Customer success teams are under increasing pressure to prove the value of their work. If a customer is happy, your job is easy. But if they’re not, it can be hard to say why—and your team won’t get any credit for fixing problems that you can’t measure. The key to making the most of this data is to use it to solve problems before they become too big and expensive to handle. With that in mind, here are some ways to make use of your customer success surveys.
Understand the survey’s purpose
The first step is to understand why you’re conducting the survey, and what you hope to achieve by doing so. This will help you determine what questions you need to ask for it to be valuable. Once you’ve identified these questions, you must know how to analyze the results of your survey when they come in. This can be tricky if this isn’t something that comes naturally or easily for you—in which case, we suggest seeking out someone who has experience analyzing customer surveys before diving into it yourself.
Ask the right questions
Asking the right questions is a key part of any customer success survey. You want to ask open-ended questions that allow for an in-depth response, but not so many that you overwhelm people. Keep it short and sweet. The longer your survey is, the more likely people are going to drop out before they finish it. Ideally, you want your survey to be between 5 and 8 minutes long.
Know your audience
You should know who your customers are and what they need from their experience with your product or service. While it’s not always easy to get a full picture of who is using your product, you can get a good idea by looking at the demographics of those who have signed up. Demographic information includes things like gender, age, location, and income level. This is important as it helps you understand how your target audience uses the product and how they might benefit from additional features or functionality.
If previous surveys have pointed out any problems or frustrations with certain tasks then this could be helpful information going forward when deciding which features will become priorities during development cycles.
Provide an outlet for feedback
It’s easy for customers to get overwhelmed by a survey—especially if they’re not familiar with the product or industry, or if it’s their first time in your app. Make sure you have a way for them to provide feedback outside of the survey itself so that they don’t feel like their questions aren’t being taken seriously.You should make it clear that you want feedback and make it easy for customers to fill out these forms (or email them).
Develop a testing strategy
Before you send out your survey, try it out. You want to make sure that it has all the right questions, and that it will be easily understood by customers regardless of language or cultural background.Remember, you’re not just testing whether or not a survey works—you’re also testing whether or not customers will respond. If they don’t see the benefit of answering your questions, then they won’t answer them—and then there’s no point in sending the survey out at all.
Conclusion
The most important thing to remember about a customer satisfaction survey is that it’s just one tool in your toolbox. You should use it as part of an overall strategy for collecting feedback from your customers and using that information to help improve the product or service you offer. It’s not a replacement for other types of surveys, but rather a supplement that can give you the data needed to make decisions about how best to move forward with improvement efforts.
