Customer Satisfaction Surveys 101: Tips & Examples

Satisfied customers are likely to make repeat purchases and even refer your business to their peers. But how would you know how your customers feel about transacting with your business?

Reviews are one way to tell how consumers feel about your products or services, but unfortunately, people are more likely to leave feedback on a business when they have bad experiences. 

If your business is interested in measuring how satisfied customers are with your service or offerings, you can start sending customer satisfaction surveys online. These are great ways to gather customer feedback, but there’s still the challenge of getting people to respond.

So how do you create a customer satisfaction survey? What’s the best way of creating customer satisfaction survey questions? What customer satisfaction survey examples can you get inspiration from? Let’s find the answers below.

What are customer satisfaction surveys? 

Customer surveys are a customer feedback collection method that businesses can use to measure customer engagement, assess customer satisfaction, gauge customer expectations, and conduct market research.

There are different types of surveys you can send to your customers. If the goal is to gauge customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction, you have four main options–customer satisfaction score (CSAT), net promoter score (NPS), customer effort score (CES), and product-market fit (PMF). 

1. Customer Satisfaction Score Survey (CSAT)

The CSAT survey measures customer satisfaction by asking customers to rate their experience on a numeric scale. It provides insights into overall satisfaction levels and helps identify areas for improvement based on customer feedback.

2. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS measures customer loyalty and advocacy by asking customers a single question: “How likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend or colleague?” Customers can choose a number that represents their answer, typically from 0 to 10, categorizing them as promoters, passives, or detractors, indicating their likelihood to promote or detract from the brand.

3. Customer Effort Score (CES)

CES evaluates the level of effort a customer has to exert to achieve their goal while interacting with a company. It gauges the ease or difficulty of the customer journey and helps businesses identify areas where they can reduce customer effort and improve the overall experience.

4. Product-Market Fit (PMF)

The Product-Market Fit survey assesses the degree to which a product meets the needs and expectations of its target market. It measures how well a product fits within the market and gauges customer demand, indicating if the product is aligned with customer preferences and if adjustments are needed to achieve a better fit.

Importance of Customer Satisfaction Surveys 

Why does your business need to consider customer satisfaction surveys? First off, data for improving your business is always helpful. These surveys can provide valuable, actionable insights into your products and services.

Customer satisfaction surveys will also help you understand your customer’s needs better and determine customer experience touchpoints to improve. Responses can also provide you with crucial information for making better business decisions. 

 In addition, conducting customer surveys will allow you to enjoy the following benefits:

1. Improve customer satisfaction.

A customer satisfaction survey will help your business identify negative themes in customer experiences and make any necessary improvements. By addressing negative themes, your customers will have a better experience when transacting with your business and will likely stay loyal to your brand.

2. Get more referrals.

Satisfied customers are likely to refer your business to people they know. Customer referrals are a powerful method of acquiring new customers. According to Nielsen, consumers are 400% more likely to buy a product recommended by their friends. And customers who are referred to your business are more likely to make a repeat purchase. 

3. Improve brand awareness.

Satisfied customers tend to share positive experiences with others, whether through word-of-mouth, social media, or online reviews. This organic promotion helps build a brand reputation and attracts new customers, ultimately increasing brand awareness and visibility in the market.

How to Write & Conduct a Customer Satisfaction Survey: Tips & Best Practices 

1. Set clear goals.

There are different types of customer satisfaction surveys you can conduct depending on what you’re trying to assess. Therefore, you must set clear goals before you start writing your questions. A clear goal will give you a solid framework for the rest of the procedure.

Determine what customer experience touchpoint or metric you want to evaluate and focus on one topic. Do you want to know the customer retention rate or customer’s likelihood to refer your service? Whatever goal you set, make sure to focus on a single topic. 

2. Make your questions clear. 

Your questions must be simple and understandable. Respondents don’t like vague and confusing questions. If they do answer your vague questions, there’s a high chance you won’t get a reliable response. Additionally, unclear questions may ruin the experience for respondents so they may refrain from participating in your future surveys. 

3. Keep your surveys short.

Even if there’s a world of information you want to know, avoid adding too many questions to your survey. Your customers are not going to want to spend their valuable time answering your survey. According to a Survicate study, surveys with one to three questions have an average completion rate of 83%. 

Consider mentioning at the start of the survey the estimated amount of time a respondent needs to answer all the questions. You can also add a progress bar that will let respondents track the number of questions they have left to answer.

4. Offer rewards. 

Your target audience is a busy group. If you want them to complete your survey, offering rewards may help. Giving an incentive of any kind is a way of telling your respondents that you value their opinion and time. 

You can offer any reward; it can be monetary like a gift card or a physical gift like a coffee mug. Some businesses even go above and beyond and offer charitable donations. This type of reward can encourage customers with a strong desire to help to complete your survey without giving a biased response.

5. Diversify your questions.

Survey questions come in two varieties: closed-ended and open-ended. While closed-ended questions can get you higher survey response rates because respondents don’t have to type so much, they don’t give you useful, contextual feedback.

If you want to better understand your respondents’ opinions and sentiments about the survey subject, you will need to include open-ended questions. You can leave one or two optional open-ended questions at the end of your survey to give your customers a chance to elaborate on their answers.

6. Use the right tools.

A survey tool can help you collect feedback and data from your target audience quickly and efficiently. The right tool will also help you analyze information in a way that is easy to understand. 

There are many survey tools available for businesses today. When choosing which tool to use for running your customer satisfaction survey, consider the ease of use, features offered, survey customization options, data security, integrations, and cost. Ultimately, pick a platform that can grow with your business.

 7. Mind the design.

A survey is only as good as the way it is created. Writing clear, relevant questions is a great start, but there are other elements to consider like the rating system and how well you empathize with a customer’s experience. 

8. Follow up with your customers.

Instead of sending the obligatory “thank you” email to respondents who complete your survey, share with them the changes your business made because of their feedback. It will make them feel valued and heard and even encourage them to respond to your future surveys.

15 Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions to Ask

If you want to get valuable feedback from your respondents, then you must ask the right customer satisfaction survey questions. You cannot expect your customers to give you constructive criticism with a question that’s answerable by yes or no. Including too many open-ended questions isn’t ideal either because the survey will take too long to complete. 

The success of your customer survey will depend on the questions you create. To strike the perfect balance, include a mix of both closed and open-ended questions. There are many types of questions you can ask. Here are some question types you can consider while creating a survey.

• Product usage: Product usage survey questions can give you valuable insight into how your customer uses your services or products. You can use the data to improve your products or services and ensure they meet your target market’s needs.
• Demographics: Questions about demographics will help you pinpoint what customer segments you are underserving or excelling in.  
• Psychographic: These are questions about your customer’s habits, behaviors, preferences, and tendencies. They may seem intrusive but they can give you highly valuable data. Responses to psychographic questions will give you a glimpse into the reasons behind the buying habits of your customers. 
• Satisfaction Scale: It’s a subjective survey that can give you a better understanding of your customers’ sentiments. For example, you ask your customers to rate their in-store experience from one to 10. 

If you don’t know what to ask your customers yet, here are a few examples to help you out:

1. On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied were you with the quality of our product/service?
2. How likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend or colleague?
3. Did our product/service meet your expectations?
4. Did our team meet your needs and expectations for customer service?
5. Was our pricing reasonable for the product/service you received?
6. How likely are you to purchase from our company again on a scale of 1-10?
7. Did our product/service meet your specific needs and requirements?
8. What could we have done differently to improve your experience?
9. How easy was it to find the information you were looking for on our website?
10. How satisfied were you with the delivery/pick-up process for your order?
11. What is your favorite feature of the product?
12. How often do you use the service or product?
13. Do you prefer to shop on your laptop or your phone?
14. How likely are you to buy again from us?
15. How can our employees improve your experience with our company? 

Customer Satisfaction Survey Examples

1. Airbnb

Airbnb’s survey is one of the excellent customer feedback examples. This survey example includes an eye-catching call-to-action button, which encourages customers to click. Once the customer clicks through, they will be taken to a survey page. Aside from effective CTA, the way the company politely asks its customers for their opinion also makes this survey a good example.

2. Netflix

Netflix’s customer satisfaction survey is similar to a customer satisfaction score survey. Since the company offers its customers curated movie recommendations, the survey can help them understand their viewer’s preferences and behaviors. The company also improves its recommendations by collecting feedback periodically.

3. Uber 

Uber does a great job collecting valuable feedback from their drivers and passengers. Their app asks passengers to rate their experience after every ride and asks drivers to provide passenger ratings as well. Both the passenger and the driver can view ratings. Hence, the driver and the passenger can avoid any bad experiences. This type of survey benefits the two target audiences of the business.

4. Skype

Skype is known for its telecommunication technology. If you are using this application, you know that a survey pops up after a call. It asks for feedback about the quality of the call. 

What’s great about this example is the length and diversity of questions. It only includes three questions but gives customers multiple choices. You can give a star rating, tick off boxes for whatever audio and video issues you encounter, or write an answer on the box. 

5. Amazon

The customer feedback survey that Amazon sends to customers who contact the business’s customer service department is another great example you can look into. It also only asks three questions about your interaction with the customer service representative. However, it allows the business to gauge how satisfied the customer is with the help they receive. 

Improve Customer Satisfaction With Podium  

Improving customer satisfaction is crucial for any business, and Podium can be a game-changer in this realm. With its innovative solutions, Podium has empowered businesses to collect customer feedback seamlessly, leading to remarkable growth. 

Podium offers a review tool that enables businesses to proactively manage online reviews and address customer concerns promptly. There’s also a free Google review link generator that makes it easier to gather reviews.

The platform also offers other tools that could be valuable in improving customer satisfaction. For instance, web chat allows real-time responses to queries on the website. Customers don’t have to wait for business hours to get answers to their basic questions.

By leveraging Podium’s platform, companies can easily gather and analyze customer sentiments, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to enhance the overall customer experience.