Customer Satisfaction Surveys
Customer Satisfaction Surveys and Questionnaire Templates
Lock Media's is a recognized leader in web based business software including customer satisfaction surveying solutions. The Survey Builder Pro 2008 survey system is an end to end solution for tracking customer satisfaction.
An effective customer satisfaction survey program should focus on measuring customer perceptions of how well the company or organization delivers on the critical success factors and dimensions of the business. These usually include factors like service promptness, staff responsiveness, and understanding and resolution of the customer's problems.
The Survey Builder Pro 2008 customer satisfaction solution includes industry standard survey templates, a platform for hosting data collection, automatic notifications, and an advanced suite of analysis tools for analyzing customer satisfaction throughout the business cycle.
Building and deploying a customer satisfaction survey solution is simple, quick and reliable. Survey Builder Pro 2008 survey software does not require any programming skills. Surveys are customized by navigating an intuitive web based interface. Responses are automatically tabulated and presented in an easy to understand graphical format all in real time.
Customer Satisfaction Survey Templates Include:
- Retail Store Evaluation
- Product/Services Satisfaction
- Motivation and Buying Experience
- Organizational Concern for Satisfaction
- Services Quality Evaluation
- Customer Satisfaction
- Customer Service Satisfaction
- Auto Purchase/Lease Satisfaction
How to Develop a Successful, Baseline Customer Satisfaction Survey
A basic and effective baseline customer satisfaction survey program should focus on measuring customer perceptions of how well the company delivers on the critical success factors and dimensions of the business as defined by the customer; for example, service promptness, courtesy of staff, responsiveness, understanding of the customer's problem, strategic partnering, etc. The findings of company performance should be analyzed both with all customers and by key segments of the customer population.
Sometimes an organization's customer service personnel are included in the survey so that a gap analysis can be performed to determine differences in perceptions between the service providers and the customers.
Relevancy of Dimensions and Factors:
An effective customer satisfaction survey reflects what respondents care about most. Pre-survey interviews with customers to surface and identify the dimensions and factors they consider as important assure that the survey questionnaire does not overlook one or more important areas and specific service details. If at all possible, pre-survey interviews, especially when developing a customer satisfaction baseline questionnaire, should be conducted with customers to assure that all important service dimensions are included in the survey.
More Return for Your Research Investment:
In today's highly competitive environment, companies need an extra edge, and many have found that high quality customer service can make the difference in winning and retaining customers or losing them. Research shows that organizations which employ customer satisfaction research that goes beyond customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention measurements to identifying and measuring perceived customer value can deliver much more return for their research investment.
By determining which factors produce the highest perceived value by customers, research can provide the knowledge to both correct deficiencies in today's customer service and assist in building high value strategic, customer service offerings for the future. Special sets of questions can be built into survey questionnaires to learn about the perceived value of services and how a company stacks up against its primary competitors in delivering on the critical value factors.
Organization of a Basic Customer Satisfaction Survey:
Section 1. Overall dimension rating questions
Section 2. Ratings by service dimensions and specific service factors
Section 3. Respondent demographics
Section 1 - Overall Rating Questions
This first part of the survey (or the first part of each dimension rating section) will typically have an overall rating question for each major customer service dimension plus one or two related open-end questions at the end of the dimension's section.
Scale and Question Examples:
- Please rate [Company Name] customer service overall.
(5 point scale - Excellent, Good, Average, Fair, Poor) - Please rate [Company Name] customer support overall.
(5 point scale - Excellent, Good, Average, Fair, Poor) - Please rate [Company Name] technical product training courses overall.
(5 point scale - Excellent, Good, Average, Fair, Poor) - Please rate [Company Name] documentation overall.
(5 point scale - Excellent, Good, Average, Fair, Poor) - Overall, how satisfied are you with [Company Name] customer service?
(5-point scale - Very satisfied, Satisfied, Neutral/Not sure, Dissatisfied, Very dissatisfied) - Overall, how satisfied are you with [Company Name] customer support?
(5-point scale - Very satisfied, Satisfied, Neutral/Not sure, Dissatisfied, Very dissatisfied) - Overall, how satisfied are you with [Company Name] customer technical product training courses?
(5-point scale - Very satisfied, Satisfied, Neutral/Not sure, Dissatisfied, Very dissatisfied) - Overall, how satisfied are you with [Company Name] documentation?
(5-point scale - Very satisfied, Satisfied, Neutral/Not sure, Dissatisfied, Very dissatisfied)
In addition, reference and retention questions may be added.
Examples:
- How likely would you be to recommend [Company Name] customer service to a friend (or colleague)?
(5-point scale - Very likely, Likely, Neutral/Not sure, Not likely, Never)
- How likely would you be to buy or use [Company Name] customer service again?
(5-point scale - Very likely, Likely, Neutral/Not sure, Not likely, Never)
Open-end questions in section 1. allow respondents to elaborate on their overall ratings.
Comment question examples:
- What did you like (like best) about [Company Name] customer service (support, technical product training courses, documentation)?
- What did you dislike (dislike most) about [Company Name] customer service (support, technical product training courses, documentation)?
- How could [Company Name] improve their customer service (support, technical product training courses, documentation)?
Section 2 - Dimension Factor Rating Questions
Dimension factor rating questions comprise most of the survey. Examples of service dimension factors for the dimension of personal responsibility such as promptness, courtesy, accuracy and thoroughness can each be rated by your customers. The individual factors' ratings combine to produce an overall average rating for the dimension.
By combining these in a gap analysis, the relative significance of performance compared with importance can be judged.
However, this approach has several drawbacks. It doubles the number of dimension questions, making the overall survey longer, and that may affect response rates. But what customers rate as important may, in fact, not be what actually affects their behavior. They may say thoroughness is most important while responsiveness may more likely affect their choice of service supplier.
A more reliable correlation is that between dimension performance ratings and the overall customer satisfaction rating or customer retention rating.
Another consideration is rating dimension performance against the competition's. While this may be very valuable to ask in some intensely competitive environments, it may not be valuable or appropriate to ask in other environments - and it does add another question per dimension.
Dimension Question Structure:
Though dimension questions can be structured in a number of ways, it is best to use one question structure as much as possible throughout your survey.
Examples of question structures:
- How satisfied are you with ___________?
(Very satisfied, satisfied, Neutral, Dissatisfied, Very dissatisfied) - Please rate __________ customer service.
(Excellent, Good, Average, Fair, Poor) - [Company Name] provides good customer service.
(Strongly agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree) - How often does [Company Name] customer service exceed expectations?
(Very frequently, Frequently, Not Sure, Infrequently, Very Infrequently) - To what extent does [Company Name] customer service exceed expectations?
(To very great extent, To great extent, To some extent, To little extent, To very little extent)
Some additional general customer service satisfaction dimensions and factors:
- Overall customer service
- Helpfulness
- Friendliness
- Support staff that solves problems quickly
- Provides poor support
- Very talented professionals
- All the necessary resources to service you
- A very valuable service resource
- Competent
- Unprofessional
- People that are easy to deal with
- I receive the support I need from my ABC field engineer to resolve any service problems
- Ethical
- Dishonest
- Support staff which gives you a hard time
- Staff which is interested in your comments and suggestions
- Phone calls returned quickly
- People answering the phone are polite
- People on the answering the phone are cheerful
- Knowledgeable operators
- Listening to the customer
- Attentive to customer complaints
- Close to its customers
- Unwilling to go the extra mile for its customers
- Ignores customer suggestions
- Impossible to get satisfaction unless you go to the top
- In tune with the needs of its clients
- Prompt in dealing with customer complaints
- Efficient
- Easy to get information on the phone
- Poor customer phone support
- People who answer the phone have clear, easy to hear voices
- It takes a long time to reach the right person on the phone
- You are often put on hold for a long time
- Telephone support personnel who do not seem to have time for you
- Attention to detail
- Helpfulness
- Available support offerings fit your needs
- Phone support quality overall
- Ease of gaining access to support
- Time to reach technical personnel
- Effectiveness of answers/workarounds
- Access to technical support
Some Dimensions and Factors of Training Courses - Training Manager Satisfaction:
- Overall rating of the course(s)
- Courses taken personally
- Courses taken by people I supervise
- Reasons you decided to attend a course
- Reasons you decided not to attend a course
- Reasons you decided not to send people to a course(s)
- Appropriate course offering to meet their needs
- Effectiveness of the training courses in improving employee performance
- Effectiveness of the training courses in developing employee growth
- Do test scores influence status of employees - (pay, promotion, etc.)
- Rate the quality of the learning materials (individual media)
- Length of courses
- Amount of classroom time
- Amount of hands-on time
- Training facility
- Course delivery (instructors' theoretical knowledge, hands-on knowledge, etc.)
- Instructors' presentation/communication skills
- Encouragement of participation
- Good use of time in the class
- Difficulty of tests
- Test process
- Structure of tests
- Levels of achievement
- Knowledge your (various positions) have of [Company Name] products
- Skills your (various positions) have to administer, operate and service [Company Name] products
- [Company Name] courses are a good educational investment considering the tuition/travel cost
- [Company Name] courses are well presented
- Knowledge gained has had a direct impact on my (my business) performance
- Skills gained have had a direct impact on my (my business) performance
Tracking Dimensions:
- Compared to one year ago, is [Company Name] customer service (any dimension):
(Better, Worse, Same)
Section 3 - Demographics
These questions provide the ability to analyze results by respondent segments and sub-segments. For a customer service satisfaction survey, demographics may include a variety of variables which would classify customers.
For example:
- Geography/location
- Type of business
- Position title
- Function/role-responsibilities
- Types of product(s) used
- Types of service(s) used
- Frequency of product/service use
- Spending range on products/services
- Sex
- Age range
- Income range
- Highest education level
