Customer satisfaction – we are obsessed with it, and you should be too. After all, providing high-quality products, services, and customer care brings money to the bank. How to check if your feeling of providing the best customer service really checks out with the reality? It's simple! You need customer satisfaction surveys and the right questions.
In this post, we'll cover everything you need to know about customer satisfaction surveys. You will also get 20 perfectly designed survey question examples and ready to use free survey templates.
Taking participant feedback about the way everyone was chosen in the program can also impact the participants' satisfaction level and impact their learnings. Hence, questions related to facilitators and participants should be covered in program satisfaction questionnaires. Use a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey to measure customer loyalty over time, send Customer Effort Score (CES) surveys to understand how easy it is for customers to get the support they need, or distribute customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys to understand how satisfied customers are after different points in the customer journey.
20 Customer satisfaction survey question examples
- Surveys are the bread and butter for getting feedback. They're easy to set up, easy to send.
- 101 Good Customer Service Team Names Dec 5, 2018 May 10, 2017 by Brandon Gaille In recent times, companies are looking to realigning these business to meet the needs of mobile markets, technological investments, and increased user experiences.
We have divided the questions into 4 groups of interest:
- Feedback on the product (1-7 questions);
- Customer effort, while dealing with the website and the product itself (8-13 questions);
- Position of your company against the competition (14-16 questions);
- General experience with your company (17-20 questions).
[ Feedback On The Product Survey Questions ]
1. Which of the following words would you use to describe our product?
Why should you care how people would describe your product? Because it's an important issue when your product gets described as ‘buggy' instead of ‘life-saving'.
If you don't want to give your clients any suggestions you can use on the open-ended variation of this customer survey question and ask ‘How would you describe our product?'.
Answers to any of those will show you how well you communicate your value proposition and product vision to users. If your goal is to provide them with the world's most sophisticated graphics software and people describe it as ‘Paint with 1 cool feature' it means that the communication is broken.
Hint: Check what are the most common positive words used to describe your product. If they are very frequent, it may indicate that this is what your customers are looking for in your product. You can use such words in your future marketing campaigns.
2. How well does our product meet your needs?
This is a broad question nonetheless specific enough to provide actionable results. Offering a product or service that meets customer needs is a prerequisite to providing high customer satisfaction. If the product doesn't meet the needs of users they are more likely to churn.
Hint: To make this customer feedback question even more actionable, ask the following two questions.
3. Which 3 features are the most valuable to you?
This question is vital for SaaS companies. Their products tend to offer dozens of features and most of the customers use only a handful of them.
Researching which ones are the most important and valuable to users will help you understand how customers interact with your product and what they really need.
Don't be surprised when people say that the most important to them are features you consider secondary. We discovered exactly this with our exit intent survey – a simple feature that turned out to be a must-have for many customers.
4. What are the 3 most important features we're missing?
Offering exactly what your customers need helps improve their retention. If your products don't offer everything customers need, sooner or later they will find another provider.
The same goes for e-commerce – Customers are more likely to return if you offer what they are searching and want to buy.
Answers to this customer survey question will help you minimize risks associated with building a product roadmap or planning expanding inventory.
5. If you could change just one thing about our product, what would it be?
This is a variation of question 4. This time you require information on just one change your customers would like you to introduce.
This time you don't consider any missing features. What you take into account is that your customers may have very specific needs regarding the products you already have.
As with the question above, the main purpose is to improve customer retention. Take into consideration all the propositions made by your customers.
Firstly, focus on the most frequent ones. be grateful for any feedback you may receive in that regard. To fail to act on that is the mistake that may cost you too much too soon.
6. What problem would you like to solve with our product?
This is a question that seeks information that usually cannot be gauged by analytics. Here you ask for the type of solution your customers search for.
This allows you to focus on the strongest features of your product and helps to prioritize any future improvements that could be made.
Hint: It's great to ask this question even before finalizing the sale. It may be the case that your potential customers are looking for something different than their chosen product is.
If you have other products that would much better suit their needs, it's great to navigate them towards them before it's too late and they get disappointed with a product that was not designed for what they actually need.
7. How would you rate the value for money of the product?
That is a very valid customer satisfaction survey question. First and foremost, you should use it while considering any changes to the pricing of your product or service.
If the feedback you receive proves that your customers think that your product is too expensive, you should definitely reconsider your plans to up your prices. Maybe you could reach your financial goals by introducing some sales or discounts instead.
Hint: It's great to ask your customers these questions after they spend a little while with your product. It may be a follow-up after a finalized purchase, e.g. two weeks or one month after the sale.
Free-to-Use Product Satisfaction Survey Template
No Credit Card Required • Cancel Any Time
[ Customer Effort Survey Questions ]
8. How easy is it to navigate our website?
This is a must-have question to use when there are any changes in the design of your website. What you may consider innovative, easy, and user-friendly, maybe not so much for your customers.
Take into consideration any feedback you receive. Unheard complaints from your users may result in their churn, so make sure they are happy with what they see and find on your website.
When it comes to new users or potential customers, it is also great to ask them this customer satisfaction survey question.
They look at your website with a fresh eye and may notice things from a totally different perspective. It is worth to take a look at their opinion on the matter.
9. Were you able to find the information you were looking for on our website?
It's obvious you want your visitors to find the information they need as easily and as quickly as possible. The happier they are with the navigation of your website and the time they take to get the information they need, the higher the chance they will return and bring new customers with them.
Hint: If there is certain information that seems to be particularly hard to find for your visitors, better make sure it's somewhere they will have quick access to. It may be worth a shot to add another section to the menu that would link directly to that subpage.
10. How much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request?
Customers' need for support is the one thing that you should always take into consideration, whether it be with your website or the product itself. It's not only beneficial for your customers to be able to fill their complaints and get support quickly.
There are also great advantages to your company. Quick actions to fix bugs and support your customers to enhance retention and make your workflow much smoother.
11. How did this effort compare to your expectations?
This is a satisfaction survey question that can give you a clear indication of what you are doing is a reflection of customers' needs or not. If the effort your customers had to put was greater than they expected, it should be food for thought for you.
It may be beneficial to reconsider the stages where the customers had any difficulties. Maybe some processes need simplification?
It's possible that your customers expected your product or service to be much more difficult than it really is. If you managed to exceed your customers' expectations, keep going and keep moving forward!
Hint: Send this question, along with question number 10, in a follow-up survey after provided customer support. At the latest, it should happen a day or two from that date, to get a fresh insight into the quality of provided support.
12. How responsive have we been to your questions or concerns about our products?
This customer satisfaction survey question is wonderful at the check-out of any interaction with the Customer that required providing customer support. This is a clear indicator of making sure you spend enough time on supporting them to make them feel well taken care of.
13. To what extent do you agree with the following statement: The company made it easy for me to handle my issue.
This customer survey question is great because it encompasses a lot of issues at the same time. You can use it to monitor your customers' overall experience with your website, your products, or any requests they may have.
Allow them to, first, give a specified rating and later, express their opinion in their own words. Any feedback you may receive in this case is very valuable, as it gives you the information on whether there are any hot spots in your workflow that require immediate action.
Hint: As with questions 10, 11, or even 12, this customer satisfaction survey should be sent to your customers very soon after providing the support. The fresh perspective can give you a clear indication of what you are doing right or wrong.
[ Feedback On Your Position Against Your Competition Survey Questions ]
14. Compared to our competitors, is our product quality better, worse, or about the same?
This is a wonderful satisfaction survey question: it's straightforward and very measurable. It gives a very clear image of the quality of your products in comparison with your competition.
It may and it should be followed by questions that will go into greater detail on your customers' opinion, but it is a great starting point for taking any further actions.
Hint: Send such customer satisfaction survey somewhere between two weeks and one month from the purchase. Let your customers take some time with your product and get to know it a bit better before judging it against your competitors.
15. Why did you choose our product rather than a competitor's?
Here, you ask for the information on the things that differentiate your product from your competition. You want to know what tipped the balance in your favor.
It's not only important to know what can be improved, but also what is noticed by your customers as good and valuable. You want to take this into account while considering any changes or improvements in the strategy of your product.
16. Which other options did you consider before choosing our product?
You may think you don't need this customer feedback question to know what is your competition. The truth is, it's good to know exactly what are the actual products your customers believe are your competition.
Sometimes they take into account companies that you would never take into consideration.
It is especially useful to know if they happened to compare you with a totally different type of product. Then it is worth a while to check if your communication with the potential and current customers creates a clear image of your product that is coherent with your own vision.
Besides, the odds will be in your favor if you use the feedback to constantly improve what you provide your customers with and make sure that you are a better option than your competitors.
[ Feedback On The General Experience With The Company Survey Questions ]
17. On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company to a friend or colleague?
This simple customer feedback question (followed by a question ‘Why?') changed the way marketers see customer satisfaction. Net Promoter Score®, otherwise called NPS, introduced hard data to the world of quantitative data and assumptions.
Measuring and improving your NPS should be the first step in improving customer satisfaction.
Hint: The standard for NPS is to research it using email surveys. However, if you run a news website or other type of business where you don't really have customers, NPS can also be effectively used. Just run the survey on a website using targeted website surveys.
Target either returning users or use the more elaborate technique based on viewed URLs or cookies.
18. How likely are you to buy again from us?
Why bother researching the intent of repeat purchase when you can see it in Google Analytics how many people actually bought something again? However, GA won't help you if you're just starting a business or sell durable goods.
Researching which ones are the most important and valuable to users will help you understand how customers interact with your product and what they really need.
Don't be surprised when people say that the most important to them are features you consider secondary. We discovered exactly this with our exit intent survey – a simple feature that turned out to be a must-have for many customers.
4. What are the 3 most important features we're missing?
Offering exactly what your customers need helps improve their retention. If your products don't offer everything customers need, sooner or later they will find another provider.
The same goes for e-commerce – Customers are more likely to return if you offer what they are searching and want to buy.
Answers to this customer survey question will help you minimize risks associated with building a product roadmap or planning expanding inventory.
5. If you could change just one thing about our product, what would it be?
This is a variation of question 4. This time you require information on just one change your customers would like you to introduce.
This time you don't consider any missing features. What you take into account is that your customers may have very specific needs regarding the products you already have.
As with the question above, the main purpose is to improve customer retention. Take into consideration all the propositions made by your customers.
Firstly, focus on the most frequent ones. be grateful for any feedback you may receive in that regard. To fail to act on that is the mistake that may cost you too much too soon.
6. What problem would you like to solve with our product?
This is a question that seeks information that usually cannot be gauged by analytics. Here you ask for the type of solution your customers search for.
This allows you to focus on the strongest features of your product and helps to prioritize any future improvements that could be made.
Hint: It's great to ask this question even before finalizing the sale. It may be the case that your potential customers are looking for something different than their chosen product is.
If you have other products that would much better suit their needs, it's great to navigate them towards them before it's too late and they get disappointed with a product that was not designed for what they actually need.
7. How would you rate the value for money of the product?
That is a very valid customer satisfaction survey question. First and foremost, you should use it while considering any changes to the pricing of your product or service.
If the feedback you receive proves that your customers think that your product is too expensive, you should definitely reconsider your plans to up your prices. Maybe you could reach your financial goals by introducing some sales or discounts instead.
Hint: It's great to ask your customers these questions after they spend a little while with your product. It may be a follow-up after a finalized purchase, e.g. two weeks or one month after the sale.
Free-to-Use Product Satisfaction Survey Template
No Credit Card Required • Cancel Any Time
[ Customer Effort Survey Questions ]
8. How easy is it to navigate our website?
This is a must-have question to use when there are any changes in the design of your website. What you may consider innovative, easy, and user-friendly, maybe not so much for your customers.
Take into consideration any feedback you receive. Unheard complaints from your users may result in their churn, so make sure they are happy with what they see and find on your website.
When it comes to new users or potential customers, it is also great to ask them this customer satisfaction survey question.
They look at your website with a fresh eye and may notice things from a totally different perspective. It is worth to take a look at their opinion on the matter.
9. Were you able to find the information you were looking for on our website?
It's obvious you want your visitors to find the information they need as easily and as quickly as possible. The happier they are with the navigation of your website and the time they take to get the information they need, the higher the chance they will return and bring new customers with them.
Hint: If there is certain information that seems to be particularly hard to find for your visitors, better make sure it's somewhere they will have quick access to. It may be worth a shot to add another section to the menu that would link directly to that subpage.
10. How much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request?
Customers' need for support is the one thing that you should always take into consideration, whether it be with your website or the product itself. It's not only beneficial for your customers to be able to fill their complaints and get support quickly.
There are also great advantages to your company. Quick actions to fix bugs and support your customers to enhance retention and make your workflow much smoother.
11. How did this effort compare to your expectations?
This is a satisfaction survey question that can give you a clear indication of what you are doing is a reflection of customers' needs or not. If the effort your customers had to put was greater than they expected, it should be food for thought for you.
It may be beneficial to reconsider the stages where the customers had any difficulties. Maybe some processes need simplification?
It's possible that your customers expected your product or service to be much more difficult than it really is. If you managed to exceed your customers' expectations, keep going and keep moving forward!
Hint: Send this question, along with question number 10, in a follow-up survey after provided customer support. At the latest, it should happen a day or two from that date, to get a fresh insight into the quality of provided support.
12. How responsive have we been to your questions or concerns about our products?
This customer satisfaction survey question is wonderful at the check-out of any interaction with the Customer that required providing customer support. This is a clear indicator of making sure you spend enough time on supporting them to make them feel well taken care of.
13. To what extent do you agree with the following statement: The company made it easy for me to handle my issue.
This customer survey question is great because it encompasses a lot of issues at the same time. You can use it to monitor your customers' overall experience with your website, your products, or any requests they may have.
Allow them to, first, give a specified rating and later, express their opinion in their own words. Any feedback you may receive in this case is very valuable, as it gives you the information on whether there are any hot spots in your workflow that require immediate action.
Hint: As with questions 10, 11, or even 12, this customer satisfaction survey should be sent to your customers very soon after providing the support. The fresh perspective can give you a clear indication of what you are doing right or wrong.
[ Feedback On Your Position Against Your Competition Survey Questions ]
14. Compared to our competitors, is our product quality better, worse, or about the same?
This is a wonderful satisfaction survey question: it's straightforward and very measurable. It gives a very clear image of the quality of your products in comparison with your competition.
It may and it should be followed by questions that will go into greater detail on your customers' opinion, but it is a great starting point for taking any further actions.
Hint: Send such customer satisfaction survey somewhere between two weeks and one month from the purchase. Let your customers take some time with your product and get to know it a bit better before judging it against your competitors.
15. Why did you choose our product rather than a competitor's?
Here, you ask for the information on the things that differentiate your product from your competition. You want to know what tipped the balance in your favor.
It's not only important to know what can be improved, but also what is noticed by your customers as good and valuable. You want to take this into account while considering any changes or improvements in the strategy of your product.
16. Which other options did you consider before choosing our product?
You may think you don't need this customer feedback question to know what is your competition. The truth is, it's good to know exactly what are the actual products your customers believe are your competition.
Sometimes they take into account companies that you would never take into consideration.
It is especially useful to know if they happened to compare you with a totally different type of product. Then it is worth a while to check if your communication with the potential and current customers creates a clear image of your product that is coherent with your own vision.
Besides, the odds will be in your favor if you use the feedback to constantly improve what you provide your customers with and make sure that you are a better option than your competitors.
[ Feedback On The General Experience With The Company Survey Questions ]
17. On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company to a friend or colleague?
This simple customer feedback question (followed by a question ‘Why?') changed the way marketers see customer satisfaction. Net Promoter Score®, otherwise called NPS, introduced hard data to the world of quantitative data and assumptions.
Measuring and improving your NPS should be the first step in improving customer satisfaction.
Hint: The standard for NPS is to research it using email surveys. However, if you run a news website or other type of business where you don't really have customers, NPS can also be effectively used. Just run the survey on a website using targeted website surveys.
Target either returning users or use the more elaborate technique based on viewed URLs or cookies.
18. How likely are you to buy again from us?
Why bother researching the intent of repeat purchase when you can see it in Google Analytics how many people actually bought something again? However, GA won't help you if you're just starting a business or sell durable goods.
Think about cars or furniture. People don't buy then once a month. So, if you want to see how many customers will come back, you need to wait as long as several years to get the data. But you can capture intent sooner. Just ask your customers.
Hint: Send such client satisfaction surveys to your customers on a regular basis, e.g. once a year – depends on your industry and Customer Lifecycle. The best idea would be to observe the medium frequency your customers are making their purchases.
Observe trends and find out what are the reasons for increasing or decreasing the intent of buying again. Plus, you can then check how answers translate into actual acquisition – it will allow you to build a model of repeat purchases.
It will just require integrating your survey tool with Google Analytics or a similar tool you're using. Learn more about this in the article on measuring customer satisfaction.
19. What would you say to someone who asked about us?
You should not be fishing for compliments with this customer survey question. What you can measure here is the customer's general perception of your product and your brand. It will help you to check if what you consider your company to be is really what your customers truly see.
It will help you specify the image you want your company to have and implement actions that will allow you to achieve it.
20. What else would you like us to know?
This is a truly universal customer feedback question. No matter what is the subject of your survey, it is always valuable to ask if your customers have anything else to say.
It can give you additional insights, sometimes on issues that you would not expect. This, in turn, allows you to much quicker take necessary actions.
Hint: You can either send this customer satisfaction question in a targeted website survey (e.g. after the website visitors respond to your questions regarding the pricing while on the pricing page), in-message surveys via email (either with the follow-up surveys after the purchase or providing the customer support) or in your exit/return intent surveys (it can give you the actual answer why they decided to churn or return the product).
Turn prospects into customers and learnhow do marketers use surveys in 2020
Ready-to-use FREE survey templates
Here are the top 15 ready-to-use survey templates used by Survicate customers – so you never run out of ideas on what survey to run next.
NPS (Net Promoter Score) – Ask how likely customers are to recommend you. Predict repurchases and referrals.
Product-Market Fit – Discover what's the key benefits people get from your product. Build products people love.
Website Experience – Get people to rate your website's usability, then make the right improvements!
CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) – Establish if customers are happy with your product or service. Fix what's not working well.
CES (Customer Effort Score) – Measure if doing business with your company is as easy as pie.
User Experience – Ensure your users are happy with the experience they get.
Brand Awareness – Validate your product position on the market.
Churn Reason – Reduce churn by collecting insight on why your customers cancel their accounts.
Exit Intent – Uncover why visitors leave your website or product. Remove the obstacles to reduce lost leads.
Reader Interest – Get new content ideas. Find out what your audience would like to read about next.
Buyer Personas Research – Learn more about your leads and customers so you can sell to them more effectively.
Content Rating – Establish if your audience enjoys your content, and what you can do to make it better.
How Did You Hear About Us – Find out where your clients first came from and which channels are worth investing resources in.
Likert Scale – Let your audience rate the different aspects of your business with just one question.
Coronavirus returning to the office check-in – Find out how your employees feel about returning to work in the office and how to support them.
Why customer satisfaction surveys are important?
Customer satisfaction surveys are important because you can check if your feeling of providing the best customer service or product really checks out with reality. You can keep a high level of customer satisfaction that can be a strong predictor of customer retention, loyalty, and product repurchase by quickly responding to the negative experiences.
Satisfied customers are more likely to make a purchase again and recommend the shop to their friends and coworkers. Research shows that a loyal customer is worth even up to 10 times more than their first order.
How long should a customer satisfaction survey be?
Customer satisfaction surveys should be as short as possible – no one wants to spend 30 minutes answering questions. People are busy, your customers/leads included. Surveys with 1-3 questions have the highest average completion rate (83.34%).
Think hard about what you want to achieve with your survey, or what information you want to get. The more questions your questionnaire includes, the longer it takes to fill it in, the lesser the chance your respondent will complete it.
GET MUCH MORE ANSWERS THAN IN OTHER SURVEY TOOLSPeople are busy and not always have time to complete the entire survey. With Survicate, you will see responses from partially completed surveys.
The completion rate on a dashboard is the average completion rate for all the surveys. The completion rate on a survey is calculated by the number of questions answered divided by the number of questions that need to be answered to finish surveys.
Simplifying a little bit – a completion rate of 81,78% means that if the survey has 10 questions people answer to 8,2 questions on average.
With Survicate, surveys don't need to be completed to get valuable data.
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FURTHER READING:
Customer Feedback Template
When should you send a survey to your customers?
To get the most reliable answers, you should send satisfaction surveys to your customers right after they have experience with your products or services – it's called a post-purchase survey.
This way, the experience of your customers will be fresh enough and you'll be able to make sure you're offering a perfect experience or quickly make amends.
On the other hand, you want to measure customer satisfaction of your product or services constantly, so we suggest you set up customer satisfaction surveys in a regular period of time (daily, weekly or monthly). Just don't be too offensive for your customers.
How REAL BRANDS use surveys to get more value
1. Droplr
Droplr used surveys to find out what their users thought about the app and to learn why some of their users remain inactive.
The NPS survey allowed Droplr to identify promoters and detractors, and subsequently, target each group with a different Intercom campaign.
Promoters as a group of highly satisfied users were invited to write a product review. With this approach, Droplr managed to increase the number of reviews 16 times!
Droplr also started to survey inactive users by asking 'Did you have any problems after signing up on Droplr?'. They quickly discovered that some of the users got lost in the product, their onboarding wasn't smooth, while for others it was difficult to understand the product value.
Thanks to surveys, Droplr started to better educate their users with guides, tips and case studies. Read full Droplr case study.
2. Looka
Looka surveyed its customers to find out why they failed to finalize a logo purchase.
Respondents had 5 options to select from:
- Not ready to start my business
- The logos are too expensive
- Can't perfect my logo design
- Too busy to finalize my logo
- I used one of your competitors
Looka learned that a large percentage of customers who didn't purchase their logo package found it too expensive. This had led them to develop a new pricing package that was geography dependent.
While $65 USD for a premium logo package may be reasonable in North America, entrepreneurs in developing countries can find it cheaper to hire a graphic designer.
Pricing changes allowed Looka to increase their ROI by 2400%. Read full Looka case study.
3. weex
weex used surveys to identify churn reasons. They sent out an email survey to their churned customers saying: 'We've noticed you've recently ported out. Can you tell us what was the reason?' (In telecommunication, the term 'port-out' means to switch between mobile operators).
As soon as they discovered the 2 main reasons for churn – poor network coverage (which was beyond their control) and a lack of understanding of the product offering, they were able to address the issue.
weex changed its product communication and presented it in a more transparent way. Read full weex case study.
Looking for more inspirations? There are a lot more customer stories to explore!
Final thoughts
Asking the right question is the key to researching customer satisfaction. Of course, you can ask questions like ‘How satisfied are you?' but the answers won't provide you with very detailed and substantive conclusions.
It's always better to ask more specific questions. The answers will clearly show you what works well and which areas of your activity need improvements and how urgent they are.
While creating a survey, you can also include questions not directly related to customer satisfaction but important to you.
For example: Ask how customers found out about you, what are their characteristics (roles, parental status, etc. – anything that will help you tailor services to their needs), or whether they used any similar products before.
The choice depends on what exactly you want to research and your target audience.
You can learn how to build your ideal customer audience in order to better tailor your services or products with customer segmentation guide.
Often it's better to create and send 1 survey with 6-8 questions than to create one survey with 5 questions to research customer satisfaction and later send another short survey to research something else.
The Survicate Team wish you Happy Surveying 💪
Zipcar, the American car-sharing company, is transparent in the way it communicates its rules to customers across multiple channels. The six simple rules are clear and concise: Report damage, keep it clean, no smoking, fill the tank, return on time and keep pets in carriers. Most rental car companies do the opposite; they hide the rules to try to make more in fees.
This level of openness represents one type of customer experience project that can make a difference.
In many industries, competition has eroded traditional product and service advantages, making CX the latest form of competitive advantage. For IT leaders supporting customer experience projects, it is important to audit and coordinate existing efforts to achieve better results.
'Although successful customer experience initiatives require a corporate wide commitment, companies have long had individual departments or business units working on it independently,' says Ed Thompson, vice president and distinguished analyst. 'The challenge is that consumers have numerous touch points within an organization, so companies end up running multiple, uncoordinated CX projects in parallel with one another.'
Gartner Application Strategies & Solutions Summit 2017
Create the ultimate digital business experience
Good Customer Service Feedback
A typical $1B company will likely be running more than 50 CX projects. Companies need to place all the different projects on the table and then divide them based on complexity, impact on overall customer experience, business units and their dependence on technology.
Customer Feedback Programs
Gartner classifies CX projects into seven types.
Amazon Customer Feedback
- Listen, Think and Do
Although 95% of companies have collected feedback from their customers for years, only about 10% use these suggestions to change their processes and improve customer experience.Instead of wasting this opportunity, companies should link the desires of their customers with the overall strategy. One way to do this is by consolidating direct, indirect and inferred customer feedback received through numerous channels so customer issues are resolved in real time. If multiple teams interact with customers, knowledge-sharing programs can also be used to remove departmental barriers and improve customer-facing processes. - From Out to In
Most customer-facing processes are designed from the inside out, which means they are built from the company's perspective. The result is that customers have to learn the company's processes. This adds unnecessary barriers to the customer journey, and companies must focus on minimizing customer effort as much as possible.The best way to do this is by flipping the perspective from inside out to outside in and 'walking in the customer's shoes.' Companies can then map the customer journey, conduct touchpoint analysis and identify customer pain points at each level of interaction. This data can then be used to improve processes from the customer's perspective — whether it's consistency, speed, completeness, flexibility or reliability. - Act as One
Consistency is important for a great customer experience, and the challenge for companies is ensuring that information received during one interaction is not lost or forgotten when a customer switches channels. But achieving multichannel consistency is a slow process because it involves breaking down departmental silos and, in most cases, significant IT workBy building a single, 360-degree view of the customer across different channels, companies can streamline information flow across departments and provide a more consistent customer experience. - Open Up
Openness and transparency is becoming an essential part of CX initiatives because customers feel they have better experiences when they trust an organization. The key element here is trust. Companies that are open and transparent to customers are typically better at creating positive customer experiences.For companies, the biggest challenge is striking a balance between legal concerns and the benefits of sharing information with customers to build trust. The growth of social media in the past decade has also helped companies interact directly with customers to collaborate in co-creating brands with customers. - Get Personal
Most customers prefer a personalized experience — if it's done well. Poor personalization can actually damage the customer experience and increase complexity, so companies should be cautious when determining the degree of customization. Traditionally, customization of an experience was an expensive undertaking, but digital personalization has made it a much more affordable option. Digital products, bundles, pricing, offers and communications can all be personalized more easily than in the analog past.Customers are often confronted with multiple choices and have to put in time and effort to get to the product or service they want. This complicates the customer experience and ultimately lowers customer ROI. Personalization done well will make things simpler by limiting the options to those most relevant to the customer. - Alter Attitudes
Employees' actions often have the most powerful and direct impact on a customer's experience and, as a result, most companies focus more on this than on any other type of CX project type. Companies most commonly alter employee attitudes and behaviors through training, recruiting and policy change projects.The first set of projects involves educating employees on how their actions affect customer experience and what they can do to personally to help. The second set relate to recruiting the right type of employees — those with the personality that will benefit the customer experience, not just the job skill requirements. The last set are those that empower employees to use their judgment, take responsibility for resolving customer issues, and create a culture where this is not only allowed, but expected. - Design Better
Most companies have no plan or design for the overall customer experience, and it falls into place somewhat randomly. On the other hand, companies in the service, automotive, consumer goods and high-tech industries that focus heavily on brand management pay much greater attention to designing customer experiences. A brand sets high-level expectations of the overall customer experience and can be seen as an expression of the company's reputation with customers. Design is a discipline that requires investment.
