Using a customer experience survey can help you measure how good your business is at interacting with your customers.
By tracking the customer experience through surveys, you can identify problem areas and make changes to improve the overall experience of your customers.
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Bill Gates
What is a Customer Experience Survey?
A customer experience survey allows you to capture a customer’s emotions based on their experiences at various touch points throughout their customer journey with you.
For example, you want to track the customer experience from the moment they think of your brand through to their return as a repeat customer. Using a CX survey can help you measure the customer experience at every touchpoint along the way. One way to find all the touch points is by mapping the customer journey.
A customer experience survey looks at both structured data and open-ended questions. The data and feedback provided can help you to understand your customers experience and look for areas of improvements.
How Can You Make Your Customer Experience Survey More Effective?
Be Focused Define a clear purpose for your survey. Why are you running it? What information are you seeking to gain? How are you going to interpret the results? Avoid the temptation to throw in additional questions as this increases the likelihood of drop out.
Explain the Survey Explain to those participating why you are running the survey. Users are more likely to participate if they can see the point. If they understand your objectives it may also help them to provide answers that are more useful to you.
Tell Them How Long the Survey Takes Tell participants exactly how long the survey takes to complete. If they know exactly how long it will take and what to expect then they’re more likely to complete the survey.
Don’t Ask Too Many Questions Keep your survey short and sweet. Participants hate answering pages of questions that eat away at their free time. Only ask what is most important for reaching your goal. The most effective surveys have about five to ten relevant questions.
Don’t Make Them Think Be careful not to require too much effort from your participants. The highest completion rate will come from easy to answer questions.
Start Easy Start with a few simple questions that require no thought at all. If participants answer the first one or two questions, they are much more likely to do the whole survey. If the first question is too challenging people give up, presuming the entire survey will require too much effort.
Avoid Asking Too Many Personal Questions Always keep your surveys anonymous. An online survey is not the place for collecting names and contact information. Asking for this will significantly decrease the number of people completing the survey. Remember your goal is to find out about their customer experience not to find out about them.
Watch Your Language The way questions are worded can make a substantial difference in results. For example using the word ‘should’ instead of ‘could’ has been known to alter results by up to 20%. Make sure the words you choose are as neutral as possible.
Avoid Using Jargon or Technical Terms The CX survey should be easy to read and understand. Don’t use internal language that only your business knows. A customer who feels confused is unlikely to complete the survey or give you accurate answers.
Test Your Survey Make sure that you test your CX survey across all devices. This test will give you a better idea of how the survey will appear and how readable it is in a different medium.
In summary, an amazing customer experience begins with solid data. You’ve got to figure out what your customers need before you can deliver it.
By asking the right questions you can identify the specific steps to take to improve your customer experience which will lead to increased conversions, a lower churn rate and more loyal customers.
If you need any help turning your data into actionable insights then get in touch and I’ll be happy to help.