Client satisfaction is an important metric for the growth of an organization and client satisfaction surveys are conducted to gather client feedback about new products or services , upcoming concept and feature updates, client service and other domains of an organization. An organization, however small or large, focuses on designing products, services, and overall strategies according to their clients. Keeping clients satisfied is the primary goal of every organization in order to elevate business. Gauging client experiences with an organization not only helps the management of an organization to strategize better to minimize or eliminate negative feedback, but also channelizes the efforts put into making an organization’s operations more effective.
Client satisfaction surveys are often used to collect client feedback, compare various feedback to form new marketing strategies and improve products and services to contribute to overall progress. Satisfied clients go to great lengths to spread the word about their experience and knowing the number of satisfied clients will only be productive for an organization.
To know accurate feedback about desired subjects, an organization has to include appropriate questions. Client survey questions can be classified into the following –
There are new organizations launching every day and with the increasing competition in any market, it becomes crucial for any organization to constantly improve client experiences. Clients require a platform where they can share their pleasurable and not so pleasurable experiences and there can be no better platform than a satisfaction survey .
Here are the reasons to conduct client satisfaction surveys:
Clients appreciate it when organizations are proactive in collecting and implementing feedback. Data collection about client expectations and demands can lead to an effective development of a new product/service or feature update.
It is the clients who are responsible for the progress of an organization and their opinions are extremely valuable for those who intend to grow. In case a client is dissatisfied with his/her experience, it is an organization’s main duty to bring a solution to the reason of dissatisfaction. Those organizations who work towards the improvement of their products/services according to the received feedback may eventually gain a loyal client.
It is easier for organizations to retain clients who would express their dissatisfaction when asked via a client satisfaction survey. An organization should carefully listen to client complaints and ensure them that the complaints will be resolved within a particular time-frame. Constantly working to create a better client experience should be the ultimate motive so that retention becomes easier and more effective.
The client management of an organization would know the importance of a loyal client. Providing best-in-class products is one thing and utilizing clients to spread the word for the products is another.
It is observed that a loyal client can tell at least 9 others in their network about the brand they are satisfied with. Many organizations thrive on brand advocacy and it is client loyalty that makes them talk about a particular brand with their friends, colleagues, and family. It is reported by a reputed business school that a referred client is 16% more likely to stay loyal to a brand than the others.
Clients are the most trustworthy sources of information that backs major business decisions. By creating an effective client satisfaction survey using the best client satisfaction questions, an organization can collect quantitative data that can be used to make thorough business-related decisions.
Writing effective client satisfaction surveys is a skill which requires the creators to keep the following tips in mind:
Always have an unbiased opinion about your products and services so that the questions created do not reflect the bias. While adding questions, keep away from adding superlative adjectives to describe the question and instead, include questions that are as unbiased as possible.
For example, instead of adding a question such as “What do you have to say about our enthusiastic sales executives?”, the survey should have this question: “What are your comments about our sales executive?”
There are many organizations which include hypothetical scenarios in their surveys only to realize that the obtained answers were not effective for their business. Including questions based on theories may not always be fruitful. A Likert Scale or Semantic Differential Scale question can be used to gather customer experience ratings.
Survey questions form the most basic section of a client survey. Confusing the clients by using complicated language or context may lead to clients dropping-out from the survey . Respondents will never spend excess time reading complex questions and this made reduce the survey response rate .
Close-ended survey questions provide insights from the list of answer options mentioned in the survey and open-ended questions allow respondents to freely respond. There may be questions such as “Do you enjoy working with our organization?” which will have just two answer options – Yes and No. But, this question can be molded into an open-ended question to collect more information.
A survey creator is always interested in collecting as much information as possible but this often results into a long survey which eventually will not be effective in gaining desired results. Short surveys with a selected number of survey question will be much more effective than a long and imprecise survey.
As discussed earlier, there are five bifurcations for client surveys. Here is the list of 20 client survey questions according to those divisions:
Almost 45% of clients are annoyed by the helpdesk executives and 30% of client care executives do not have the required knowledge. These statistics can hamper the progress of an organization and thus, knowing about client service from a client satisfaction survey is important.
| Very Satisfied | Satisfied | Neutral | Dissatisfied | Very Dissatisfied |
| Issue Handling Capability | ||||
| Executive Competence | ||||
| Time for solution |
There are situations where website drawbacks and inefficiencies are visible to the clients and not the organization’s management. These client survey questions can be included to understand aspects of the websites which can be improved only to observe an increase in the customer satisfaction levels.
The aspect of customers enjoying the purchased products or appreciating the manner in which the product was delivered is important for an organization’s evolution.
| Very Satisfied | Satisfied | Neutral | Dissatisfied | Very Dissatisfied |
| Available Delivery Options | ||||
| Time of Delivery |
Client loyalty is closely associated with brand shareability and retention. For an organization to be competent with regards to client retention, the following questions should be added in the client satisfaction survey:
The marketing team leads from the front to build an organization’s brand value and client feedback about the marketing approach is vital.
