Customer Service Surveys That Give You Immediate Results
Scientific, yet Affordable Surveys
Use our customer service surveys to keep tabs on Tech Support, Consumer Affairs, and other customer-facing teams. Track your progress so you can strengthen your customer relationships.
Get a Free Consulting Session ➔
Martha Brooke, CCXP & Six Sigma Black Belt, recommends the best approach to customer service surveys for you.
Survey fatigue is real. So, your surveys must stand out!
Here’s an example of a customer service survey that’s quick and easy for customers but still captures robust information about unresolved issues. It works well on all devices and keeps clients in the loop with real-time data.
Get a Free Consulting Session ➔
Martha Brooke, CCXP & Six Sigma Black Belt, recommends the best approach to customer service surveys for you.
Step 1
Discover Your Options
See examples of survey questions, formats, and strategies. Find what’s best for you.
Step 2
Review Your Survey
We customize your survey and embed CRM data. When you love it, we press go.
Step 3
Impress Your Boss
Share insights with your team! You'll have a live data portal and robust analysis.
"It was great to have Interaction Metrics do the kind of deep dive into our call center quality and analytics that is so desperately needed but that we just can’t make the time to do. A great service for a great value."
Leah Wilson, Executive Director, The State Bar of California
"Interaction Metrics’ thoughtful approach gets to the heart of understanding the changes required to deliver consistently exceptional customer interactions."
Paula Skartland, Customer Experience Manager, Safeco Insurance, a Liberty Mutual Company
"We continue to be impressed by the quality and clarity of Interaction Metrics' Findings Reports and surveys. They have guided my team on how to stay on the cutting edge of the customer experience."
Dennis Fitzgerald, VP Customer Satisfaction, Yaskawa America Inc.
"Interaction Metrics has given us detailed insights about the customer experience that we never could have achieved on our own. Their Service Evaluations and Surveys have been eye-opening and transformative!"
Andrew Larsen, Talent & Development Program Manager, Acme Construction Supply Inc.
"Interaction Metrics has been a great partner on [employee] survey deployment, reporting, and gleaning insights from the data. The recommendations for next steps, provided by Interaction Metrics, were well received and we look forward to incorporating the feedback. Kudos to the Interaction Metrics team for a job well done!"
Stephanie Holloman, Assistant Chief/Human Resources Director, Orange County Fire Authority
Get a Free Consulting Session ➔
Martha Brooke, CCXP & Six Sigma Black Belt, recommends the best approach to customer service surveys for you.
Derek Sivers Is a Spokesperson for the Value of Customer Service
Derek Sivers has famously said “customer service is the new marketing.” We can’t agree more! Customer service forges relationships, and shows customers what companies truly value. While ads show what companies try to value, service shows what companies actually focus on and care about.
What Are Customer Service Surveys?
Need feedback from your customers about their experiences with your company’s products or services? You need a customer service survey. These surveys gauge customer service interactions and identify areas for improvement. Their primary goal is to collect actionable insights that can improve your customer service strategy, identify trends, benchmark performance, and increase customer loyalty.
Customer service surveys can include multiple-choice questions, scale questions, binary questions (Yes/No), or open-ended questions. Questions can address a wide range of customer service topics, including the quality of the service received, the staff’s professionalism, and how effectively issues are resolved.
Once you’ve collected enough data from your surveys, analyze it to identify strengths and weaknesses and use it to improve your customer service.
Of course, for a customer service survey to be effective, it must be bias-free and allow respondents to answer anonymously. Questions should be clear and relevant to the customer’s experience. And customer service surveys should be short and to the point. Don’t overwhelm your customers with a barrage of questions, as tempting as it may be.
What Do Customer Service Surveys Cover?
Customer service surveys provide crucial insights into customers’ thoughts and behavior. They are an essential aspect of how you:
- Coach Employees: Customer service surveys highlight areas where additional customer service training is necessary or policies should be updated.
- Improve Operational Efficiency: Customer service feedback can reveal bottlenecks that affect customer satisfaction, like long wait times, complicated processes, or website usability issues.
- Increase Customer Satisfaction: Customer service surveys give direct and immediate feedback from customers about their happiness with services, interactions, and products.
- Improve Customer Retention: You can boost customer loyalty by identifying and solving customers’ concerns.
- Track Progress: Surveys help you set benchmarks and monitor progress compared to your own goals and the marketplace at large.
- Build Customer Relationships: Asking for feedback tells your customers that their opinions matter and that you are committed to improvement.
Customer service surveys are your most direct line of communication with your customers, giving you a wealth of useful data that will show you how to improve your customer service.
Why Do You Need a Customer Service Survey?
Everyone knows it’s always less expensive to retain existing customers than it is to acquire new customers.
Customer service surveys let companies identify and address customers’ concerns proactively, helping them to reduce churn.
Customer service feedback also mitigates risks by allowing companies to identify issues before they escalate.
In addition, understanding customers’ needs gives companies a competitive edge. This is because customers’ expectations are constantly shifting, and successful companies must evolve to meet those expectations. Customer service surveys give direct insights into what customers value now.
When and How Often to Send Customer Service Surveys
When and how often you send your customer service surveys depends on your company, the customer journey, and the kinds of interactions you’re analyzing. Here are a few guidelines for deciding how often to send your customer service surveys:
- After a transaction: Send a survey after a customer makes a purchase to capture their immediate impressions, but wait until the experience has fully concluded. Waiting avoids putting social pressure on the customer to give an inadvertently high rating.
- After a customer support interaction: Once a customer interacts with your support team, send a survey to get feedback on the quality of service and how effectively the issue was resolved.
- After onboarding new customers: If you sell services or products that require onboarding, send a survey after the process to see how well you’re setting up your new customers for success.
- On a recurring basis: for subscription services, send periodic surveys to track customers’ evolving needs.
- After making major changes: If you’ve recently done an overhaul of your product or services, ask for feedback on how your customers view these changes.
For every customer journey and company type, it’s critical to send customer service surveys at the right time to establish meaningful engagement with your customers without overwhelming them.
Augment Your Customer Service Survey with Customer Service Evaluations
To get a comprehensive view of your customers’ interactions, integrate Customer Service Evaluations with Customer Service Surveys.
Surveys show how your customers view your services, while evaluations show how you compare to the internal sales and brand goals. Evaluations give you critical and different perspectives on the degree to which you’re building thriving customer relationships.
Also consider implementing a Customer Service Dashboard to track customers’ responses in real time.
An advantage of interactive customer experience dashboards is that you can filter and sort your data in detail without losing the big picture. Visualizing and sharing your real-time data is one of the most actionable things you can do.
Customer service insights should start with a survey but can include a lot more to achieve a complete picture.
Customer Service Surveys Best Practices
Writing effective customer service surveys is both a science and an art, requiring a thoughtful approach to make sure that the insights you gather are actionable. Here are some of our best practices for designing a customer service survey:
- Define Your Goals: What do you want to achieve with your survey? Before you write your customer service survey, identify a specific department to improve, business goal to meet, or problem you want to fix. Clear goals help you design questions and gather actionable insights.
- Keep It Focused: Respect your customers’ and users’ time. Surveys should focus on the key areas you identified and not veer off into a dozen different directions. Long, aimless surveys exhaust customers and result in lower completion rates.
- Mix Your Question Types: Use a combination of rating scale questions, binary (yes/no) questions, and open-ended questions for qualitative feedback. This approach results in both quantitative data that is easy to analyze and qualitative insights that can reveal customer sentiments you didn’t think to ask about.
- Vet your Questions for Bias: Make sure your questions are straightforward and clear, avoiding ambiguous language or jargon. Since bias can be so difficult to detect, we recommend hiring an outside writer or at minimum having several people in other departments read your questions for bias or ambiguity.
- Offer Anonymity: Always give respondents the option to take your survey anonymously. Anonymity can encourage honest customer service feedback, and around half of all respondents choose to take a survey anonymously when they’re given the option.
- Follow Up: Email customers who provide valuable feedback or express their dissatisfaction. This can help solve individual problems and demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction.
These best practices will boost the effectiveness of your customer service surveys, resulting in richer insights and more actionable data.
Get to the Heart of How Your Customers Feel With a Customer Service Survey
Creating an exceptional customer experience starts with collecting feedback at key stages along the customer journey. By designing a customer service survey that captures meaningful, actionable insights, we deliver insights that transform your company and make your customers feel valued.
Want to see how you can boost your customer service survey? Book a free Consulting Session today!