22 PROCESS AND PRACTICE

OH NO, A SURVEY!

How do you respond to survey requests? Do you click them away? Your customers probably respond the same way when you send them a work-related survey request. While it is these measurements that are so important to the improvement of your services. How do you make sure your customers provide the feedback you need?

When introducing a customer satisfaction survey, it only makes sense

to begin with the question: what do I want to measure? You determine

which parts of your services are the most important, what you want

to know about them and create a list of questions. Nevertheless, in

practice it proves to be difficult to get people to respond and it takes

your department time to process all the information. What is going

wrong? This approach has you asking the right questions, but you are

missing the most important prerequisite: you are forgetting to think

from your customer’s perspective.

What is a logical survey moment?It might be a bit much to posit that you are not thinking from

your customer’s perspective. After all, you send them as few surveys

as possible. Just the one per year, for instance, so as not to overwhelm

your customer. However, this assumption is not quite right and

does not get the desired results. You eventually send a huge list of

questions about all aspects of your services and receive hardly any

responses. For your customer, the threshold is high when faced with

a long survey to fill in – higher than with several smaller surveys. It is

not that you approach your customer with as few surveys as possible,

but approaching your customer at the right time.

If a customer has just used your services, it will feel logical to them

to provide feedback. There is a reason to send him or her a (short)

survey and to ask about his or her experiences with the process: a

so-called process measurement. This measurement answers questions

such as, have we processed this call well? What did the customer

think about the communication regarding progress updates? You

can perform such measurements after completing a project for your

customer, for instance, or even after processing calls. Before you

introduce process measurements, you must first map out how the

department handles contact with your customer: which services does

the customer use and which contact moments can we identify? This

measurement concerns a completed whole, so you can keep the survey

short while using open questions to gather higher quality input. The

customer will be more like to answer the questions and processing the

answers will not take much time.

When should you ask what?A process measurement answers the question of whether you

are doing things well. However, you probably also want to know more

generally whether your customers are satisfied – the answer to the

question: are we doing the right things? Your customer understands

that you can use recurring surveys to improve your services and is

happy to fill in a survey once a year. You do not need to send surveys

more often; your customer’s opinion of your services will not change

from month to month. Do think about when to send the survey: take

into account the holiday periods and make sure the survey does not

coincide with other instances of customer communication.

During the process measurement you ask specific questions

about certain processes, so you are able to keep recurring customer

Text: Nienke Deuss

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PROCESS AND PRACTICE 23

satisfaction surveys brief. Such surveys answer questions like: are we

supplying the services that our customers expect? Are we focusing on

the right aspects of our services?

In these measurements, customers are often asked to supply

scores: how important does he or she find the service and is he or she

satisfied? This results in a matrix that helps you determine your most

important points of improvement.

How can you ask for feedback?The easier it is for your customer to fill in the survey, the more

likely they are to actually do it. Printing, filling in and returning a Word

file will not result in many responses, so try to think of ways to make

this simpler. Of course you can use a web form, but also consider using

quick surveys (about three questions) or ‘likes’. Answering a question

by clicking an option is easier than typing a response. For instance, you

will receive many more responses by providing only three buttons as

possible answers: .

Tip: the biggest threshold for your customer is actually starting the

survey. If you let customers answer questions on your website with a

single click, they are also more likely to answer the following question.

After all, they have already decided to help you with their first click.

This means you can have a link on your site open a number of follow-

up questions. There is a good chance that your customer will also fill

these in.

Tip: do not ask unnecessary questions. Can you link the personal

information from your staff file to the respondent’s email address? If

so, do not make the customer fill this in themselves.

What does your customer want to know?Communication is very important, both before, during and after

the measurement.

Before: a customer who knows what you want to measure, as well as

the goal of the measurement, is more likely to fill in your survey. Use

existing communication moments to explain this and announce the

measurement, write a message for the newsletter and think of an

email footer. When you send the actual invitation, it is important to

manage expectations: does your survey comprise eight questions? Say

so in the invitation.

During: to make sure that the customer fills in the entire survey, it can

be useful to provide information about the progress while they are

taking the survey. Think, for instance, of a progress bar and completion

percentage at the top of the screen, or the number of the question as

it relates to the total number of questions. If the finish line is in view,

the customer will probably complete the survey.

After: your customer will be curious about what is done with their

input. When the survey is completed, communicate what the next

steps are: when you will share the results, and whether the customer

can expect a response.

What does the customer expect afterwards?It is important to communicate the results to your customer

after you have processed the answers. Your customer took the time

to provide input, and will appreciate it if you let them know that

you take their opinion seriously. Tell your customer what you will do

with the feedback. Discuss the results within your department and

try to connect concrete action points to the results. Approach your

most unsatisfied customers personally and ask them for additional

information. This provides more insight into why the customer is not

satisfied and will ensure the customer feels heard.

Tip: save the scores and answers per customer. This lets you compare

these over the years and refer to them when you contact the

customer.

Good resultsOf course you cannot take absolutely everything into account,

and not every survey will be as easy to fill in. However, do take a

moment to consider how the customer experiences things when

creating your customer satisfaction survey. Think from your customer’s

perspective and who knows: maybe your survey will result in better

customer satisfaction rather than mere irritation.

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