Client Satisfaction Questionnaire

Despite the soaring price of Apple products in the past years, its sales still hit millions of dollars. Much of Apple’s customers who are willing to pay the price for premium quality have been with them for years. This goes to show that consistent excellent product quality aligned with what the consumers want can build a loyal customer base. And what is the better way to learn how to keep clients satisfied than by asking them directly with the help of questionnaires?

A client satisfaction questionnaire is a survey material that collects consumer data about the company’s performance. The data is evaluated and compared to the objectives of the company to see if it reached the targets. Administering the questionnaires is an alternative to paying data companies to conduct surveys and data analysis on a representative population. Because you are collecting the information from people who are interacting with your brand, you get a more specific and tailored viewpoint that is often not true for data generated from representative populations.

Pitfalls in Age of the Internet

With the rise of instantaneous connectivity, news can travel from China to Argentina in a few seconds, so does negative reviews of services and products. Most people have had a bad customer experience in some establishments—orders took too long, rude staff, unpleasant surprise in their food. The relatable content of a tweet, Facebook post, or news article and the emotion it contains can make an ordinary post on social media go viral. As a business owner, bear in mind that bad reviews can negatively impact your business, or worse, ruin your brand’s reputation.

What You Should Not Do

One hotel in Blackpool, UK, is aware of how bad reviews can affect their business. As a countermeasure, they indicated in the fine print of the booking contract that people who would post negative comments about the hotel on any website would be charged £100. When an aggrieved couple gave the hotel a one-star review, the company deducted the amount on the couple’s credit card. Several media outlets reported the incident, which only made the company look worse in the public’s eyes. Reports say that the hotel had removed the clause from its policy and refunded the couple.

Reviews: Handle With Care

Websites allow businesses to respond to customer complaints and reviews. Therefore, companies should write smart and well-thought-out responses, given that the comment section is open for everyone to read. According to a survey conducted among TripAdvisor users, customers tend to trust your services a little less when you handle a bad review aggressively. With this in mind, we can conclude that it is essential to manage reviews with care since it can either attract potential customers or push them away. You can charge the customers for complaining about your products and services and earn bad press. Or you can respond to the raised concern with apologetic swiftness and a remedy to the situation.

Invest in Your Customers

Prevention is better than cure. While you might be able to address a poor service complaint appropriately, it is still better to ensure that you don’t run into negative reviews along the way. A few bad reviews resolved with a positive note may be excused. However, too many complaints about not delivering your promises speak a lot about the services you offer—people may stop coming to you altogether. Therefore, every customer experience should make the client want to go back to you for another purchase.

Building A Following

Excellent client service does not only build patronage; it is an effective word of mouth marketing strategy. Satisfied customers would recommend you to their relatives and peers. In addition, more happy customers mean that more people will advertise you to their peers, personally or online. With the normalization of an online presence, a good or bad review will hit the domain of the Internet for everyone to see. How you delivered your promises to the clients will decide how that review will turn out. As the Internet makes businesses transparent, how you interact with your present customers will create a ripple effect in the sea of potential clients.

Ask Your Clients Directly

Instead of just scouring the Internet for reviews about your business, you can also ask the customers how you are faring in your service. Conduct customer satisfaction surveys after they have transacted with you. Aside from collecting data about consumer satisfaction in your company, feedback forms let your customers know that you value their opinion on how you can further improve your business. Customer satisfaction surveys show that you don’t settle with just being good enough—you have to deliver the best customer experience they deserve.

2+ Client Satisfaction Questionnaire Examples & Templates

Unsatisfied customers only mean that something from the business idea to the customer reception of the product or service is hurting the company. When left to go away on its own, the company will be crippled with losses and possibly, lawsuits. Know how to keep your customers happy with client satisfaction questionnaires. The following are templates of what goes into the document. You can choose to custom-made one or take inspiration from the following samples.

1. Sample Client Satisfaction Questionnaire Example

2. Basic Client Satisfaction Questionnaire Example

3. Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire Example

How To Create Questionnaires

You can only get conclusive results from valid survey data. And the validity of the data will depend on the construction of your questionnaires. How do you write effective questionnaires that generate insightful and valuable answers?

1. Ask the Right Questions

To get useful answers and reviews, you need to ask the right questions. It means that you have to phrase the statements in a manner that your clients will easily understand regardless of their age and education level. Confusing questions generate vague responses that will get you nowhere. Remember to be specific and concise with what you want to find out.

2. Leave Space for Comments

Dedicate a section where your clients can provide their review freely as they would. The firsthand narration of a customer’s experience helps you gain substantial insights and makes you see matters you haven’t before. Sometimes, a dichotomy of “Yes” or “No” would not quite encapsulate the customer’s opinion regarding your business.

3. Make the Survey Short

Even if one has the time, no one wants to sit through 20 minutes, answering several pages of questions. Aside from being specific with the questions, it is best to be direct to the point. Long surveys are exhausting and straining to the mind. Your customers might not provide an honest review because you made the task daunting and arduous. When you ask for client feedback, make it easy for them to give you such.

4. Ask After Transaction

Ask for customer feedback right after the business transaction with your clients, so that the experience is still fresh to the person. If you let days pass before conducting the survey, you might fail to gather crucial input and insights the customer could have provided you on the day of the transaction. Whether it is online or on-site, immediate feedback measures the satisfaction of a customer more accurately.

5. Use an Online Survey System

For convenience, you can launch online surveys on your website and designated mobile apps after customers perform a transaction. You can also email questionnaires to the customers and have the responses automatically recorded. Other than that, you can also perform analysis using software and data analysis tools. It enables your customers to fill the surveys on their own time while they’re on the go. More importantly, it lessens the paperwork and the manual labor it would have taken to sort through the forms.

Knowing how you can deliver your promises to the clients is vital to attain success in a competitive industry. It’s essentially asking your clients how you can make their experience better through different engagement media. When you have built a satisfied and loyal customer base based on how you met and exceeded customer expectations, your products and services will sell themselves.