How to Design a Successful Customer Satisfaction Survey?

In our last blog post Survey Mythbusters: Customer Satisfaction or Customer Loyalty, we discussed the major myths regarding customer satisfaction and loyalty.

In this blog we will discuss how to design a successful customer satisfaction survey. A ‘Voice of the Customer’ campaign is important not only to get your customer’s feedback, but also to get greater insights into their perception about your company brand.

aMarketForce, a premier survey services provider, suggests the following procedure to design your customer satisfaction survey.

1. Define survey goals unambiguously
2. Design the survey process with at least two process options
3. Decide your survey questions based on your goals. Will each question lead you towards your goal? Will it distract rather than focus the respondent? Will it introduce any unwanted bias that might give incorrect results?
4. Establish your database sampling process, segmentation and management
5. Setting up the campaign on a survey execution tool
6. Run at least two pilot campaigns in parallel, (with two different subject lines in case of email based surveys)
7. Select the final survey based on the results of your pilots.
8. Execute the survey
9. Collect your data and run reports for analysis, which can run from simple text and line charts to sophisticated tools such as regression analysis
10. Report the results at various levels, from executive summaries for management, to detailed reporting to the marketing teams

Here are the major factors to consider while designing a survey process:

• Survey database – Sample size and segmentation
• Response rate – Decide on the response rate that will be acceptable (before starting the survey)
• Based on the above, you will arrive at a sampling size. Ensure that your respondent size meets the sample size requirements. If you have access to a statistician, you can use his/her to tell you the expected accuracy, which depends on the number of respondents as a percentage of the total population.
• Questionnaire design
• Establish survey rating standards
• Make sure your survey methodology is statistically valid, especially if the results will be used to make definitive conclusions
• Survey execution method – Website, Email, Social Media, Phone
• Project Phases – Your survey project should be divided into different phases with distinct goals for each, which helps in tracking and analyzing milestones
• Survey execution frequency and dates – Decide on how many survey campaigns will be executed weekly/monthly
• Permission/ Privacy factors

In our next blog for surveys we will discuss an eCommerce industry case study for customer loyalty and satisfaction. Request a quote for customer satisfaction survey services.