Can Surveys Help You Delight Your Customers

July 30, 2008

This article is an excerpt from Jamie Walters’ book — Big Vision, Small Business: The Four Keys to Finding Success & Satisfaction as a Lifestyle Entrepreneur.

Many companies, large and small, conduct periodic surveys with clients to ensure satisfaction. Surveys can be valuable, but the effectiveness depends largely on the quality of the questions and the listening skills of the interviewer. In some cases, as with written multiple-choice surveys, there is no opportunity for personal interaction or to ask clarifying and probing questions, reducing the value of the data gleaned. While quantitative surveys are certainly useful when statistical data is your goal, qualitative surveys are far more effective for a relationship-driven business intent upon truly guaranteeing client satisfaction and using the data gleaned to improve customer-interaction practices.

While writing this chapter, I received an electronic newsletter featuring a sample customer-satisfaction survey readers could use to "delight customers." The seven-question survey included measures such as "Rate the quality of our customer care" and "To what extent would you recommend our services." This particular survey was a good example of how such an effort can skim the surface by using vague language and yes-or-no questions, and miss excellent opportunities for deepening the relationship and gaining truly useful information. Why? The survey questions might yield an answer such as "Customer care is fair," but provides no specific details about what, specifically, your company is doing from the customer’s perspective to seem caring or uncaring, or to warrant a referral or not.

It’s easy to catch the Vapid Jargon Disease prevalent in corporate America because it’s so contagious, flowing in a torrent from seemingly wise management and leadership books. One example? The ubiquitous use of "delighting your customer" verbiage. Unless you know exactly what you mean by delighting your customer, and you have information regarding what, specifically, delights your customer — and if, in fact, your customer is delighted (or wants to be) — you won’t be delighting your customers consistently. Rather than talking a mean game about delighting your customers — while that’s certainly a nice thing to want to do — perhaps the more practical and enjoyable goal would be to commit to respectful interactions, consistency, good communication and follow-through, and delivery of the products and services you’ve promised in a manner that’s convenient and satisfying for the customer. A poor survey made up of such superficial questions not only gives you information you can’t act upon, but it wastes your customers’ time — hardly something most would find delightful.

Customer surveys, then, might be more valuable if they contain open-ended questions and an opportunity to delve more deeply into answers to allow you to define what’s most important to the customer and whether the interactions with your company are delivering just that. For example — instead of sending out a multiple-choice survey with questions such as "Did you find your recent experience with us delightful?" or "Was your experience with us fair, good or excellent?" — you might schedule fifteen-minute discussions with customers to find out what they value most about your products and services; what they wouldn’t want you to stop doing; and what’s most important to them when purchasing products and services such as yours. One good way to get constructive criticism that many people avoid is to ask, "If you absolutely had to select at least two things that would have made your experience with us better, what would they be?" That gives you more specific, actionable information than more general surveys.

Once you have that information, you can make whatever adjustments are necessary in your delivery or interaction practices to consistently make customer experiences positive — and be much more likely to "delight" your customers.

WHAT’S YOUR "SQ" (SERVICE QUOTIENT)?

If you really want to refine customer service, use these questions and exercises as a discussion guide to brainstorm improved — and deliberate — ways to "wow" your customers and boost your service quotient.

Exercise: Role play

Ask employees to assume the roles of specific customers speaking with you honestly about your current project. With you playing the part of the project lead or point person, discuss with them the service, interactions, products, etc. that they perceive and receive. Afterwards, discuss what was said, asking pointed questions such as:

How does our organization’s service fare under scrutiny?
Where does our organization rate very highly?
Where is improvement needed?
Where are there missed opportunities to increase the level of service on a regular basis?
What will change — and how — to improve service levels?
How will we feel as a group when we know we’re delivering this refined level of service?
What do we want customers to be able to say about working with us, ideally?
How does this differ from what they’re able to say about working with us now?

Be as specific as possible, offering detailed examples of what "fair service" or "ideal service" look, sound and feel like — for both your group and your customers. Once you’ve done some role-playing as a group, outline a plan for discussing the questions with a selection of current and previous customers. Then come back together as a group to decide how to integrate the feedback in a way that refines your service practices.

Homework: Analyze your survey

If you’ve designed a customer service survey, ask your employees to independently analyze the questions (not the answers) and share their perspective on how to make the survey a more effective tool for your business and your customers. Have employees respond to the following questions anonymously, if necessary, to elicit honest responses (and if they don’t feel able to share honest answers in the group, you might want to put that on your discussion list next!):

In your opinion, what is the purpose and intended result of this survey?
Does the language used represent the company’s personality, mission, and vision?
If you were asked this question about a product- or service-provider that you use, would you be able to answer it accurately? (For example, a true/false question such as, "We delight you" may be too vague to answer true or false.)
What is your opinion about how the survey was presented and framed to the reader?
From the survey alone, what do you believe the company will be able to do with the information that it gathers?
What needs to happen to convert this survey — and its benefit to customers and the company — from a ‘satisfactory’ rating to an ‘excellent’ rating in that the
information it generates will be useful in taking real steps to refine service practices?

Reality check: Recap actions taken

Schedule a meeting with yourself to honestly assess how you and your group are serving customers. Once individual group members have reflected on these questions, add them to the group dialogue list for a spirited discussion. Consider:

What is your rate of repeat and referral business?
Which customers do or would you list as references, which you’d leave off that list, and why?
How much do you know about what your customers want in terms of service? (Don’t make assumptions here; think about actual feedback that you’ve received.)
What service standards have you "made public" (in marketing materials or conversations, for example), and how are you living up to those promises?
How — on a day-to-day basis — do you and your team members demonstrate the level of service that you claim? Be very specific.
How have you remedied an instance of poor service?
What actions do you take to ensure that you’re not becoming complacent about the service that you deliver?
How do you train new employees to meet or exceed your service standard? (Does this training work? How do you know that it works, or doesn’t?)
Do all employees (including executive and management team members) demonstrate your desired level of service — regardless of the amount of contact they have with external clients?
In what ways could you improve service in areas that you, and perhaps even your customers, currently rate as good or excellent? Identify at least two ways to boost it even higher for each category under discussion.

Brainstorm: Discover service boosters

Just as in the case of a vague survey, performing these exercises will not improve your service levels. The exercises will help you identify opportunities for providing extraordinary service — if you take action. With your employees, review the responses to the above exercises and launch into a brainstorming session geared toward developing approaches to improving service. Encourage employees to suggest new methods, shifted responsibilities and additional ‘tools.’ Communicate the agreed-upon actions internally so that your expectations are clear, and follow up with customers, indicating why you’ve made changes and what they can expect from you. You might even adopt an approach used for high performance by other people: Tell your customers about your vision for higher levels of service and let them know some of the actions you’ll be taking to create real refinements in their experience with your company. Once it’s "out there," you’ll feel extra motivation to follow through!

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