Yesterday, I stopped by my favorite sandwich shop and ordered their vegetarian special — the ‘Tomato Moz’ — along with a small order of sweet potato fries. An artistic combination of organic veggies, fresh mozzarella and balsamic dressing. While waiting for the order to arrive, my thoughts turned to how I might write a satisfaction questionnaire for this restaurant… One that was better suited than the traditional comment cards so often found tucked between the ketchup bottle and sugar packets. Why is it that these surveys so often fail?
Instantly, I realized that what turns me off with so many customer questionnaires is being asked to provide ratings on a long list of items that feel absolutely irrelevant to my evaluation of the business. Such surveys feel disrespectful of both my time and my ability to provide meaningful feedback. So I rarely complete them.
Here’s what I mean. The typical questionnaire for a shop like The Paisley Hippo, would ask me to rate my overall satisfaction on a four or five point scale – no room for nuance. In addition, it would ask for ratings on 8 to 10 other aspects of my dining experience. Aspects that the business thinks might influence my overall rating. But nine times out of ten, I find them completely irrelevant.
And How Would You Rate the Seating…
For example, the survey card might ask about the quality of the ingredients, the lighting, my seating comfort, the menu, the service provided, price levels, value, etc. Invariably, halfway through the list I’ll have put down the card and gone back to my meal — or iPhone — or whatever else I can find to do that doesn’t feel like a root canal. The net result, no feedback given and no opportunity for the restaurant to benefit from a different point of view.
So how does this relate to the design of a customer satisfaction questionnaire?
The questions on a typical survey simply don’t relate to my criteria for evaluating the shop; they relate, if at all, to someone else’s. Which means that what I have to say is less important than what the questionnaire writer had to say. Hmmm.
Do I care that the lighting is only average? Never even noticed. Or do I care that the seating and furniture are mis-matched and dated? Are they? Didn’t notice. Was I satisfied with the service? It’s exactly what I expected, so I guess I was satisfied. Could I find my item easily on the menu board? I know it by heart. Was I greeted with a smile? Yes.
All of these are ‘interesting’ tidbits for analysts to look at. But the key questions are will I come back and would I recommend the ‘Hippo’ to a friend?
The Sum Really Is Greater Than the Parts
Think about a good friend. If I were to ask if you’d be willing to ‘recommend’ or perhaps ‘introduce ‘ your friend to an acquaintance of mine, it should be a pretty easy decision for you. Not because of his or her hair color, or height, or last name. It’s because of the overall collection of benefits that we – and they – would experience by the act of putting them in touch.
The same is true of the restaurant. My decision to eat there is based on a gestalt that subconsciously synthesizes a huge number of variables into a single answer. One that takes far more into account than the 8-10 selected features, including personal history, past occasions, convenience, whim and God knows what else.
I’m a believer in starting with the big picture. That means keeping your questionnaire short and easily understood. It also means keeping it focused on the what is relevant to a customer and what can readily be answered by that customer. While I can easily say that I’ll be eating there for the next 10 years and recommending it frequently, I couldn’t begin to tell you the precise weights that my subconscious places on a subset of the elements that drive the decision.
Ask The Ultimate Question
Fred Reichheld has caused quite a stir in marketing research circles — especially among customer satisfaction and loyalty consultants. His Net Promoter Score (NPS) is based on the answer to a single question, one that he calls The Ultimate Question, i.e.,
“How likely would you be to recommend [The Paisley Hippo] to a friend or colleague?”
Responses are captured on a highly intuitive 0-to-10 point rating scale, where zero means “Not at All Likely…” and 10 means “Extremely Likely to Recommend”.
I favor this approach, especially for businesses just starting to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty. I also like an open ended follow-up question that asks
“What could we do to get your rating to a 10?”
It’s in the responses to the second question that gold is most often found.
Just a Couple of Questions? Is That All?
This brief satisfaction questionnaire can be improved. I suggest adding another future minded question that captures an additional dimension of loyalty. For example,
“Six to twelve months from now, how likely will you be to eat at The Paisley Hippo?”
Use a similar 0-to-10 point rating scale.
And ask a question or two that can be used to classify customers into groups that represent different value to your business. In this case, I might ask about the frequency of visits.
A Satisfaction Questionnaire for the Rest of Us
Just as a friend is much more than the sum of his or her individual attributes, my local eatery is much more than a collection of furniture, lumens, ingredients, typefaces and linguistic gestures. My subconscious calculates and assigns a rating about whether or not to come back, how frequently to do so and which friends to recommend the shop to.
Furthermore, it’s important to me that if I’m asked for feedback, that I be given the opportunity to express myself on my own terms. Unfiltered, as it were, by preconceived ideas of what might or might not be important to my decisions.
Build your customer satisfaction questionnaire in a way that provides the customer with as much freedom as possible to tell you what matters. And make sure to capture it in their own words. The analysis may be a bit ‘messy’(you can’t just add up the percentage of each answer choice) but the rich understanding you gain will provide much more clarity about how to take your business to the next level.
The Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire as Seen by Wordle
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