Customer Survey Proceses: 12 Steps to implement an effective system

How-to-implement-an-effective-customer-feedback-systemWhitepaper

How hard could it be?  You want to know what customers want so just ask them a few questions.  Actually, it's not quite that easy and there are a few tricks and traps to running a customer survey and collecting this information.

The 12 steps to success

Creating an effective customer services survey process requires planning and good implementation in order to make the most of your time and money.  Having created customer surveys and processes for many clients we've already made all of the mistakes.  So, we have taken all those lessons and distilled them into 12 steps for customer survey success.

Send them a web customer survey form - it's easy

Unfortunately that will not work for all your customers and it how you deliver customer surveys is just as important as the content of the form.  We cover this as part of Step 9: Delivering the survey.

Have you included Outcome questions?

Every client survey form must have a mix of important attributes questions and at least one outcome questions.  If you don't have both of these types of customer survey questions you will not know where to focus your time and effort for maximum payback.  You will learn about this in Steps 6 and 7.

"Begin with the end in mind"

Steven Covey's second habit of highly effective people makes an appearance in Steps 1 and 2.  You need to make sure that you are set up for success before you even go near the first customer survey form

How does it work?

The 12 steps have been captured in this whitepaper. The whitepaper introduces the steps, explains why the step is important and how to perform that step. At the end of each explanation you receive practical homework to help you to implement the step.

Step 1:
Determine your goals - what are you really trying to achieve

Why do you want create a customer feedback system and what do you want achieve?

Step 2: Ensure that you are set up for success

In order to be successful there are lots of pre-requisites but these are first ones you must consider.

Step 3: Be aware that the survey is a customer touch point

Most organisations are very careful how their staff interact with clients, the look of their written communications, telephone etiquette, etc, because they know that these all interactions affect customer perceptions. The customer feedback survey is no different.

Step 4: Which customers should I survey?

All of them, right? Perhaps, but not necessarily.

Step 5: When should I survey customers?

Now comes the "when" question; how often will you survey your customers.

Step 6: Select your outcome questions

You need to ensure that you have one, or perhaps two, key outcome questions in your survey.

Step 7: Determine what might be important attributes to your customer

Now that you have an overall outcomes measurement you need to understand what drives that measure for your business.

Step 8: Design the survey questions

Now is the part where you actually write the survey questions.

Step 9: Delivering the survey

The right approach to delivering the survey is a balance of options.

Step 10: Analysing the data

Analysing the results from a customer feedback survey is not as straight forward as it might seem.

Step 11: Communicate the survey outcomes

How will you communucate tghe survey outcomes to each of the key stakeholders: staff, customers, management?

Step 12: Do something with the results

Turning data into action is the final step in the process and requires effective change management.