Our customer satisfaction survey templates can be guides in delivering better value to customers and strengthening your business.
Know how consumers feel about your company and its services? If not, it’s time to acquire valuable feedback that will lead to product and service improvements. One of the best ways to do this is through customer satisfaction surveys and, thanks to SurveyPlanet, creating one is easier than you might think.
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To create a customer feedback survey, determine what types of questions to ask. Want feedback about customer service? Specific products? Pricing? The general experience customers have had? First focusing on the areas where information is sketchy is a good place to start.
For example, if operating an online shop, then ask sensible questions about customer satisfaction with the online shopping experience. Inquire about how they feel about specific products while also getting answers about how the online shop looks and if finding items on it is easy.
Learn more about the top 8 ways to gain insight from your customers to better understand how they really feel about products and services.
Customer satisfaction surveys are a powerful tool for gaining direct feedback from your customers. Here are a few reasons why they are crucial for any business:
Identify Strengths and Weaknesses
Surveys help businesses pinpoint areas where they are excelling and identify weaknesses that need attention. By understanding what customers appreciate, you can continue to build on those strengths. On the other hand, feedback about dissatisfaction can guide you to make necessary improvements.
Enhance Customer Retention
When customers feel that their opinions matter, they are more likely to stay loyal to your brand. Regularly collecting feedback demonstrates that you value their input and are committed to improving their experience, which can lead to increased customer retention.
Boost Brand Loyalty
Loyal customers are the backbone of any business. By actively engaging with customers and addressing their concerns, you foster a sense of trust and loyalty. A customer satisfaction survey can be the first step toward creating stronger, long-lasting relationships with your audience.
Drive Business Growth
Customer feedback often contains valuable insights about market trends, unmet needs, and potential areas for expansion. By listening to your customers, you can identify opportunities for new products or services, contributing to overall business growth.
By regularly conducting customer satisfaction surveys, businesses can gain insight into customers' needs and expectations. This not only can help you better understand customers but can influence product development, service improvements, and sometimes even strategic direction.
By understanding and addressing customer feedback, companies can create a more positive customer experience, which is critical in a competitive marketplace. Customer surveys can identify customers who are satisfied and dissatisfied, enabling a business to take action to improve retention rates.
There are four different types of surveys for customer satisfaction.
Customer satisfaction score (CSAT) surveys measure customer satisfaction with a specific product, service, or interaction. The CSAT survey typically consists of a single, straightforward question that customers answer on a numerical scale. The most common CSAT question asks customers to rate their satisfaction on a scale, often ranging from 1 to 5 or 1 to 10.
CSAT question example:
How satisfied are you with [product/service/interaction]?
CSAT surveys are brief and easy for customers to complete, increasing response rates. Analyzing CSAT scores helps organizations identify trends, strengths, and weaknesses. The scores are often benchmarked against previous periods, industry standards, or competitors to provide context. CSAT surveys can be conducted regularly to monitor changes in satisfaction and guide continuous improvement efforts.
CES surveys, or customer effort score surveys, are designed to measure the ease of the customer experience with a company's product or service. Specifically, CES surveys ask customers to rate the effort it took to use the product or service or resolve issues with customer service or support teams.
Unlike the NPS, which focuses on loyalty and overall satisfaction, CES surveys aim to quantify the effort required from the customer's perspective to achieve a specific goal, such as resolving a problem, making a purchase, or getting information.
An NPS survey, short for net promoter score survey, is a tool used to gauge the loyalty of a company's customer relationships. It asks respondents to rate on a scale of 0 to 10 how likely they are to recommend a company's products or services to others.
Respondents are categorized into three groups based on their scores:
The NPS score is equal to the percent of detractors (percentage of answers scored at 6 or lower) subtracted from the promoters (percentage of answers scored at 9 or 10). Use this score to track satisfaction over time.
Milestone surveys are a specific type of customer satisfaction survey designed to gather feedback from customers at key stages of their journey with your product or service. These surveys are typically deployed at critical touchpoints—referred to as "milestones"—in the customer lifecycle. Unlike generic satisfaction surveys that may be sent at any time, milestone surveys are tailored to collect insights at specific moments when the customer's experience is most relevant or impactful.
To get the most out of a customer satisfaction questionnaire, it’s imperative to follow best practices. Not only do you need to determine the best customer satisfaction survey questions, but you must also be aware of other factors that influence the success of conducting a customer service satisfaction survey.
The following customer satisfaction survey best practices will help ensure that respondents stay engaged and provide honest feedback.
It’s important to keep a survey focused. If too many questions are asked, respondents will likely get bored halfway through and exit the survey. Try to keep things short and to the point. Read our blog "How Long Should Your Survey Be" and use our survey length estimator to better understand the perfect survey length for your next questionnaire.
Don’t use industry jargon that the average person won’t understand. Keep the language at a level that avoids miscommunication. If a customer satisfaction survey is hard to understand, inconclusive answers will result. Respondents can also become frustrated and leave the survey early.
To get a respondent’s overall rating, ask that question early. If nitpicky questions are asked first, the overall rating question might be skewed.
Respondents will answer a customer satisfaction survey more meaningfully when it is sent directly after their purchasing experience. Since their acquisition is fresh, more accurate and meaningful answers will result.
Getting something for completing a survey will result in more responses. This means better data. Incentives can be a small gift—a sample product, purchase discount, gift card, or entry into a drawing to win a larger prize. The better the incentive, the more people will respond.
Although any type of business can benefit from a customer satisfaction survey, the following four industries get the most bang for their buck. This previous article highlights all the detailed benefits of surveying your customers.
Customer satisfaction surveys provide manufacturers with feedback about new and existing products. This feedback can be used to make design changes or get ideas for future products to meet customer needs. Find out how a feedback questionnaire can help your business.
Developers are always looking for ways to improve. A well-written customer satisfaction survey can provide new feature ideas and improvements to software that existing customers want to see.
Those working in the service industry know that the customer is always right. Client satisfaction questionnaires provide insight into what customers actually want, what they don’t like, and what services they would like to see down the line.
Nearly 60 percent of new restaurants fail within their first year. By asking the right customer satisfaction survey questions, restaurant managers can better gauge customer needs and implement necessary changes to ensure their clientele keeps coming back.
Read our blog "Tips to Help Business Owners Increase Their Survey Response Rate" about ways to better understand both customers and employees.
Well-conducted customer satisfaction surveys help businesses retain patrons and examine overall customer loyalty. The main purpose of conducting a customer satisfaction questionnaire is to collect data about experiences, use it to improve the business, and show customers you care about their opinions.
A survey will deliver insights into whether customer expectations are being met and gather more information about a target market. It is vital to discover which consumers are happy and which are not.
Additionally, data collected through a survey can help better ascertain broad trends in the marketplace.
For example, respondents might indicate they’re most satisfied with a certain product or have good experiences with a specific customer service representative. Fully comprehending answers from a survey—individually and collectively—can help managers develop useful insights that will improve business operations.
Need assistance with analyzing gathered data?
We got you covered! Read the "Ultimate Guide To Survey Data Collection" to better understand everything about methods, examples, and analysis of survey data.
to better understand everything about methods, examples, and analysis of survey data.
To get started, here are customer satisfaction survey examples that will help determine the types of questions to ask:
Overall customer satisfaction survey questions examples:
Product or service-specific customer satisfaction questions examples:
Customer service satisfaction survey questions:
These questions help measure customer satisfaction specifically related to customer service interactions. By assessing response time, professionalism, and overall effectiveness, you can ensure your support team is meeting customers' needs and improve areas that may require attention.
Finally, even though yes/no questions and Likert-scale questions are quicker and easier to answer, open-ended customer satisfaction questions can be very valuable. By letting customers express opinions and feelings in their own words—and give suggestions—more valuable information can be garnered that can be used to your advantage.
To access more customer survey examples or explore complete customer satisfaction survey templates, visit SurveyPlanet. We have a wealth of pre-made surveys and pre-written sample customer satisfaction survey questions to choose from. Log in to your account or sign up for a free account to start creating customer satisfaction surveys today.
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