When customers need help, they expect a swift solution to their problem. Does your customer support team meet that expectation?
Knowing how your customers feel about your support team isn’t always easy. That’s why it’s imperative to collect customer feedback to know exactly what customers think. With detailed feedback, you can offer the kind of support that keeps customer satisfaction high.
Brands shouldn’t underestimate the impact their customer support team can have. For every ten customers who have a “high-effort” or difficult support experience, nine will become disloyal and eight will say something negative about your business, according to research from Gartner.
To help support teams gauge their success, here are five surveys to send to get the feedback necessary to provide stellar support experiences:
1. Customer Satisfaction Survey
What is it?
A customer satisfaction survey is a transactional survey that asks customers about a specific interaction. For example, Stacey, a customer service agent, helped a customer get his Xbox back online. The survey focuses on the specific agents who helped with the problem.
Typically, the survey is short; just two or three questions. One of the questions should be a rating scale and another should be open-ended to give customers a chance to provide feedback. A question like, “What can we do to improve your customer service?” is common.
Here’s a look at a two-question customer satisfaction survey:
How does it work?
Sending a customer satisfaction survey is easy and is sent immediately after a case is closed.
You can send the survey via email and embed the questions right in the message, or you can send an email with a link to the survey. Embedding the questions is usually preferred since customers don’t have to leave the email to complete the survey; this feature is called a one-touch survey.
Why use it?
A customer satisfaction survey is a great way to gauge how well your support team is working in the eyes of the customer.
As you collect feedback, you can use it to make improvements. For instance, you might find there are service gaps that need closing or areas where agents need additional training.
Brands can also use the information collected to compare service channels. Maybe your support gets great ratings on Twitter, but your live chat option isn’t a fan favorite. With feedback, you can better access your support channels and make decisions to improve or modify each as needed.
2. Customer Effort Survey
What is it?
The customer effort survey (CES) is a simple questionnaire that asks customers for the level of difficulty to get their issues resolved. It focuses on the effort it took to fix a problem and the process customers went through to get answers.
Unlike the customer satisfaction survey, its purpose is to gauge overall satisfaction, rather than collect feedback on a specific interaction or channel.
How does it work?
This survey works just like the customer satisfaction survey. It’s automatically sent to customers when their case is closed via email. The email contains the survey questions in it or it contains a link to the survey.
Why use it?
Support managers turn to customer effort surveys to get a big-picture look at how their team is doing. Moreover, it gives insights on the difficulty level your customers are experiencing with gaining access to your support resources. If you want general feedback to improve your customer service holistically, the customer effort survey is your best choice.
It also highlights problems in the process. For instance, customers might be frustrated with the self-service resources online or get bounced from one channel to another to get help. The more effort it takes to provide assistance, the more frustrated customers get and less loyal they become.
3. Net Promoter Score Survey
What is it?
Have you ever wondered how likely your customers are to refer you to a friend? The Net Promoter Score® (NPS®) tells you just that.
It’s a simple, one-question survey that gauges a customer’s satisfaction with your brand based on their willingness to tell friends and family about you. Customers respond on a scale of 0-10, where zero is highly unlikely to recommend and 10 is highly likely to recommend.
How does it work?
You can send an NPS survey out after any touchpoint or you can send it as-needed to take the “pulse” of your audience.
Since the NPS is just one question, you can easily weave it into other surveys, like a customer satisfaction survey.
Typically, brands get the most use out of NPS surveys when it’s integrated with Salesforce. By utilizing a CRM, you can send the survey to key customers and give multiple departments access to the data. Everyone from the sales team to support staff can benefit from a net promoter score.
Why use it?
A net promoter score let’s you know where you stand with customers. It’s a great customer loyalty gauge for brands as a whole.
For the support team, the NPS helps the team evaluate how their service impacts overall customer satisfaction.
4. Website Survey or Form
What is it?
You can collect customer feedback on your website with a website survey or form. The survey can pop up on a certain page, like your resource hub or knowledge base, and prompt visitors to answer a few questions.
The survey can be as specific as you’d like. You can ask questions about particular content, ask customers what’s missing, or collect feedback on the support process as a whole.
How does it work?
Figure out the goal of your survey first and then begin creating questions. You can use survey logic, which sends respondents to different questions based on their answer. A “no” response, for example, can take respondents to a thank you page while a “yes” response could prompt another question.
Attempt to personalize the survey as much as possible. Add the respondent’s first name or remind them of a recent product they purchased before asking them to review it.
Once the survey is ready, you’ll need to add a little code to your website and then specify where you want to the survey to appear.
Why use it?
A website survey gives you powerful insight that you can leverage to improve the customer experience.
For instance, you can learn how and why customers are browsing your site and use that intel to create the kind of content customers want.
You can even direct respondents to areas of the site that they’re look for. Let’s say the survey reveals that a customer can’t find a specific how-to article. You can provide a link in an exit page before the respondent leaves your site.
5. Knowledge base article survey
What is it?
A growing number of customers (57.7%) look for solutions online before calling a company for help, according to research from Gartner. That’s why brands are creating resource centers that enable customers to solve their own problems online.
But how do you know if the resource articles that you create are helpful? A knowledge base article survey can help.
This survey consists of an embedded question at the end of a specific article. Take a look at the example below. The red circle at the bottom is a knowledge base article survey.
The question typically asks visitors to rate the helpfulness of the article. If an article receives a low score, you can include a follow up question that asks customers what’s missing.
How does it work?
You simply create the question you want at the end of an article, add a little code to your website, and let visitors respond to the question while they’re on the page.
Why use it?
It’s challenging to create knowledge base articles that are helpful and current. With a survey at the bottom of each page, you can see what’s helpful and what’s not.
In time, responses from knowledge base article surveys give you the insight needed to tweak and improve your content so it’s on-point for every customer.
Wrap up
Customer support teams have a tough but important job. If customers aren’t happy with the support they receive, it can hurt your brand’s reputation and turn loyal customers away.
The best way to offer five-star support is to monitor the service you provide and collect feedback from the people you value most: your customers.
GetFeedback can help your support team create and send all five of the surveys listed above. Learn how to build a strategic survey program with GetFeedback for Salesforce, the #1-rated survey solution on the Salesforce AppExchange. Request a demo of Getfeedback today.