge over competitors
Do you know how your company compares to its competitors? A customer satisfaction survey can give you insight into where it excels—or falls short—when compared to others in your industry. If customers like the competition’s price point better, use this insight to reexamine your pricing structure. Asking the right questions about competitors can help determine the best ways to win over your competitor’s customers.
Maintain loyal customers
Customer loyalty goes much further than just repeat business. Satisfied customers usually praise a company to everyone they know. Word-of-mouth marketing helps companies grow and thrive far more efficiently than paid online ads. With a customer satisfaction survey, inspire customers to stay loyal by listening to their feedback and making improvements to your company. And as loyal customers see these changes implemented, they will continue showing their loyalty.
Want to conduct a deeper examination of customer loyalty? With some help from SurveyPlanet’s customer/brand loyalty survey examples and templates, you can conduct an effective survey that will provide access to the honest feelings of customers about the products and services you offer.
A better understanding of customers’ perspectives
It’s easy to get tunnel vision when running a business, failing to see the business as consumers do. Use a customer satisfaction survey to understand what your company looks like from the perspective of customers. Open-ended questions can be extremely beneficial in this context. Although multiple-choice questions are easier to analyze in bulk, open-ended questions provide important insight into the real experiences of actual customers. Make sure not to ask too many of them to avoid respondents becoming frustrated or bored.
Track feedback about changes
When your company makes changes to products or services, a customer satisfaction survey makes it easy to track the response of customers. Asking survey questions about recent updates will tell you if those changes were beneficial to the customer experience. Without such feedback, there’s no way to tell if the changes were beneficial to the company or not. Continue to use customer satisfaction surveys to improve decision-making.
Increase word-of-mouth advertising
When a consumer loves a product, they usually want the whole world to hear about it. By sending out a customer satisfaction survey, you can find out just how many customers are happy and out there spreading the word about your products. They might do this through reviews, posts on social media, or when conversing with friends and family. Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most effective ways to spread brand awareness and gain new customers.
Maintain a positive reputation
Just as customer satisfaction surveys give customers an outlet to express themselves, it also demonstrates that you care. When a company shows that they take the customer experience seriously, consumers take notice and have a deeper appreciation and devotion to the brand. This builds a positive reputation.
Identify trends
Customer satisfaction surveys are not a once-in-a-lifetime idea. Use them regularly to check in with customers and learn how their needs and preferences are changing over time. Whether you stay on top of trends in your industry or not, competitors will, making it more likely that you lose customers over the long run. Learning about current trends can help a company develop new products and establish new goals.
Determine company success
When a company is ignorant of how satisfied its customers are, there’s no way to gauge how successful the company will be down the line. Regularly sending our customer satisfaction surveys is a good way to ensure your company’s future success by staying in tune with customers’ needs and getting regular feedback. It’s safe to say your company will have a more positive outlook by doing so.
Utilize customer surveys benefits with SurveyPlanet
If you’re not already sending customer satisfaction surveys regularly to customers, it’s time to begin. With all the benefits, you don’t want to fall behind competitors. Fortunately, SurveyPlanet makes it easy to create your first customer satisfaction survey with a pre-written survey that will help you get started. Learn what customers really think of your business by sending out a first survey today. Sign up for a free account here to get started.