How do you design and conduct customer satisfaction surveys?

For a customer satisfaction survey, your objectives should have a clear focus on understanding the current levels of satisfaction with your customers. Especially if this is the first time you're collecting this type of customer data. An example of a simple, focused objective would be: Determine the levels of satisfaction among current customers. If you have the need, budget and/or the decision making capacity, either now, or after a few waves of running the survey, an objective that still keeps it simple, but would offer more granular data would be: Determine the levels of satisfaction among current customers across all [product/service] criteria.

Online surveys which can be distributed through email or social media are cost-effective and allow for quick data collection. You can also conduct phone surveys or in-person surveys for an immediate feedback but it may be limited in scale.

Online surveys are typically the best option for customer satisfaction surveys. They can be easily integrated into the customer journey to capture data at the correct point and in a timely manner, e.g. after purchase, or other specific interaction. The anonymous nature is also preferable to capture honest information. I'd only recommend phone or in-person as a way to dive deeper into the quantitative data your satisfaction survey will collect, not as a part of the actual survey.

The choice of survey method depends on the type of business. To measure the CSAT of passenger experience at airports, it might make more sense to conduct an in-person survey. On the other hand, for measuring the CSAT of the shopping experience on an e-commerce platform, an online survey is might be the most suitable method. As digital systems and feedback loop integration become mainstream in the physical world, online surveys are likely the future standard. After deciding on the most appropriate method, factors such as budget, convenience, response rate, and effort required come into play.

There may be steps in the consumer journey that have an impact on the overall NPS/CSAT score but are not within the organisation's control. When designing a questionnaire, it is important that feedback is captured for such steps. E.g. Airport experience for an airline constitutes to a large part of a flyer's journey, but other than the check-in & baggage delivery experience, other steps are completely out of the airline's control. If a customer has a bad experience with security or seating, it impacts the overall score for the airline. That's why it is critical to capture this feedback & isolate the root cause. Once you have the results, you can bi-furcate the controllable vs non-controllable and take corrective action accordingly.

This part of the process should take the most time. One person should lead, with other stakeholders providing input, balancing strong design and research best practices, with the needs of your business and your product or services features. For a customer satisfaction survey, the fewer the questions the better. Again, if you're starting out, you can focus on one simple question that assesses overall satisfaction. If your product/service experience has complexity to it e.g. the travel example below, you need to ask questions that isolate each aspect to get an accurate understanding of satisfaction. E.g. Please tell us how satisfied you were with each of the following aspects of our service: Check-in process Waiting area etc...

I don't agree that testing the survey is a stand alone part of the survey process. Errors and inconsistencies should be worked out in the design phase. Testing should focus on the technical aspects prior to launching, and is part of that stage of the project.

This phase would typically be referred to as launching and fielding your survey, and would include testing prior to making the survey available. If you are sending as part of a one-off initiative, send once, with two mid-points reminders, and then one final reminder that says the survey will close at the end of the day. If your customer satisfaction survey is part of a longer term process where the survey would be emailed as part of the customer journey, then include the same number of reminders as part of the email flow.

If you've used an online survey (recommended) ideally it offers some kind of reporting on the back end that will give you the metrics you need. If you've designed the survey correctly, you should be able to gain insight into overall satisfaction and satisfaction for all the important aspects of your product or service. You can create a framework to help you with your analysis to help guide you. Some early and simple things to identify: - Is your customer satisfaction higher or lower than you expected? - Which aspect of your service/product is rated highest? - Which aspect of your service/product is rated lowest? If you have stakeholders, present your results, and encourage discussion over the results, and actions you'll take.