Customer satisfaction surveys are the best way for businesses large and small to find out how customers really feel about products, services, and the shopping experience. But, unfortunately, not all companies use customer satisfaction surveys correctly.
While it may seem like an easy way to check in on employee performance, using customer satisfaction surveys this way has drawbacks. In reality, it makes the surveys less effective and less accurate. These surveys measure customer satisfaction, not employee performance (there are different surveys for that). Focusing on customer experience helps companies adjust practices and improve the bottom line.
Use feedback surveys to measure the reality of your business. This approach helps keep both customers and employees satisfied. It also provides insights that can lead to beneficial changes.
Develop a Culture That Promotes Honesty to Get Good Customer Satisfaction Survey Results
Fear of surveys or bonuses tied to results may lead employees to manipulate the surveys. This fear or incentive structure pressures employees to influence the outcomes.
Employees at such organizations might feel pressured to offer extra service or discounts. They may even pressure customers to give top marks.
Employees generally do this because they fear for their job or want the compensation tied to the satisfaction scores.
Either way, they got a clear signal from upper management that the score, not their actual level of service, was all that mattered.
Gathering data in these customer satisfaction surveys should be a mechanism for the customer to have an honest conversation about their experience. The feedback that you get should be an opportunity for continuous improvement.
If you really want nothing but perfect scores, don’t distribute your surveys. Just take them yourself!
The data collected would be just as valuable in this case. Data gathered from an extremely biased process is useless.
Empower Employees to Give Good Customer Service Without Fear
Sometimes, you can’t avoid a low customer satisfaction score.
Customers may leave low feedback scores if employees follow company policies the customers disagree with. Additionally, customers might leave poor scores for unreasonable requests that cannot be accommodated.
There are even scenarios where a customer leaves a bad score by accident. Have you ever read a glowing 1-star review on Amazon? I know I have.
Considering these scenarios in surveys helps employees use results to provide better customer service.
Empower your employees to reach out to customers who leave feedback and address their complaints. They should also have the opportunity to thank customers who offer positive feedback.
Even if you cannot do what they request or resolve their complaint, sometimes an honest explanation goes a long way with a dissatisfied customer.
No matter the scenario, your employees should not fear reprisal for each incident that arises that may be totally out of their control.
Using the Right Questions for Customer Satisfaction Surveys
Along with the common, “Please rate your experience on a scale of 1-5” type questions, make sure you include open text questions as well.
Rating questions and NPS (Net Promoter Score) provide solid quantitative data. However, allowing customers to describe their experience in their own words offers invaluable qualitative data.
Pressing the Reset Button On Customer Satisfaction Survey Collection
If your company demands only perfect survey scores, consider pausing your customer satisfaction surveys for a while. This break will help reset expectations and improve the quality of feedback.
As an organization, find out what you want to gain from your customer satisfaction surveys in the future. (A good place to start would be our best practices library Great Survey Design.)
Meet with all stakeholders in the company. Explain the shift in how you want to deal with customer satisfaction surveys. Assure your employees that you want honest customer feedback to improve and that you will not use it to punish or promote.
Make sure you keep your word after the survey relaunches.
You may also want to consider leaving your front-line employees out of the decision-making process regarding who gets the survey. Instead select from your customer base randomly.
Relaunch your survey and learn to act on data collected and look at it as an opportunity for continuous improvement.
How We Do Customer Satisfaction Surveys
At Alchemer we have weekly company meetings where we analyze trends in our NPS scores and comments. We examine the data and work hard at keeping our customers happy.
We reach back out to those that take our NPS surveys and try to resolve their complaint or provide honest explanations. Our agents are empowered to provide stellar customer service in either case!
