Business to Business Customer Satisfaction Surveys (Part 6)

There are a few additional details that can enhance the overall polish of a survey. While a survey should be an exercise in communications excellence, the experience of taking a survey should also be positive for the respondent, as well as valuable for the survey sponsor.

First, People – Those responsible for acting upon issues revealed in the survey should be fully engaged in the survey development process. A “team leader” should be responsible for ensuring that all pertinent business categories are included (up to 10 is ideal), and that designated individuals take responsibility for responding to the results for each Key Attribute.

Second, Respondent Validation – Once the names of potential survey respondents have been selected, they are individually called and “invited” to participate. This step ensures the person is willing to take the survey, and elicits an agreement to do so, thus enhancing the response rate. It also ensures the person’s name, title, and address are correct, an area in which inaccuracies are commonplace.

Third, Questions – Open-ended questions are generally best avoided in favour of simple, concise, one subject questions. The questions should also be randomised, mixing up the topics, forcing the respondent to be continually thinking about a different subject, and not building upon an answer from the previous question.

Questions should be presented in positive tones, which not only helps maintain an objective and uniform attitude while answering the survey questions, but allows for uniform interpretation of the results.

Fourth, Results – Each respondent receives a synopsis of the survey results, either in writing or - preferably - in person. By offering at the outset to share the results of the survey with each respondent, interest is generated in the process, the response rate increases, and the company is left with a standing invitation to come back to the customer later and close the communication loop.

Not only does that provide a means of dealing and exploring identified issues on a personal level, but it often increases an individual’s willingness to participate in later surveys.

And Finally..

A well structured customer satisfaction survey can provide a wealth of invaluable market intelligence that human nature will not otherwise allow access to. Properly done, it can be a means of establishing performance benchmarks, measuring improvement over time, building individual customer relationships, identifying customers at risk of loss, and improving overall customer satisfaction, loyalty and revenues.

If a company is not careful, however, it can become a source of misguided direction, wrong decisions and wasted money.

About the Author

John Coldwel, Managing Director of InfoQuest Customer Relationship Management Ltd has an international network that conducts comprehensive customer and employee satisfaction surveys, using such pioneering techniques as the ConSensor Survey Device, Neural Network Analysis (ProfitMaxsm). InfoQuest has delivered over 70,000 surveys in 52 countries in 20 languages. Info:  Tel.: +44(0) 1484 868390 Fax: +44(0) 1484 868391 E-mail: jc@infoquestcrm.com Web: www.infoquestcrm.com.