Understand your customers: ask the right questions in customer surveys

Anyone who is interested in what customers think should know how to prepare a customer experience survey. Even though there are numerous other, more modern ways of communicating with clients, surveys are still far from obsolete.

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Open-ended questions

If an answer requires more than a simple yes or no, the responses will be much more informative. Customers often want to express themselves, so provide them with such an opportunity by posing open-ended questions - which need not be mandatory. 

Simple questions for more feedback

While you yourself might be fully familiar with your branch, your customers probably aren’t experts in the field. They will not speak your jargon, so don’t use excessively technical language when trying to reach out to them. You should ask only simply worded questions.

Of course, you should avoid leading questions: in other words, the wording of the questions should not imply a particular answer. You should be seeking honest feedback; if, however, you affect the outcome by phrasing certain questions in a leading manner, the feedback will not provide a true reflection of how things really are. In the long term, such surveys are of no real use; make sure, therefore, that your questions are as neutral as possible.

Customer stories

If you want to really know what problems exist in your company, ask customers for their stories. But beware: these stories may be very negative since people always remember negative experiences more intensively than the positive ones. Nevertheless, by aggregating various customer stories you may spot some trends and determine actionable solutions.

Create solutions

You need to ask questions about things that you can change, not about things which are beyond your control. Thus you should prefer questions which lead to actionable solutions, according to an article on the business2community.com website.

-jk-

Article source business2community.com - open community for business professionals
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