Top 10 Questions to Ask in a Customer Satisfaction Survey

Sorry Rolling Stones, you're wrong. We can get satisfaction and we can measure it through a customer satisfaction survey. Customer satisfaction surveys (CSAT) are one of the most popular forms of market research. The very essence of it is what makes Voice of Customer (VoC) and market research so powerful. Take that Keith Richards and Mick Jagger.

It checks the pulse of your organization. How are we doing? What do customers like best? What do we need to improve? The most important part of this process is this feedback comes directly from your customers. It's very real and unbiased.

Working on the inside of an organization, we all have preconceptions or ideas on what our customers like and dislike. This can be spot on or a delusion. It's a complete gut feeling without an CSAT data to back up the claim. This is what customer satisfaction data and market research helps measure. It quantifies your gut feeling - right or wrong.

"Market research quantifies your gut feelings. Right or wrong."

You may think your customer satisfaction rating is a 5-star but your customer report it as a 3-star. Guess who is right? The customer. The opinion of the buyer matters more than the opinion of the seller in any product or service industry.

Here are 10 questions to ask in your customer satisfaction survey. Need some further advice or help with your market research, don't hesitate to send our team a message. The contact information for Drive Research is at the bottom of this post.

Top 10 Questions to Ask in a Customer Satisfaction Survey


Question 1: Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score or NPS is based on a simple 0 to 10 scale of likelihood to recommend. Those who rate your company a 0 to 6 are considered detractors, those who rate you a 7 or 8 are considered passives, and those who rate you a 9 or 10 are considered promoters. NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors (20%) from promoters (60%) to arrive at the score = +40.

Scores range from +100 to -100. Some of the best in class organizations and brands have NPS ratings in the +70s and +80s. How do you match up? Find out in a customer satisfaction survey.


Question 2: Importance of Decision-Making Factors

Want to get into the minds of your customers? Not literally, we're not brain surgeons. But we are digital brain surgeons and psychologists by nature. This question asks customers to select or rank factors that go into a decision to choose your product or service.

You can ask about the importance of customer service, reputation, price, shipping time, responsiveness, etc. Choose the factors that are core to your business model. Once you get customer satisfaction data back on this topic you know exactly what messages to market in your advertising to get potential customers to buy. You'll be hitting on what is important to them.

So, you can add psychic powers to the skills of a market researcher.


Question 3: Satisfaction with Decision-Making Factors

Now that you have importance ratings collected for those factors, follow-up later in your survey with satisfaction with those same questions. Here you can use a simple 1 to 5 scale with "5" being very satisfied. We recommend a 5-point scale here so it displays better on mobile devices.

With access to both importance of decision-making factors and satisfaction with those decision-making factors, your company can strategically prioritize improvement areas with your customer satisfaction survey data.

How? Take a look at the factors that have high importance and low satisfaction when you plot the data points on a 4-grid quadrant. These are considered priority fixes. It's an excellent way to drive decisions using data.

Don't you want to know why your customers choose Company A over Company B? You can find this out and much more through a customer satisfaction survey.


Question 4: Awareness of Advertising Sources

Searching for the ROI of your advertising and marketing? Aren't we all? This is an excellent question to address in your customer satisfaction survey. This can be done simply by asking where consumers have seen advertising or marketing from your company in the past 30 days, 3 months, etc. Don't extend much beyond that as it will be difficult for customers to remember.

You can ask this open-ended or a list of potential source(s). These might include Facebook, LinkedIn, television, radio, Pandora, events, billboards, etc.

Now you know exactly where your customers see or hear your marketing. Budget accordingly. That $3,000 billboard doesn't look so attractive anymore does it?


Question 5: Word Association with the Brand

This is always a fun question because it helps companies with brand image and brand equity. Here you ask your customers, "when you think of our company what is the first word or phrase that comes to mind?"

You might get responses like quality, high prices, terrible service, responsive, and even a person or salesperson's name because that's the face they deal with on a daily basis.

This makes and excellent word cloud for your report.


Question 6: Drivers of Customer Satisfaction

In addition to asking NPS or overall satisfaction, you always want to follow-up with a "why?" The why gets at the drivers of customer satisfaction without skewing choices through a select all that apply. This should always be an open-ended question where you analyze whatever the customer says.

These can be verbatim comments placed in your customer satisfaction survey report or responses can be coded into categories and tabulated. Either way, this question is critical.


Question 7: Customer Effort Score (CES)

Customer effort score (CES) is an excellent way to address ease of doing business with your company. With so many choices and how easy it is to switch to competitors, you better make it easy for customers to work with you. This metric is growing in popularity because of the increased usage of digital and mobile devices which gives customers the opportunity to control their experience.

If you are falling short on expectations or frustrating your customers along the way, it will undoubtedly impact the customer experience (CX). Measure your CX with CES.


Question 8: Ask Them If They Need to Contact You

These last 3 questions are non-critical but excellent value-added questions for your customer satisfaction survey. Since you are reaching out to your customers in the masses (either monthly CSAT surveys or a yearly CSAT survey) and you have their captive attention, use a question to see if they would like to be contacted by your company for any reason.

You can even give your customers a list of categories for what their inquiry involves: sales, invoicing, question, issue, etc. Then these can be passed to the appropriate person for follow-up.


Question 9: Ask for a Testimonial from Your Customers

Do you have a formal process for collecting testimonials from clients? We didn't think so. Not many do so we recommend building this into your customer satisfaction survey process. You can even add skip logic to only ask this question to those who rated you highly so you are not asking for a testimonial from an unsatisfied customer that you'd likely not feature in your marketing or on your website anyway.

Customer Satisfaction Surveys are a terrific way to collect testimonials from your customers to utilize in your formal marketing and website content.


Question 10: Join Our Panel

There are many benefits to building a panel of customers to access for feedback down the road. If you are launching a new product idea, want to obtain quick feedback, or run an idea by people, what better way to do this than with your customers who would or would not buy it? You can run these things by management internally but again, the perspective that matters is your customer.

A panel gives you access to a pool of customers for future interviews and surveys. A panel is a group of customers who have raised their hand and said, "yes, I'm willing to help out."


Bonus Question: Awareness of Other Products or Services

Many companies believe customers are more aware of adjacent product and service lines than they actually are. Listing off your products and services and testing awareness of each is not only a great way to understand familiarity with each but just by listing them in the survey helps customers who weren't aware, become aware. It's a tactic that assists with cross-selling and sales. It uses the survey as a vehicle to grow awareness of other product and service lines.


Contact Us

Drive Research is a customer satisfaction survey company located in Upstate New York. We work with clients in a variety of industries across the country to assist with their customer satisfaction surveying needs.

Not only does our team design and manage the survey process but we excel in interpretation of the data by providing insights and recommendations.

Questions? Contact us today at 315-303-2040 or email us at [email protected].

Another option is to fill out our contact form here.

Customer Satisfaction