Whenever I go into my neighborhood Caribou store they hand me the receipt and invite me to save $1 and take the survey. They’re nice people and I would like to compliment my “coffee crew” but until today I haven’t bothered. Hey, it’s just not high on my list of priorities. But today the receipt landed on my desk and customer surveys are on my mind, so I logged in.
Some things we can learn from Caribou’s survey.
1. It didn’t take that long. Just a minute or two. Keep your surveys short and sweet.
2. Unless you have a reason to ask, don’t.
3. Offer a small thank-you-reward for completing the survey.
4. Keep reminding customers you want their feedback
5. Ask specific questions designed to improve performance.
In addition to asking about my overall satisfaction, Caribou asked about time in line, time waiting, overall atmostphere, attentiveness, friendliness, speed and overall value. Why? because these are things that drive overall satisfaction and that can vary widely from store-to-store, or even from shift-to-shift.
They asked about specific behaviors that are important to the customer experience. Was I greeted? Was I thanked? They also gathered simple demographic information and data about my purchase (what I bought, was it hot or cold, stuff like that). And the survey was store and time specific — so they know exactly who was responsible for my experience.
What aspects of your customer experience are important to the health and growth of your business?
Are you monitoring customer satisfaction based on those metrics?
Are you asking clients to evaluate the performance of staff and subcontractors who are responsible for the experience?
Design a customer survey to monitor performance. It can be paper, or you can use a simple tool like Survey Monkey. Build the survey into your sales process and your customer experience. And don’t forget — keep asking people to take your survey and eventually – they might.
Filed under: the who (your buyers), the why (value)
