survey tips

3 Net Promoter Score Questions To Ask

Survey Tips

When you use Net Promoter Score questions in your survey, you start the process of identifying loyal customers.

You start to recognize and distinguish your brand ambassadors. These are the people who will help lead new customers straight to your door.

With Net Promoter Score (NPS), you can quantitatively measure and then encourage customer loyalty.

To help you, we look at three Net Promoter Score questions to ask in your next survey.

#1: The Standard Net Promoter Score Question

In your initial Net Promoter Score survey, you don’t want to ask numerous questions. Keep it very short and to the point with the formulaic question customers are growing used to seeing.

The standard Net Promoter Score question looks like this:

Based on your experience, how likely is it that you would recommend our (product, brand or service) to your friends, family or colleagues?

Your scale should range from 0=not at all likely to 10=extremely likely.

With this NPS question, you’ll be able to do your Net Promoter Score calculation.

#2: The Reason Why Question

Your next question is really a follow up to the Net Promoter Score question. In addition to the main NPS question, you should invite respondents to let you know why they feel the way they do.

Provide a text area where your customers can actually write out their comments. You’ll find that you may receive glowing reviews or some negative comments here.

The “reason why” question should look like this:

Why did you provide this rating? or What is the reason behind your rating?

#3: The Follow Up Question

With this last question in your Net Promoter Score survey, you want to know what you can do better.

This is where you find out what your customers really think and how they perceive your shortcomings. The responses to this question in your NPS survey will help you determine which areas of your products and services need improvement and which ones are meeting or exceeding expectations.

For this question, craft something like this:

What is one thing we could do differently to increase the value of our (product or services) to you?

With this question, you leave it wide open for your respondents to offer their suggestions and hopefully, constructive criticism and comments. As we mentioned earlier, keep your survey to no more than three questions to encourage more responses.

You might even find you can eliminate either question #2 or question #3 or re-word them to encourage the kind of comments you are looking for, especially if your dropout rates are too high.

Final Thoughts

Now that you know the right questions to ask to get your NPS and additional feedback, you’re well on your way to using the Net Promoter Score to gauge customer loyalty.

You can use your Net Promoter Score to:

Segment your customers by their loyalty to you
Identify those customers who are unhappy and unwilling to refer you
Discover what drives your customer loyalty and how you can improve upon it
Benchmark your results against those in your industry

Finally, remember that according to NPS best practices, the power of the Net Promoter Score comes in what you do after the survey and after you have your score. Don’t miss this critical part. How you respond to your customers after you receive their feedback is integral to the entire process.

Your follow up may mean the difference between increased customer loyalty or an at-risk customer that walks away. Follow up is key to your success, and it’s what helps you encourage and gain long-term loyalty.

You earn your customers’ loyalty by creating relationships with them. Using the Net Promoter Score survey, you can start creating valuable and genuine relationships with your customers by showing them that you value their feedback and that you are willing to take action on it.

Your Net Promoter Score survey allows you to start a new conversation with your customers—one where they feel valued and important to your business.

Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial and try your hand at Net Promoter Score surveys? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

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How To Use Surveys To Gauge Customer Loyalty

Survey Tips

Have you heard about the Net Promotor Score (NPS)?

In this article, we look at the NPS and how to use surveys to gauge customer loyalty.

Defining the NPS

This is a tool you can use to gauge the loyalty of your customer relationships. The score is based on the responses to one question: “How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?”

The scores are created like this:

Promoters have a score of 9 to 10 (on a 0-10 scale) and are likely to buy more and recommend you to others.
Those with a score of 0 to 6 are called Detractors and aren’t considered value-creating customers.
People who respond with a 7 or 8 are called Passives, and they fall in the middle.

You calculate the net promoter score by subtracting the Detractors from the Promotors. (Passives count only towards your total of respondents which decreases the percentage of Detractors and Promotors.)

Using a Survey

A customer survey is a great way to measure customer loyalty and your NPS.

When you use a survey, you can quickly tell exactly how your customers view you.

You can then use your results to enhance your business and increase customer loyalty.

Follow these four steps when using surveys to gauge customer loyalty:

Create a survey that asks customers how likely they’d be to recommend your company on a scale of 0-10.
Analyze your data using the NPS scale mentioned above.
Reach back out to the customers who expressed the most loyalty towards you. Continue to nurture them through your marketing channels to increase the likelihood they’ll be your brand advocates.
Follow up with customers who are the least likely to recommend you (or not at all) to find out what you can do differently.

Final Thoughts

Are you currently using the NPS to determine your company’s rate of customer satisfaction? Have you thought about sending a survey to gauge customer loyalty?

Because your relationship with your customers is so important to your growth and retention rates, it’s a good idea to check in and see just what they’re thinking. (tweet this)

Customer loyalty is key to your business growth. Loyal customers shop with you again and again. They are your brand ambassadors.

Measure your company’s customer loyalty through a survey to learn how well you’re doing or where you can improve. This is a key indicator of potential growth.

Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

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5 Customer Satisfaction Survey Best Practices

Survey Tips

Do you know what your customers think about your business, your products and services or your staff?

Have you ever asked them?

A customer satisfaction survey is a great way to find out how your customers perceive you and to gain feedback so you can improve your products and systems.

When you send a survey to your customers, you’ll gain valuable data that you can analyze and then turn into action. (tweet this) This in turn helps you increase your strengths, work on your weaknesses and grow your business.

In this article, we look at five customer satisfaction survey best practices to help you send accurate, relevant surveys to your customer base.

#1: Have One Objective

Are you already saying to yourself, “But, wait, I have so many questions to ask?” That may be. So, in that instance we’d suggest sending several surveys spaced apart during the year.

The best practice when it comes to surveys is sending one survey with one very well-crafted objective.

Sit down with your team and find out what feedback you really want.

Do you want to know how your customers perceive a specific product or service?
Are you after their perceptions of your customer service?
Maybe you’d like to find out what they think about a new product you have in mind.

The possibilities are endless, and you do want to make sure that the objective of your survey is something you’re actually willing to take action on.

For example, if you ask several questions about your customer service, be sure you’re willing to do what it takes to help your staff improve.

When designing your survey, narrow down your survey goal. Once you have your goal, you can compose your questions. Be sure you stick to only the questions that apply to your one survey objective.

By doing this, you keep your survey focused. You also end up with better response rates because you won’t frustrate your respondents by bouncing all over with your questions and topics.

#2: Be Succinct

Now that you’ve narrowed down your objective, it’s time to come up with the questions. Brain storm questions so you have a pool to choose from.

The best surveys are short with very specific questions.

A general rule of thumb and best practice is to keep your survey under 10 questions. Better yet, make sure your customers can complete the survey in less than five minutes.

According to one study, adults lose their focus after just eight seconds. That means you have less than 30 seconds to grab their attention, convince them to take your survey and keep them interested.

Bottom line – the shorter the survey, the better chance you’ll have for a high response rate.

#3: Don’t Double Up

Make sure that you only ask one question per question as well. Sometimes survey writers are tempted to ask two questions in one. This isn’t a good idea. Make it easy on your customers so they don’t have to think too much to answer your questions.

For example, let’s say you want to know about customer service, and you ask this question, “Did you like the service you received in the deli department and the checkout lane?”

You aren’t going to get an accurate answer for either of these because while they seem related, they aren’t.

Don’t fall into the trap of asking two things in one question. Break your questions apart so your customers are very clear what you’re asking.

In the above example, they may have had a terrible experience at the deli counter and a lovely one at your checkout lane.

When offering check-boxes, don’t forget to also give respondents the chance to answer your question by selecting other or not applicable. Then, give them a text box for their answer.

This also helps ensure you get relevant answers.

#4: Test Your Survey

As with all things marketing, it’s a best practice to test your survey. Send it to your employees, a few friends or trusted advisors.

Ask them if it makes sense. Find out how long it took each one to complete the survey. Visit with them to learn if the whole survey made sense, and if they found it interesting to complete.

If you get positive feedback, that’s great, and you’re ready to send. If not, go back and revise what you need to so you can get the most valuable, relevant data from your customer satisfaction survey.

#5: Take Action

It’s a common problem – businesses send out surveys, compile the information, analyze the results, and then it sits on someone’s desk for months.

If you want to show your customers that you care about their feedback, you must take action on your results and share it with your customers.

Tell your customers what you learned. Then, explain to them what you’re going to do as a result of their feedback.

When you follow up with your customers, you show them that you value them, their feedback and their time. You increase their loyalty with your company and show them their opinions do matter.

What’s more, they’ll be happy to complete any other surveys you send them because they’ll feel like they have a voice and a say in your company’s products and surveys. This in turn confirms their reason for doing business with you.

Final Thoughts

While it may seem hard to craft your survey, it can be even harder convincing your customers to complete your customer satisfaction survey.

Your customers are busy, and as you build your survey, there are a few things to remember for the best responses. Make sure the following is in place before you send your survey:

A reason for them to complete the survey should be clear. For example, they are current customers with a connection to your business.
They believe they’re making a difference by completing the survey.
The survey is incredibly easy to complete.
There is a reward at the end. Consider offering something like a drawing or extra loyalty points for their efforts.

Now that you have five customer satisfaction survey best practices, you’re ready to begin building your survey so you can make the best decisions about your business, increasing customer loyalty in the process.

Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

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What Makes Your Survey Statistically Significant?

Survey Tips

What is statistical significance? For some, the term can be misleading. So, before we answer the question, “What makes your survey statistically significant,” let’s determine just what we mean by the term. Let’s break it down:

The word significant to most of us means something is important.
For statisticians, significant means something is probably true, and it leaves nothing to chance.

Bottom line – in surveys, something that is significant is most likely probably true, but it doesn’t always have to be important. So, the “trueness” of your survey is what’s important.

According to one source, your survey is statistically significant when it is large enough to accurately represent the population sample being surveyed.

This brings us to the topic of this article. We’re going to look at how many people you need to respond to your survey for it to be statistically significant. In other words, how many respondents do you need to trust your survey results?

You’ll find there are a few things to take into consideration when considering if your survey is statistically significant.

Population Size

When we talk about population, this is the group of people to be surveyed. As your population grows, you can usually get a better response.

Sampling Error Tolerance

Ask yourself how accurate your results should be. If you are surveying your population with soft questions, your results don’t necessarily have to be spot on.

If you’re making major business and financial decisions, you have little tolerance for sampling errors.

Response Variance

Consider your survey as a moving object. If you begin your survey, and the responses are all very similar, then perhaps you don’t need to continue the survey.

If the answers are vastly different, you might continue with the survey, polling more and more of your population.

If the variance is large, you would continue to survey for more statistical significance.

Final Thoughts

Now that you know what makes your survey statistically significant, you want to know how many people to invite to your survey.

If you know your expected response rate, you can decide how big of a population to survey.

For example, if you want 100 responses, and you expect that 25% of the people will respond to you, you should invite 400 people to take the survey.

The math is straightforward: 25% of 400 people is 100 responses. Here’s another example:

If you want 1000 responses, and you expect that 30% of the population will respond, you should invite 3,333 people to your survey.

The formula is n (respondents needed) divided by the response rate percentage equals the number of surveys to send.

In the long run, it’s always better to invite more people then less, especially if you don’t know how many people will respond. (tweet this)

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

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When Size Matters – How Many Questions Should Your Survey Have?

Survey Tips

Size matters in a lot of things – tall mountains, big lattes, cars that seat eight, waterfalls and more.

But, have you ever wondered when size matters in a survey? Have you ever wondered, “How many questions should your survey have?”

In this article, we look at the answer to these questions and explain why size matters when it comes to the number of questions in your survey.

How Many Questions Are Enough?

Short surveys have a better response rate. Additionally, surveys that stick to one topic also have clearer, more accurate responses.

When it comes to the number of questions, you want to aim for a five-minute completion time. If you go any longer than that, you’ll lose your respondents’ interest.

To keep your survey right at or under five minutes, ask no more than 10 questions. In fact, we suggest you aim for around five.

Craft Your Questions

Now that you know to keep your survey questions under 10 and ideally around five, it can be hard to decide what to ask.

The best practice is to first outline your survey objectives. (tweet this) For example, if you want to know what your customers think about your newest product, don’t ask them a question about the service they had at their last visit.

Keeping to one objective helps you stay on task and ask just enough questions to meet your goal. This helps you ditch the irrelevant questions and stick to what you need to know.

By keeping your survey questions to the minimum amount possible, you also encourage more respondents to complete the survey and not abandon it.

Final Thoughts

Finally, here are a few more best practices:

Don’t ask anything you aren’t prepared to take action on shortly after the survey.
Don’t ask misleading questions. Be clear and to the point.
Stay away from biased questions.
Ask only one question per question. Sometimes surveyors will stick two questions in one, and this only confuses respondents.

If you have several objectives or topics you’d like to survey, it’s a good idea to create a survey for each of them. Spread your surveys out over time so you aren’t bombarding your customers.

Ready to get started with your free trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

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8 Excellent Ways To Track Customer Satisfaction

Survey Tips

We live in a super-charged world today. It’s one in which your customer will let you know immediately if they are unhappy with your product or service because they’ll share it on social media or write you a bad Google review.

But, what about all of your happy customers? Or, the customers who might benefit from your product, but aren’t sure how to use it?

In this article, we look at eight excellent ways to track customer satisfaction so you not only learn when customers are unhappy, but you learn what they like and how you can improve.

If you want to stay on top of the competition, you want to actively track customer satisfaction every day.

#1: Customer Feedback Surveys

Perhaps the easiest way of all to track customer satisfaction is through the online survey.

Create a succinct, three-five question survey to send to your customers. Don’t ask leading, loaded or biased questions and include an open-ended question or two as well.

Decide what results you’re looking for when crafting the survey. Only ask the questions that are actionable. In other words, don’t ask questions if you don’t intend to take an action on the answer.

Online customer feedback surveys work, and they’re a terrific way to track customer satisfaction.

#2: Email

Tracking customer satisfaction through email is a valuable way to monitor your customer satisfaction rates.

When sending email, be personal and to the point. Don’t ask too much and use open-ended questions to elicit a response.

Always follow up if the customer is unhappy.

One of the best times to solicit feedback is right after your customer signs up to join your email list.

You can then send an automated email asking a single question. Here are some ideas:

What are you struggling with (in regards to your products/services)?
What feature would you like us to add?
Why did you join our list?
How can we make your life easier?

You can use email to send out your online surveys as well.

#3: Usability Tests

Usability tests are terrific because you have a captive audience trying out your product or service. They are dedicated to giving your test their all, and they are willing to be serious about providing feedback.

Just imagine that you developed a new iPhone accessory, and you give it to 50 people to try for a month.

You ask them to record their observations every day for the whole 30 days. You ask them what they like, what they don’t like and what they don’t understand.

After the 30 days are up, your trial users can give you a wealth of information about your product.

By tracking customer satisfaction through usability tests, you’re better able to anticipate further satisfaction when you launch your product.

#4: Customer Conversation

Another excellent way to track customer satisfaction is with the direct interview – one-on-one and person-to-person.

Understanding your customers and their wants and needs is done easily when it’s done face-to-face.

When you conduct personal interviews in conjunction with your electronic customer surveys, you’ll end up with a wealth of information.

Focus on your customers’ attitudes towards your product or service. Be specific and ask open-ended questions. You aren’t after a yes or no answer here.

Ask your customers about their usage habits. For example, how often do they use your product/service, in what instance and for how long. Uncover if there are other products they use as well.

If you want to really understand your customer and dive deeper into the level of their customer satisfaction, interview them in person. (tweet this)

#5: Website Feedback Boxes

You can track customer satisfaction through feedback boxes on your website or with one question website surveys.

Grab your customers while you are top of mind. For example, if you want to know what they thought of your checkout process, put a feedback box on your shopping cart page.

Offering customers a quick chance to let you know how they feel is a great way to catch minor problems before they get broadcast all over social media.

#6: Social Media

Monitoring social media is an untapped arena for many businesses, but one you should be using.

Social media is a wide open world where you have the ability to create a huge impact on your customer base. This is where you do your heavy relationship building.

Social media is also where you’ll learn if people are happy or unhappy with your service.

In fact, the amount of customer feedback on social media is unprecedented. Never before have people been able to express their opinions so vocally.

Be sure to monitor your social media conversations and attend to comments immediately, especially if they’re negative.

To help you track your customer satisfaction on social media, you can use the following tools:

Google Alerts – set these, and for free Google notifies you when your brand has been mentioned online.
Mention – this tool also lets you know when your business gets mentioned online. It works much better for social media monitoring. (This tool is not free.)
Socialmention – this free tool analyzes your social mentions and shows your range of influence, your ratio of positive to negative mentions and much more.

#7: Website Analytics

Some businesses neglect their Google Analytics, which is unfortunate because it’s a treasure trove of information.

By checking your analytics, you can glean what part of your website gets the most traffic, when and how often. You can also get a good look at user behavior while visitors are on your website.

Using your analytics is a passive way to track customer satisfaction as it doesn’t directly involve their input, but it’s still a good way to gauge customer traffic on your website.

Through your analytics, you’ll find areas of your site that need improvement, and you can learn how to better guide website visitors through your sales funnel.

#8: Focus Groups

Finally, one last way to track customer satisfaction is through focus groups. These are an excellent and relaxed way to talk to your customers.

Getting a group of people together encourages interaction and discussion. They might even provide some ideas for moving forward.

To Conclude

Now that you have eight excellent ways to track customer satisfaction, it’s time to get to work. Once you’ve picked a couple strategies for learning more about your customers, put someone in charge and set the ball rolling.

When you’ve completed your customer satisfaction surveys, tally your data, and then take action.

Let your customers know what you learned and what you’re going to do about it. This lets them know you value not only their input, but their time.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

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How To Manage Admin Roles For Company Surveys

Survey Tips

Did you know you can manage admin roles for your company surveys?

It’s quite similar to how you’d manage admin roles in WordPress, Google Analytics or another online program.

You can give different people in your organization special roles on certain surveys.

Why is this good?

By assigning different roles, you allow everyone to work together in your account, while keeping the overall management to yourself.

This helps in the information gathering and decision making processes. It also allows your team access to the pieces of your survey that pertain to them.

For example, your writers can add and edit questions, while your analysts can do the analysis while monitoring the results.

Or, if you are an agency, you can easily manage all of your accounts. This allows multi-user accounts the ability to collaborate together on their surveys.

Let’s look at how to manage admin roles in Survey Town.

Manage Admin Roles

At the top of your account, click Settings.
Then, click on Users.
In the top right hand side, click on Create User.
In the box, add your employee’s user name.
Enter a password for them.
If you want them to have permission for everything, you can click the box in the upper right hand side that says +Give All Permissions.
If not, choose the permissions you want to allow. You have a wide choice with regarding to giving permissions.
Under Surveys, you can choose to give permission for any of the following:
- Create/Edit Surveys
- Create/Edit Event Registrations
- Start/Stop Surveys
- Create/Edit Survey Templates
- View Survey Reports
Under Settings, you can choose to give permission for any of the following:
- Edit General Settings
- Edit Account Settings
- Change Username/Password
- Create/Edit Users
- Create/Edit External Fields
Under Tags, you can choose to give permission for any of the following:
- Create/Edit Tags
- Add/Remove Tags

In addition, you can choose whether or not to give someone permission to view all of your surveys and/or manage all of your surveys.

At any time, you can modify or change survey permissions for each individual user.

Survey Permissions

Let’s look at the permissions you might give members of your team pertaining specifically to your surveys.

Perhaps you’d like another team member to be able to manage an entire survey. If so, you’d give them permission for the entire Survey block.

Then, if you have another staff member who handles event registrations, perhaps you’d only give them access to this category.

You might give your designer the ability to create and edit your survey templates.

While giving your employees access to certain parts of your survey, you can ensure that everyone is part of the process, yet no one has complete access.

How Many Users?

Now that you know the roles available, you might be wondering how many users you can have in your Survey Town account.

With the Basic, Standard and Professional accounts, you can have one user. With the Enterprise account, you can have more than one user and multiple roles and permissions.

Why choose the Enterprise account? First, you can send an unlimited number of surveys with an unlimited number of questions. Second, you can collaborate on your surveys.

Finally, you also have access to integrations, report filters, API access and more.

The Take-Away

Sending surveys is good for your business. You can gain insight from your customers by asking the important questions that matter.

With Survey Town, you can choose from different question types to craft the perfect survey.

When it comes to developing your survey, it helps to have more than one person involved in its design and creation. (tweet this) This is where admin roles come into play.

By assigning different team members different roles for your company surveys, you enable group collaboration. This helps ensure you send out the best possible survey to your customers.

Often it takes a group of dedicated employees to design the perfect survey to get the results you need to improve your business or your products and services.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

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The 3 Best Questions To Ask In A Customer Satisfaction Survey

Survey Tips

So, you’ve decided it’s time to collect some data. You want to know just how happy your customers are.

The best way to find out is with a customer satisfaction survey.

It helps you learn how satisfied your customers are while finding ways to improve your products or services. And, finally, it helps you identify people who love your products and might be your brand ambassadors.

But, where do you start?

It can be confusing trying to decide the best questions to ask. In this article, we’re going to help you.

Here are the three best questions to ask in a customer satisfaction survey.

#1: What is your biggest challenge in ___?

Depending on your business, you can fill in the blank at the end of this question.

Your goal is find out what the biggest problem your customers are facing as it pertains to your company, services or products.

When you find out what their challenges are, you can meet them head on and help them solve their unique issues.

Hopefully, once you start receiving responses, you’ll see some common threads so you can create actionable solutions.

Here are some example questions you might ask:

What is your biggest challenge in speaking to our customer service staff?
What is your biggest challenge in using our services?
What is your biggest challenge in using our products?

#2: What would you most like us to know about ___?

This is a great open question that lets your customers know you really care about their opinion. You’ll find that you gather some very useful information through this question.

It can be tricky to elicit the right answers from this question. So you will need to direct your customers a bit. You might limit the number of characters they can use in the text box or give them a few choices so you can narrow their answers.

You might find that the answers to this question allow you to tailor your business model to meet customer needs directly.

#3: How would you describe us to a friend?

Wouldn’t you like to know what terminology your customers use to describe your business, products and services?

With this open-ended question, you’re sure to gain a great deal of insight. You can use the answers to this question to position your company and fine-tune your marketing strategy.

This question also provides good verbiage for testimonials and reviews on your website. Please just make sure you have permission to use them.

Through this question, you can also pick up on any negativity and make plans to change it.

To Conclude:

We’ve covered the three best questions to ask in a customer satisfaction survey. So, those of you ready to start have a good base.

For those of you still on the fence about sending out a customer satisfaction survey, we’re going to leave you with a few reasons why you should think about sending a survey at least once a year.

You can find out if your customers have had any problems with your company and your products or services. Some of your customers won’t complain, so a survey is a great way for them to respond anonymously.

Customer satisfaction surveys can shed light on the performance of your staff. You’ll learn how they respond to your customers.

Surveys also help you understand your customers’ needs, want and desires. The overall goal of your survey is to help your customers have a better overall experience. (tweet this)

Finally, the last two important parts of conducting a customer satisfaction survey are compiling the data and actually doing something with it. Don’t let the data sit on a shelf. Act on it to improve your business and your customers’ happiness.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

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