A customer satisfaction survey is a questionnaire developed by consumer brands to understand if their customers like or hate their products/services. The main goal and purpose of this survey are to check whether the brands are meeting customer expectations.

The questionnaire is designed to recognize the dissatisfied customers and understand their pain points to make improvements to their current customer experience.

Why is the customer satisfaction survey important?

After investing much time, money, and effort, businesses still lose several clients. To understand why they are losing clients it’s important to gather feedback from customers regularly. The ideal practice is to use a customer satisfaction survey to figure out where they’re going wrong. It has become a critical instrument to improve client satisfaction and loyalty.

5 reasons why customer satisfaction surveys are important:

1. Establish connections and make customers feel valuable

When you ask your customers to participate in surveys, you are demonstrating that you appreciate their input. It also demonstrates that you want customers to have a say in how your company is run, making them feel more connected to the brand.

Furthermore, asking people what they think about your service or product gives them the impression that you are not only interested in their money, but also in addressing their needs. This is a fantastic method to turn your customers into brand advocates.

2. Product enhancements

To improve your products/services, you need to know your customer’s pain points through feedback from multiple touchpoints, analyze them in detail and actively act on the product CX insights. Customer satisfaction surveys are performed to know how well a company is performing in terms of product quality, customer experience, and service quality. However, measuring these will help you to figure out the friction and pain points of customers.

3. Personalize the customer experience

Customer experience is one of the most powerful unique selling points for most brands in a highly competitive business environment. How do your consumers feel about doing business with you? Is there a personal resemblance?

Besides, consider how Apple users may cheerfully spend hours explaining why they love their products to anyone who will listen. Is it possible for your customers to connect with your brand on that level? It may be tough to achieve Apple-level loyalty, but a personalized customer experience can help you get very close.

4. Actionable data for business decisions

You can’t afford to make business judgments on the spur of the moment in a highly competitive market. Customer satisfaction surveys are a great approach to getting useful information that can help you plan your future business plans.

What areas of your business should be given more budgetary attention? Should you open a new brick-and-mortar store? Should you increase your digital or offline marketing budget? You may make decisions based on the data from your customer satisfaction surveys that will yield the best results for your company.

5. Benchmarking for development

Benchmarking is another compelling incentive to survey your customers. However, gathering feedback at various periods in time will help you to compare data from year to year to see if any changes are needed and whether implemented modifications were well received. You’ll eventually be able to monitor your progress in real-time.

6 Types of customer satisfaction surveys

As we all know that surveys are the best way to measure customer satisfaction, asking the wrong question may not provide the right results you expect. Only asking the right questions gives you the right data.

Here are 6 customer satisfaction survey metrics that guide you through the right data.

1. Customer satisfaction score  

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is a metric used by many companies to measure how satisfied a customer is with a product or overall experience. With CSAT, customers can denote their satisfaction with a star rating or a smile that shows their emotion.

2. Net promoter score

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a metric used to measure the propensity of a customer to advocate a product or service to another person. It comes with a question like – “How likely are you to recommend this to someone?”. Customers can choose a score from 0-10 to report their satisfaction with the product/service.

3. Customer effort score (CES)

A CES survey usually measures the effort a customer has to take to get an issue resolved. and, It is typically asked with a question – “on a scale of ‘very easy’ to ‘very difficult, how easy was it to interact with us”.

4. Milestone surveys

Milestone survey questions are shared with customers at the key moments in their purchase journey to understand their experience with the product/service. In the same way, this survey can be triggered either time-based(eg. after 15 days free trial) or experience-based(eg. after the onboarding).

5. Post-purchase survey

As the name suggests, post-purchase surveys are triggered after each purchase of customers to gather their feedback by asking questions like – “how would you rate overall experience, what can we do to improve the experience, what did you love the most in purchasing with us, and what almost stopped you from completing the purchase”. This customer response will have great value as they can give the real reasons for their satisfaction or pain points.

6. Product development survey

Product Development Surveys are conducted before the product development and launching. The respondents will be your clients and target responses. Moreover, the survey is helpful for businesses as it allows them to predict the success of a new product even before its production.

Top 5 customer survey tools

To conduct customer satisfaction surveys we need dedicated online survey tools that are capable of collecting customer feedback. There are several methods to collect different types of feedback.

Let’s have a look at the top customer satisfaction survey tools.

1. Google forms

Using google forms we can easily create and share online forms and surveys, and analyze responses in real-time.  This platform is easy to use, as it doesn’t require special software. However, We can create and analyze surveys on mobile as well.

2. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey allows you to create sophisticated surveys, quizzes, and polls online. This platform allows anyone to create surveys seamlessly even though they are not technical savvy.

3. Typeform

It allows the creation of online forms and surveys. You can create surveys dynamically as per the requirements. However, it’s user-friendly where we don’t have to write a single line of code. And, it collects and shares information and it is comfortable and conversational.

4. SurveySparrow

You can use different question types and features to create and share a highly engaging survey with your customers. And, it generates actionable survey insights and reports.

5. Zoho survey

The survey helps you create your survey with a simple drag-and-drop interface. Using this you can share surveys online and view your responses with real-time reports seamlessly.

Top 5 customer satisfaction survey software

Some of the customer satisfaction survey software available in the market are as follows.

1. Zendesk

Zendesk offers a built-in customer satisfaction survey. It allows you to track how well your agents and customer service organization as a whole are performing on a ticket-by-ticket basis.

2. Nicereply

It allows you to ask customers for feedback, and turn a conversation around. By adding a Customer Satisfaction Survey (CSAT), a Net Promoter Score (NPS), or a Customer Effort Score (CES) you can follow up with customers who are willing to share their thoughts with you and instantly respond to their concerns or issues. Often, It comes with CSAT, NPS, and CES. With this, you can generate reports, mobile surveys, and manage surveys.

3.Tidio

It implements surveys to collect customer feedback. A simple question along with a rating scale will be provided to the customer. On the other hand, it generally asks for customer feedback after the customer service interaction.                

4. Feedbackly

It allows you to collect customer data by publishing surveys on any sales/marketing channel simultaneously and can track 20 different KPIs such as the Net Promoter Score and CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) to Customer Retention Rate and First Response Time. Select from a variety of question types such as smileys, multiple-choice, open question, form, etc, and likewise, analytics converts all data into easy-to-understand, visual data.

5. Qualaroo

It helps companies to acquire valuable insights from customers ‘in the moment’ when they are using your website or app. This platform makes it easy to survey specific users in context while they are looking at your product, service & brand.

Moreover, for Conducting customer satisfaction surveys we need dedicated online survey tools that are capable of collecting customer feedback. There are several methods to collect different types of feedback. Let’s have a look at the top customer satisfaction survey tools.