To be successful in today’s business world, you need to know your customers’ wants, preferences, and pain points. Customer surveys are one of the best ways to find out important information. A well-made survey consisting to the point customer survey questions lets you get information from your target group directly, making better decisions and making your customers happier.
In this blog, we’ll discuss the best practices for making questions for customer surveys and give examples to help you get started.
What are customer survey questions?
Customer survey questions are specific questions that are asked of customers to get their comments, opinions, and insights about a product, service, or the entire customer journey. The goal of these questions is to get useful information that can be used to measure customer satisfaction, find places where things could be better, and make decisions based on facts to improve the customer experience.
Customer survey questions can ask about things like overall satisfaction, feedback on particular products or services, customer service, how easy it is to use a website, brand loyalty, and more. They can be set up as multiple-choice questions, rating scales, open-ended questions, or a mix of different kinds of questions.
To get accurate and useful answers, questions for customer surveys should be well-thought-out, clear, and impartial. By collecting and analyzing the data from these polls, businesses can learn about their customers’ likes, dislikes, and expectations, which can help them make strategic decisions, improve their products and services, and make them more customer-focused.
Best practices of customer survey questions
Designing effective customer survey questions is crucial to ensure the accuracy and quality of the data collected. Here are some best practices to consider when creating questions for customer surveys:
- Clearly Define the Purpose
Clearly establish the objective of your survey. What specific information or insights are you seeking to obtain from your customers? Having a clear purpose will help you frame relevant questions.
- Keep it Concise with the Customer Survey Questions
Respect your customers’ time by keeping the survey as short and concise as possible. Long surveys can lead to survey fatigue and lower completion rates. Focus on essential questions that provide the most valuable insights.
- Use Clear and Simple Language
Use clear and straightforward language in your questions to ensure respondents understand what is being asked. Avoid using technical jargon or complicated terminology. Keep the language accessible to a broad audience.
- Avoid Leading Questions
Ensure your questions are neutral and unbiased. Avoid leading questions that influence respondents to answer in a particular way. Maintain objectivity and allow customers to express their genuine opinions.
- Provide Balanced Response Options
When using multiple-choice questions or rating scales, ensure you offer a balanced range of response options. Cover the full spectrum of possible answers to capture customer sentiment accurately.
- Avoid Double-Barreled Customer Survey Questions
Double-barreled questions combine multiple issues into a single question, which can confuse respondents and lead to inaccurate responses. Instead, focus on one aspect or topic per question to maintain clarity.
- Include Both Quantitative and Qualitative Questions
While quantitative questions (multiple-choice, rating scales) provide numerical data, qualitative questions (open-ended) allow customers to express their thoughts and provide more detailed feedback. Including a mix of both types can yield a comprehensive understanding of customer experiences.
- Pre-test the Survey
Before launching the survey to a wider audience, conduct a pilot test with a small group of participants. This allows you to identify any ambiguities, confusing questions, or technical issues and make necessary improvements.
- Consider the Survey Platform and Format
Choose a survey platform that suits your needs and provides a user-friendly experience for respondents. Ensure the survey is optimized for different devices (desktop, mobile) to accommodate a wider range of participants.
- Analyze and Act on the Data
Once you have collected survey responses, analyze the data to identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement. Use the insights to inform decision-making, refine processes, and enhance the customer experience.
By following these best practices, you can design customer survey questions that yield accurate, meaningful, and actionable insights to improve your products, services, and overall customer satisfaction.
Examples of customer survey questions
Here are some examples of customer survey questions covering various aspects of the customer experience:
- Overall Satisfaction:
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with our products/services?
- How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague? (1 – Not at all likely, 10 – Extremely likely)
- Product/Service Feedback:
- What do you like most about our products/services?
- What improvements would you suggest for our offerings?
- Customer Support:
- How would you rate the responsiveness of our customer support team?
- Were your concerns resolved to your satisfaction?
- Website/User Experience:
- How easy was it to find the information you were looking for on our website?
- Did you encounter any issues during the checkout process?
- Brand Perception:
- How would you describe our brand in three words?
- What sets us apart from our competitors in your opinion?
- Customer Loyalty:
- How frequently do you purchase from us?
- Have you considered trying our competitors’ products/services?
- Product/Service Usage:
- How often do you use our products/services?
- Which features of our product/service do you find most valuable?
- Purchase Experience:
- How satisfied are you with the ease of the purchasing process?
- Did you encounter any challenges during the ordering process?
- Communication Preferences:
- What is your preferred method of communication with us? (Phone, Email, Live Chat, In-person, etc.)
- How often would you like to receive updates and promotions from us?
- Customer Feedback:
- Is there anything specific you would like to share with us about your recent experience with our company?
Remember to tailor the online survey questions to your specific business, objectives, and target audience. Mix and match different question types (multiple-choice, rating scales, open-ended) to gather a well-rounded view of your customer’s opinions and experiences.
Additionally, always consider the context in which the survey is presented and ensure that respondents can easily provide their feedback.
6 Tips to design good Customer Survey Questions
When it comes to knowing what will work well for the company, nothing is as impactful as customer surveys. Customer survey questions have been vital in giving the stakeholders of a company insights on what to develop, what to work on and what to keep improving. It also gives a chance for the customers to voice their displeasure about a company.
Customers appreciate a well-penned survey and do not hesitate in filling it out. There will only be a handful of people who think that customer surveys aren’t effective as a tool to get transparent feedbacks from the customers themselves.
But how should one make customer surveys effective? How to create survey questions?
This blog will give you a list of pointers to make good customer survey questions and how can you benefit from them.
1. Simple Customer Survey Questions = Better Responses
Imagine going through a survey and coming across this question: “What feelings have you brought home from the newly inaugurated gymnasium that was launched at the beginning of this calendar year?” Unless someone forces you to answer a question like this, you will not do it. You wouldn’t want your respondents to feel that way!
Come up with customer survey questions that are easy to understand and answer. Expecting respondents to repeatedly answer essay-like questions will do no good for the survey. Instead, ask questions that are not complicated to understand and can be answered without investing too much time.
An alternative to the above question, you could as “How did you like our gym?” or “Did you enjoy the visit to our gym” will be much simpler to understand and the respondent will not be irritated by the look of the question. (That’s exactly what you need!)
2. Avoid Unwanted Questions
You may feel the need to get as much information as you can from a single survey but this temptation can create damage. In case you keep asking every single detail, you’ll end up asking customer surveys questions that may seem off track. The user can get suspicious about your intentions apart from getting confused and irritated.
3. Keep your Questions Fair
The prime most point to keep in mind while designing your customer survey questions is to not be too boastful about your own services and products. Use as few exaggerated adjectives as you can with your services that can make the customers think that you think too highly of your own company, which isn’t the impression you want your customers to have.
Dodge questions like: “What do you feel about the extremely warm welcome our staff gave at your arrival?” Respondents will prefer being asked questions like, “How did you like your welcome at our hotel?”
4. Skip Assumptive Questions
People never keep situations in mind that haven’t happened in their lives and so, they’d be hesitant in answering made-up customer survey questions. Avoid cooking up “what if” conditions which will not necessarily get authentic answers from respondents as they may or may not have faced the situation. It will be much effective if you post more realistic situations for them.
5. Ask Customer Survey Questions with “How”
A single select question like “Did you like our gym” will get you either “yes” or “no”. Instead of the yes or no kind, if you ask “How did you find the services at our gym?” and come up with responses like, “extremely professional,” “moderately professional,” and “not at all professional.” This question will fetch you detailed data, giving you a peek into what exactly did the respondents like about your services. Taking corrective measures becomes easier for the management.
6. Don’t Ask More than One Question at Once
The last thing you want your survey to do is to confuse respondents. Asking two or more correlated things in one question may baffle your customers. Also, multiple interlinked things in one question may indicate that they’re unimportant. In case you have a complicated topic in hand, you can divide it into multiple customer survey questions so that you can get effective answers and great insights.
Keep these points in mind to create amazing customer survey questions:
- If you have to ask sensitive questions about religion or political parties, place them next to the questions contextually related to them. This will make it easier for the respondents to at least try answering.
- The introductory questions that you ask should be simple, pleasant and interesting.
- Including a question mark towards the end of every question can prove to be an effective way to get respondents to finish the survey
- For the respondents to get the right impressions from your survey, make sure all the questions are grammatically correct and error free.
- The questions should have understandable terms and concepts broadly known to all.
Learn About: Aided Awareness vs Unaided Awareness in Survey Questions
Conclusion
Utilizing well-designed customer survey questions is essential for businesses to understand their customers and make data-driven decisions. With a powerful survey platform like QuestionPro, businesses can easily create, distribute, and analyze customer surveys.
QuestionPro offers a wide range of question types, customization options, and robust analytics tools to gather valuable insights. By leveraging the features and capabilities of QuestionPro, businesses can uncover actionable feedback, identify areas for improvement, and enhance the overall customer experience.
Empower your organization with QuestionPro to unlock the full potential of customer survey questions and drive meaningful growth and customer satisfaction.
