Discover What Your Small Business is Doing Wrong (and Right) By Conducting Customer Satisfaction Surveys, Part 1

A few months ago I wrote a post about the importance of asking for testimonials from your small business clients.  That post – with advice about personally asking each client for a testimonial using questions tailored to your specific interaction – still holds true, but isn’t very practical for small business owners who own an eBay business, ecommerce store, retail shop or other business that attracts a high volume of clients.

Still, gauging customer satisfaction is an important part of growing and improving your business. And often, even if people have a bad or annoying experience with your business, they keep their mouths shut. Why? Because you didn’t ask. Worse, while you remain in blissful ignorance, your close-mouthed customers simply point their feet or their browsers to another store, leaving you to wonder why they left you.
A well-written and cleverly delivered customer satisfaction survey can change all that. And, luckily for you, with a little planning you can host the survey on your own without paying the high consulting fees commanded by market research firms.

When you’ve decided to perform a customer satisfaction survey, your first step is to pinpoint what information you are looking for. If you’ve never done a survey before, you will probably want to keep your questions general. Here are a few areas you might want to cover, whether you run an ecommerce store or a brick and mortar shop:

1. Customer Service – This is the primary area where you and your staff have the chance to interact with customers. If anything about your customer service – from wait times to be served to a labyrinthine phone menu on your helpline – turns your customers off, you can lose them without ever knowing why. Evaluate your current customer service policies and procedures and ask customers what they like and what needs work.
2. Navigation – If you run an ecommerce business, navigation refers to actually browsing your store – from using the search feature and shopping cart to reading and understanding product descriptions. For a brick and mortar store, navigation means everything from finding the place to finding what they are looking for on your shelves. Does your store make sense or leave customer scratching their heads? You may never know unless you ask.
3. Products – Ask customers what they think about your products and product lines. If you sell a limited product line or handmade objects, such as through Etsy.com or eBay, you may want to ask detailed questions about satisfaction with the product. If you sell a range of products, you may want to ask if customers are satisfied with the product lines, if they would prefer other product lines, or if they have suggestions for new products. For example, perhaps you sell cat toys, cat beds and even cat Halloween costumes, but never thought to sell cat food.  A customer’s idea could open up a whole new line of business for your store.

By no means are you limited in what you ask customers about. You may want to get opinions on everything from your brick and mortar store hours to a special you’re running. Or, if you have found yourself receiving complaints about a certain aspect of your business, you may want to create a follow up survey to ask more specific questions about that area. When used correctly, customer satisfaction surveys can help you improve problem areas, satisfy customers more completely, and ultimately take your business to the next level.

In future parts of this series, we’ll talk about writing customer satisfaction survey and the best ways to deliver customer service surveys to your customers for maximum effect.

Have you used customer satisfaction surveys? Have they helped your small business?

Similar Topics for Your Business:

• Discover What Your Small Business is Doing Wrong (and Right) By Conducting Customer Satisfaction Surveys, Part 3: Delivering the Survey
• Discover What Your Small Business is Doing Wrong (and Right) By Conducting Customer Satisfaction Surveys, Part 2: Writing the Survey
• How Ecommerce Geniuses Write Eye-Catching, Conversion-Inducing Product Descriptions
• Dos and Don’ts for Successful Sales Conversions on your Ecommerce Site
• Testimonials for Your Small Business: You Have to Ask

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