Death by Customer Survey: Missing a Key Opportunity to Grow Your Business
Are you planning to implement a customer satisfaction survey with the obligatory 15 questions that don't really get to the root of what you're trying to find out?
Before you start, consider that a large percent of your customers don't want to participate in a long drawn-out survey, answering questions that don't quite make sense to them.
Nor will the answers make any relevant changes to increasing the profitability of your business - and isn't that your ultimate goal?
The problem is that most surveys are conducted to “learn about our customer” as opposed to learning about our business and how to make it more profitable. With profitability and long-term growth directly related to customer loyalty, it would seem that measuring loyalty would be the most important information a business could get, and that information doesn't come from questions regarding household income, gender or frequency of visits.
What do you do when you're about to initiate your customer satisfaction program? Ask the one important question that determines loyalty: “Based on your recent purchase/visit, would you recommend us?” The next question should be “To what degree, on a scale of 1-10, would you recommend us and why?”
From these two questions, you'll find out what percent of your customers rave about you. The long-term profitability of your business depends on growing your legion of raving fans and increasing the number of customers that will remain fervently loyal to your business.
