Did you know that a business only hears from about 4% of its dissatisfied customers? However, a Zendesk infographic shows that 95% of people who have a bad experience share it with others. The problem is that those ‘others’ aren’t you, but they are your prospective customers. Therefore, you are losing them without even knowing why this happens. Surveys can help you fix this problem, at least to some extent. You can use them to learn about the customers’ experiences directly or to learn more about them and thus improve your service as a whole.

How to Use Surveys to Improve Customer Service: 3 Ideas to Try

#1: Find out What People Think Through a Customer Satisfaction Survey

If you don’t have a customer satisfaction survey, you have to get one online immediately. This is the most straightforward route that will help you learn about any issues your customers might have with your business. You need to keep a close eye on those surveys so you can address the problems immediately and improve the customer’s opinion of you. Even if you lose this client, you reduce potential loss of others if you manage to curb the person’s desire to denounce your business to all their friends.

The customer satisfaction survey should be simple and straightforward as such pieces have a higher response rate. Mykfcexperience.com offers a great example of what this kind of survey should be like. The KFC brand is renowned for the high quality of its customer service.

#2: Learn Customer Preferences Through a ‘Product Competition’ Survey

A ‘competition’ type of survey should be fun to engage your customers. Therefore, you should use humor when designing it and run the entire campaign around it with a bit of comedy blended in. The point of such a survey is to learn which of your products are the customers’ favorites.

Give your customers a chance to vote for their favorites and be sure to create a story for each to make the whole thing more entertaining for your audience. The ‘crowing’ of the winner is a definite must. You should consider launching a special edition of the product to commemorate the event. Meanwhile, you’ll be able to use the data to improve your product development strategy.

You can also run similar ‘competitions’ for different product features. This kind of info will be a great help when developing new projects. And the customers will feel more appreciated and become more loyal to your brand when they see that their opinions matter.

#3: Get a Different Point of View Through an Employee Feedback Survey

You can improve customer service and satisfaction not only by conversing with your customers but also by getting your employees to reflect on their experiences. This type of survey allows you to get a different kind of opinion. It might help you understand which of your policies need to change.

The most important thing about this type of survey is that your employees can report on multiple customer experiences. The buyer, however, has only their personal story to share. Launching an employee survey will also help you foster employee ambition and initiative as this tool will help them share their ideas on how to improve the business.