Improve your services strategically according to feedback you get from your customers. It will come back to you in the form of higher turnover.
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Before you read this article and learn how to create a service evaluation survey, we have a challenge for you: List as many differences as possible between a product and a service. The goal is to know what is specific to a service, what makes services in general more sensitive than products.
If we abstract from the result of the service as such, people play a very significant role in providing services. Sometimes people and their knowledge is the service. A seamless and friendly communication can make the customer stop thinking about any other solution than yours. On the other hand, late arrivals, inadequately explained problems or unpleasant behaviour of a worker can be a sign for the customer to turn on their heel and never show up again.
An American poet Maya Angelou once said: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Services are strongly connected with emotions, with individual customer experience. Every customer has a different perception and slightly different needs and expectations. However, if you find a good balance between keeping your customers satisfied and keeping your costs on a sustainable level, you will watch your business grow successfully. Sometimes this is a hard nut to crack, but it’s worth staying people-oriented and listen to the voice of your customer. Remember, it is cheaper to keep an existing customer and motivate him in various ways to make another purchase than acquire a new one. Therefore, customer satisfaction is in fact a value that has an impact on your revenue. A lifetime value is what you are looking for.
Get information from the customer's side to verify that you are going in the right direction, that you are creating a service that the customer requires and wants available. The next lines will give you a clue how to do it.
Learn from our customer experiences how you can benefit from using Survio.
Are you a marketer? A product owner? A freelancer? Great. Find out how your customers generally view your service. Test your own USP (Unique selling proposition). Why did your customers choose you over your competitors? Make sure you are aware of the reasons and use it in your communication.
Example: You own a bike service chain. You have two branches in the capital city and one branch in five other cities in the country. You need to fix your position on the market, new trends are emerging (downhill mountainbiking - MTB, bike sharing, new ergonomic equipment etc.). After providing the service, you ask your customers in a survey if they were satisfied and why they chose you over other bike services. The majority said it was because:
Think about communicating this data as a reason to visit you. Think about how to speed up the service process even more. Update your sortiment of the best accessories on the market and shout it out! When you get a positive feedback, use it’s power! Show it to your workers, it will make their day and their good mood will make your customers happy! It is a logical circle. Don't let positive feedback sit in a drawer. Share it as a content, show it in the form of a testimonial on your webpage.
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning”
Let these words from Bill Gates inspire you in working with negative feedback. Don’t let negative feedback scare you. It is something you want to know. You don’t want your customer to tell it to ten other friends and relatives. Translate negative feedback into suggestions for a change. Communicate these changes not only internally within the company but also out to the customers as new tweaks that you have.
Example: In your survey you have given the customers of your bike service the possibility to express their negative experiences with your services. There were several customers that complained about communication issues with the staff, there were cases where different parts were replaced than they should have been. Some clients wrote that your workers explained what they had done in such a complicated way that they left the place confused and in doubt if everything was OK with their bike.
Think about optimizing the process of accepting orders. Train your staff in the use of the internal system. Strive for better communication among your staff. Develop ways to make your store a place where any biker will find adequate advice. Give your workers possibilities to become real experts in mountain bikes and accessories and also in communication skills. And don’t forget to share your efforts.
Tip for freelancers: You have many opportunities to have informal conversations with your customers and you get verbal feedback on a regular basis. It is a very valuable opportunity to have these conversations. Do not hesitate to write down their comments, whether positive or negative.
Reflect on them and improve your service accordingly. Still, negative feedback is not something many will tell you in your face, they prefer to tell their friends. The power of Word of Mouth will start to kick in and you might start losing potential customers. Give your customers a chance to express themselves in an anonymous survey.
“When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills.“ - Unknown author, an ancient Chinese proverb
Customer feedback can be a form of such a wind of change. It is a very important piece of information for a business to keep its service in the market. We have to keep moving forward because if we stop innovating, our competitors will overtake us in no time. That's why we really need to work with the feedback to find out what our customers are missing and adjust the service accordingly, or add new services as part of a package.
Example: Is there a MTB community around your bike service? Certainly. According to the call for better explanation of professional matters, you could organize some workshops for MTB enthusiasts. Attendants will not only have a great time and gain priceless knowledge but they also can get a discount for accessories, for example. What a booster! There is so much content coming out of this to share. There is so much space for word of mouth to have an impact.
Before you actually create your online survey, think about a few important details.
Are you launching a new service?
Are you preparing an update to an established service?
Simply think about what kind of data you need to get from your target group, not just to create something that your customers view as a standard, but to come up with added value which makes them really happy.
When it comes to online surveys, Survio has 100+ ready-made and fully editable templates that you can use right away.
Survio offers 19 question types at your disposal. When you choose the right question type, you make it easier for yourself to evaluate the survey. Choosing wrong question can ruin the validity of the data. Be careful especially when choosing between single choice and multiple choice. The data evaluation is different. To make sure you don't make a mistake, we recommend you to read the article How to use closed-ended questions correctly.
It is also very practical not to overuse open-ended questions. You cannot evaluate them in bulk, in one chart. You have to go through the responses individually and make the big picture by yourself. On the other hand, there is no other question that gives your respondents more space to express their feelings, attitudes, values or mood. And this is what you are looking for. Read more about right usage of open-ended questions.
All questions are fully editable, you can add or delete answers, set up a condition of obligatory question, add an image or video, choose the format of the answer (e-mail, number, date, text). The survey builder is super-easy and intuitive - watch the video.
Customize the design of your surveys to your brand colours, add your logo or your own picture as a background. Your respondents will find the survey more credible.
By all such details you can make the survey more understandable for your respondents and increase the response rate. Don’t forget to test your survey in a preview. You can send it for example to your colleagues and with their help eliminate all typos or mistakes that could affect the quality of collected data.
Find your respondents where they really are. You can share your survey:
Choosing the right channels also influences your response rate. You can collect feedback right at the point of your purchase. Install a tablet to a well accessible place and set up the kiosk mode in your survey (the survey can be filled out again and again). People can fill out the survey right when they are leaving.
Watch the results in real-time. Survio shows the results in clear tables and charts. You can filter summary results and also individual answers, change the type of chart, create pivot tables. Use this analysis to make data-driven decisions to give the customers the best of you.
You can download your results as a report in one click (PDF, .docx, .pptx, .xlsx, .csv or Google Sheets) get ready to present ascertained data to your colleagues in an instant.
Customer feedback, even the negative, can be the kicker that will lead you to a change. Customer satisfaction is a value that influences your business growth, indeed. Learn how to measure customer satisfaction and how to increase it.
An online survey is a very effective and fast way to get the most relevant data directly from your customers. All features are here to make it as automated as it is possible. Create the survey, collect responses and analyze results to get professional data overviews that provide clear and understandable insights for your decision making. And remember to carry the surveying out regularly so you can evaluate the impact of your changes on the satisfaction score in time.
Receiving responses is not where it all ends. It is where the change starts! Use the data as a base for new ideas and decisions.
