There’s an adage in marketing, made famous by Harvard’s Thedodore Levvit:
“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”
The drill is just the tool that gets them the hole in the wood.
So, too, when it comes to customer satisfaction surveys.
Unlike a few of us market research nerds, most small business owners or bloggers don’t ‘want’ a satisfaction questionnaire. They want to know about their customers or readers.
Even more importantly, if you’re one of those business men or women, you want to grow your customer base and to keep those customers coming back year after year. And you want insights into customer frustrations that can lead to new product ideas.
In short, you want a quick assessment or customer relationships and to identify priorities for moving your business forward.
If you write a blog, similar reasoning applies. You want to understand your readers’ perspective on your content and to know which areas to emphasize (or downplay) in future posts.
All of this means we have to resist being infatuated with our satisfaction questionnaire. And to see it, instead, like Levitt’s drill, as the tool that help us reach our main objective.
Get on with Drilling the Hole
One implication is that we should get on with doing the survey, worrying less about the shiny features of the questionnaire or the advanced capabilities of the survey software and more about whether we’re actually engaging our customers and asking for their opinions.
If you haven’t asked them yet, here’s an example satisfaction questionnaire that can get you started. (You’ll return here once you’ve answered the quick questions of the mock survey.)
Just a few basic questions will help you gauge your readers’ level of engagement with your content and provide suggestions on how it could be improved. That’s valuable stuff.
Sure there are specialized customer surveys and specialized questionnaires used for advanced market researcher. But if you’re just starting to ask your customers for feedback, don’t be fooled. These special tools can’t take the place of the hammer or drill.
Want to Measure Customer Loyalty?
Start with this simple question:
“On a scale from 0-to-10, how likely would you be to recommend [brand or product X] to a friend or colleague?”
Using the 0-to-10 point rating scale helps to make the question more intuitive for your readers or customers.
Want to Know How to Improve?
Follow up the rating scale question with one that asks what you should work on to get better. As the following for anyone rating less than a perfect 10 in the previous question.
“And what would it take to get your rating to a 10?”
Ask this as an open-ended question that lets the customer or reader fill in a small text box using their own words. The analysis may be a bit more challenging, but the insights will be more forthcoming.
That’s because it’s difficult, if not impossible, for us to anticipate all of the answers. It’s far better to let customers and readers express their own thoughts.
Keep Additional Questions to a Minimum
Believe it or not, just these two questions are sufficient to provide extremely valuable insights. You can add a couple more without overburdening the respondent, but be sure to keep the questionnaire brief.
Doing so increases the likelihood that your survey will get responses, which in turn, helps to limit the bias that comes when only your best customers take the time to respond.
See how to write your first satisfaction questionnaire for more details about why we use the particular question and rating scales. Here’s another link to the example satisfaction questionnaire as well.
There’s an adage in marketing, made famous by Theodore Levitt:
“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”
The drill is just the tool that gets them that hole.
So, too, when it comes to customer satisfaction surveys.
Business owners or bloggers don’t ‘want’ a satisfaction questionnaire. They want to know about their customers or readers.
Even more importantly, if you’re one of those business men or women, you want to grow your customer base and to keep those customers coming back year after year. And you want insights into customer frustrations that can lead to new product ideas.
In short, you want a quick assessment of customer relationships and to identify priorities for moving your business forward.
If you write a blog, similar reasoning applies. You want to understand your readers’ perspective on your content and to know which areas to emphasize (or downplay) in future posts.
All of this means we have to resist being infatuated with our satisfaction questionnaire. And to see it, instead, like Levitt’s drill, as the tool that help us reach our main objective.
Get on with Drilling the Hole
One implication is that we should get on with doing the survey, worrying less about the shiny features of the questionnaire or the advanced capabilities of the survey software and more about whether we’re actually engaging our customers and asking for their opinions.
If you haven’t asked them yet, here’s an example satisfaction questionnaire that can get you started. (You’ll return here once you’ve answered the quick questions of the mock survey.)
Just a few basic questions will help you gauge your readers’ level of engagement with your content and provide suggestions on how it could be improved. That’s valuable stuff.
Sure there are specialized customer surveys and specialized questionnaires used for advanced market researcher. But if you’re just starting to ask your customers for feedback, don’t be fooled. These special tools can’t take the place of the hammer or drill.
Want to Measure Customer Loyalty?
Start with this simple question:
“On a scale from 0-to-10, how likely would you be to recommend [brand or product X] to a friend or colleague?”
Using the 0-to-10 point rating scale helps to make the question more intuitive for your readers or customers.
Want to Know How to Improve?
Follow up the rating scale question with one that asks what you should work on to get better. As the following for anyone rating less than a perfect 10 in the previous question.
“And what would it take to get your rating to a 10?”
Ask this as an open-ended question that lets the customer or reader fill in a small text box using their own words. The analysis may be a bit more challenging, but the insights will be more forthcoming.
That’s because it’s difficult, if not impossible, for us to anticipate all of the answers. It’s far better to let customers and readers express their own thoughts.
Keep Additional Questions to a Minimum
Believe it or not, just these two questions are sufficient to provide extremely valuable insights. You can add a couple more without overburdening the respondent, but be sure to keep the questionnaire brief.
Doing so increases the likelihood that your survey will get responses, which in turn, helps to limit the bias that comes when only your best customers take the time to respond.
See how to write your first satisfaction questionnaire for more details about why we use the particular question and rating scales. Here’s another link to the example satisfaction questionnaire as well.
Insider Secrets to Successful Satisfaction Questionnaires
More Satisfaction Questionnaire Articles:
- Write Your Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire in 30 Minutes
- Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire for a Phone Survey
- A Satisfaction Questionnaire Example
- About Andy Perkins
- What’s Holding Up Your Satisfaction Questionnaire?
Businesses are driven by the needs of their customers. Many companies perish because they cannot align their product or service to the needs and wants of the customer. Outstanding Customer Service is an evolutionary process that must be entrenched in the company culture or the customer will go elsewhere.
Gravity Gardener
http://gravitygarden.com/build-customer-loyalty
Customer satisfaction can be known by feedback form, it is not only one method to find out the customer need but it help to improve product quality and sales.
Int3eresting blog and great suggestions for a survey. I like your logical approach and samples.
Thanks. I found you thru Twitter and invite you to follow me @ptaylor98.