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Ultimate Guide to Customer Service Survey Templates & Questionnaires

Jan 5, 2024

In a market where 81% of consumers say that having a good customer service experience increases the chance of them returning to your business, knowing your customer's experience and needs is critical. The right customer service survey template can help you create a comprehensive customer service survey so that you can better understand the areas what your company is doing well and what needs improvement.

In this definitive guide, we'll explain the factors that make effective customer service surveys successful in the first place, and provide three free survey templates, tips on studying survey data, and guidance on implementing change in your organization.

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What makes a good survey on customer service?

The creation of a thorough and efficient customer survey is a challenging job. The initial step to designing your survey is knowing what makes a good one, so we've compiled an extensive list of 15 most effective practices to develop an effective customer survey.

  1. Set out with a specific goal. Your customer service survey should have a clearly defined purpose. This can help your staff and you formulate clear and succinct questions to get responses that are helpful in achieving your goals.
  2. Ask concise questions. In keeping the goal of the survey in mind, write straightforward, relevant questions. Also, you must know the purpose behind each question and reach that point quickly. Let's look at an example.
     
      Unconcise answer: In your interaction with our customer support team Did you encounter any issues that you felt could be improved, such as speed of support, friendliness of our staff or the quality of our product you received, that you believe could be improved on in any manner?
     
      Response in a few words: How happy were you with speed, efficiency and the quality of the service provided by our employees?
  3. Incorporate question types. Question types include open-ended and closed-ended questions, ratings, multiple-choice questions and Likert scales. Each question can be used type in different scenarios depending on the type of question that you're asking and the results you'll get the most value from. The inclusion of different types of questions will aid in gathering valuable data as well as keep people engaged in your survey.
  4. Keep surveys brief. The longer the survey you conduct, the more respondents will leave before completion. In analyzing the responses of 100,000 people, Survey Monkey found that each questions after question 15 increased respondent drop-off. Therefore, you should avoid posing unnecessary questions by focusing only on your survey's purpose.
  5. Utilize everyday language. Make sure to use simple, non-jargon words in your survey. Complex industry terms can confuse users and lead to higher drop-off rates and the possibility of incorrect response. As a rule of thumb try to create content at or below an 8th grade reading level. We advise making use of Hemmingway Editor to analyze written content. Hemmingway Editor to evaluate written content for clarity, vocabulary, and reading level.
  6. Craft specific inquiries. Specific questions encourage specific, relevant, and helpful answers, and ultimately assist you achieve your overall objective. Here's an example of nonspecific and precise language.
     
      Nonspecific: How would you assess the atmosphere in the restaurant?
      Specific What would you say about the size of the main dining room?
  7. Use neutral language. Leading and biased language can skew survey responses, resulting in incorrect information. Two examples are provided of neutral and. leading languages.

Non-neutral: How happy did you feel about the seats in your restaurant?

Neutral What would you say about the available seating in the dining room?

Non-neutral: Do You Think that our services are superior than the other options on the market?

Neutral: How would you rate our services in comparison to other similar services that are available?

  1. Avoid double-barreled questions. If a survey has at least two questions within it is what's called an ambiguous question. Here's an example
     
      "How pleased were you with the speed, friendliness, and quality of the service provided by our employees?"
     
      Perhaps you've noticed the question before It's whether the speed, efficiency, as well as the quality of service. For better results, it should be divided into three distinct questions, each one asking for different aspects of the service.
  2. Beware of the use of absolutes. Absolute language can include phrases such as "always" as well as "never." Using these words can encourage respondents to give answers that might not be useful.
     
      For example, "Do you always order clothing online?" will likely push people to say "No." Consider that question to "How frequently do you purchase on the internet?" This question will generate responses that are more likely to assist you in understanding the customer's purchasing habits than the previous version.
  3. Utilize Conditional logic. The use of conditional logic an option that most survey tools offer, where a respondent's answer to one question determines the next question they see.
     
      Conditional logic lets you ask pointed, specific questions in a survey. As an example, a client rates their satisfaction with the burger they ordered as "poor" and then is inquired about the flavor of their food quality, temperature, as well as accuracy during the subsequent questions.
  4. Maintain consistency. Respondents want to be able to recognize the same format and structure of their surveys, which means they aren't reviewing every page on the survey. They'll probably overlook any inconsistencies in design and layout, which can result in inaccurate and misleading data. Make sure you keep your scales in line. For example, always use 1-5 when answering satisfaction questions, or always display "excellent" in the middle and "bad" to the left.
  5. Use balanced rating scales. You should always have an equal mix of positive and negative options for Likert scales and numerical ratings. Incorrectly balanced scales can lead people to respond more positively or negatively and can result in skewing results however balanced scales can result in more precise results.
  6. Add skip and opt-out options. If you're asking sensitive or personal questions, allow respondents to remove themselves from the conversation by providing an "Prefer not to speak" option. When possible, permit respondents to skip questions they'd prefer not to answer.
  7. Check for clarity. Examine your survey using an intimate group prior to releasing it to the public. This will allow you to catch any confusing or poorly phrased questions, and then correct your mistakes.
  8. Regularly update your survey. Products, services, and objectives change over the years. Review and regularly update your survey to make sure it aligns with your current goals and offerings.

After examining the best practices and essential elements of a well-designed customer service survey, let's examine three of the most common types of customer survey.

The types of customer service survey templates

This section is going to cover the transactional, regular, and specific surveys. We will also dive into the best times to utilize the templates and providing them for download. Each template of a customer survey covers a distinct element of customer service.

Surveys that are transactional

Transactional surveys occur immediately after a customer purchase or interaction and gather information about the customer's experience. Examples of experiences could be a customer's contact with customer service, a recent product delivery or interaction on your site.

The Transactional Survey template is designed to allow you to gather information on your customers' experiences. It is possible to customize the template according to your customers' interaction type and feature different types of questions.

This template for feedback from customers will also assist you calculate a Net Promoter Score (NPS) that will give you an important insight into the level of customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Periodic satisfaction surveys

The surveys of customer satisfaction take place at regular intervals throughout the customer's experience with you. They are usually each month, every quarter and biannually or annually, and they help businesses assess overall customer satisfaction as well as the health of their relationship.

This Periodic Satisfaction Survey template is designed to help you understand the overall satisfaction of your customers as well as the areas that need improvement. It also helps you collect specific feedback regarding the products and services you offer. The template can help you gather a loyalty ranking and also determine the possibility of customers using your product or service.

Service specific surveys

Specific surveys for service providers are focused on certain aspects of a product or service. These surveys are similar to transactional as well as periodic surveys.

Service specific surveys focus on providing a positive customer experience, like a product delivery or an experience using your website. And like periodic surveys, services-specific surveys work best when distributed at regular intervals. The goal is to gather information about your offerings so that you can enhance your service and track progress over time.

The Service Specific Survey template is designed to help you focus upon a particular aspect of your service or product, gather satisfaction and comparative data on your offering, and understand how it's improved, and how it could benefit from more enhancements.

Analyzing survey responses

After completing the survey and collecting responses from respondents, now is the time to interpret the survey responses and then take the appropriate action. If you've chosen to utilize these samples of customer surveys or an alternative, in this next section, we'll share what to examine in your answers, the best way to analyze the data, and how to tackle your next steps.

Interpreting survey responses

The initial step to interpret the results of surveys is to distinguish between qualitative and quantitative results.

Analysis quantitative

Quantitative data refers specifically to information that can be described in numerical terms. It includes Likert scales as well as rating scales.

Quantitative data is simpler to analyze and collect since you can make use of statistics like median, mean, and average to interpret data. Think about the following questions:

      Do you think the quality of the product?  

      1 - Very poor    

      2 Poor    

      3 - Neutral    

      4. Good    

      5 - Very Good    

As the responses are linked with numbers, if the median of the responses is 4.2 It is easy to conclude that the majority of customers consider the good quality of the product be satisfactory.

Qualitative analysis

In comparison to quantitative data qualitative data can be more difficult to understand because it is based on things that are not described numerically. This kind of data is usually written and also includes answers to open-ended or free-response inquiries.

To make the qualitative information easy to comprehend Researchers often try to quantify the data. You can do this with a thematic analysis. It takes text and examines it for particular keywords or phrases. It's about understanding how often specific themes occur within a response to a poll.

In the example above, your questionnaire asks "How do you feel about the food you had the last time you ate?" You could analyze responses by searching for the regularity of phrases such as "hot" and "cold." If you find that the word "cold" is used in a significant amount of answers, it may indicate that there is a problem with the preparation of food. In contrast If neither of these terms occurs often, it may mean the respondents were focusing on various elements of their experience.

While thematic analysis can help make the interpretation process more effective, you'll still have to understand the outcomes from that analysis. This leads us to some tips for analyzing your survey results.

  • Seek out patterns. Similar to a thematic analysis, look for trends within survey responses. The trends could be seen in a single survey, or throughout multiple survey periods.
  • Check for changes as time passes. The patterns can assist you in identifying popular opinions, or problems that you've not yet tackled. They can also assist you to find strategies that don't work.
  • Find the key information. The initial step to creating a customer service survey was to begin with clear objectives. When you have those initial goals set, you should pay particular consideration to the related data. If, for instance, you're looking to boost customer retention, pay special focus on customer satisfaction as well as the churn rate.
  • Segment results from surveys. I.e., break the responses of your survey into demographic segments such as age, gender, location, and income. This will help you better comprehend the needs of customers, behavior and needs.
     
      For example, segmenting the results based on age could show that younger clients tend to be happy with customer service bot, while more mature customers would prefer a live person to assist them.
  • Results of a benchmark survey. It is the act of comparing your current survey results with industry standards or previous results from surveys. Doing this helps you understand how your business's performance compares with the previous or your the competition.
     
      Consider, for instance, that your customer satisfaction ratings are less than your industry norm, but are higher compared to your last poll. This indicates that the recent changes have been beneficial, but there's still potential for improvement.

Even with these tips, analyzing survey responses can be a monumental task. If the data you have is extensive, as will likely be the case when you're running a medium-sized to a large enterprise, think about using sophisticated data analysis tools in the process of analysis. These tools will allow you to interpret the data and determine your next steps.

Best practices for implementing survey feedback

Once you've thoroughly analyzed the results of your customer service survey and interpreted them, you're now ready to translate your interpretation into action. However, turning the results of your customer service survey into a logical and systematic approach requires a strategy. Avoid knee-jerk reactions by following this simple three-step approach instead of rushing to implement adjustments.

Converting insights into results

Before you make any major changes or actions, start by transforming insights from the raw survey information and data analysis phase into tangible outcomes.

In the case, for example, if findings from a survey show that clients are not satisfied with the support team's product knowledge, you might consider implementing ongoing employee training.

Note all of your actionable outcomes in one place, like an Google Document or spreadsheet.

Set priorities

Once you've turned your survey insights into actionable results, you'll have to determine what's next. Understanding your priorities will enable you to decide on which areas to concentrate your efforts initially.

Many factors could impact how you prioritize specific actions over others. Below are some that you should consider:

  • Potential for impact - Is the action you take more likely to be significant on the other
  • Feasibility - Is one action simpler or less expensive to carry out in comparison to the other?
  • Importance - Are there critical areas you need to focus on due to company-wide measures or the emphasis of your business's management?

With your actionable goals Prioritize them according to order of priority. This will help you in Step 3.

Act

Now is the time to turn your strategy into a reality. All you have to do is act.

Create your plan of action. It should outline particular tasks, delegate responsibility and dates, and list any required resources.

Then, implement changes slowly. Sudden change can put a strain on your team and shock your customers. As you implement your action plan, monitor the response from your customers, monitoring for any significant responses--interdepartmental collaboration can be especially helpful here, as your marketing and customer service teams are most likely to see these responses first.

Conclusion

Crafting comprehensive and effective survey for customer service is more than simply stringing questions together and attaching them to an email campaign. Surveys on customer service can be a continual cycle of asking, listening and improving, requiring diligence, preparation as well as dedication.

This guide has equipped users with the skills to design effective surveys, analyze the results, and turn your analysis into a plan of action. As you implement these strategies, maintain a customer-centric approach--the main goal of all customer service surveys is to enhance the satisfaction of the customer.

Begin your survey by using any of our three survey templates to gain valuable insights from your customers' experiences.

  • Transactional customer service survey template
  • Periodic customer service survey template
  • Service specific customer service survey template

Commonly Asked Questions

What is the main parts of a Customer Service survey?

The surveys of satisfaction with customer service typically include a combination of channel-specific, agent-specific the customer's effort, their satisfaction and Net Promoter Score questions. Survey makers can modify the survey's focus based on goals of the business, and tailor the focus of the survey to specific areas like product quality or customers' service.

A robust survey for customer service can help you concentration on a small set of objectives to encourage a variety of question types and focus on conciseness.

What is the frequency at which customer service surveys be carried out?

Customer satisfaction surveys must be carried out regularly to ensure most effective outcomes. But, the frequency will depend on the type of information you need to collect and also the type of surveys you're giving out.

We advise distributing survey surveys for transactions either periodically or even service-specific surveys. The transactional survey is conducted right after an item or service is purchased. Similar to service-specific surveys, they are conducted after an experience related to a service was experienced. Both require an event to trigger survey distribution. However, periodic surveys occur on a regular basis, with set times, often quarterly, biannually or even annually.

In general, the kind of survey you pick will impact when and how often you will conduct your survey.

What are some common mistakes that customers should avoid making in service surveys?

There are numerous common problems during customer surveys. Here are five of the most common error-prone mistakes.

  1. Distributing surveys without a clear purpose - Making an undefined survey with no objective can lead to unhelpful results, which makes the process of implementing changes or actions difficult for your business.
  2. Making long surveys - The more extensive your survey is will be, the more likely people are to exit the survey. Make sure to ask questions that are relevant to your objective only.
  3. Insufficiently asking questions In reality, it's not uncommon to have too many questions. Aim to find a middle ground between asking too much of a survey and answering enough questions so that you can understand the issues or areas of concern to your clients.
  4. Asking questions that use bias or leading language improper phrasing may skew results, and result in inaccurate data, which ultimately leads to an ineffective strategy or analysis, which could leave issues with the business that are not resolved.
  5. Infringing on privacy of customers - Survey respondents should be able to choose not to answer private or personal inquiries, and it is best to avoid soliciting customers in a series of solicitations for responses to surveys.

In addition to these five mistakes that most people make in customer service surveys, we recommend exploring the factors that make a great customer service survey. There, we explore fifteen best practices to follow when crafting a survey.

What can companies do to effectively use the data gathered from customer service surveys?

It is recommended to begin by looking at your data gathered through customer service surveys. After that, you should interpret the results of the data analysis to transform the insights from your survey into actionable outcomes. At this point you can begin to prioritize and implement changes based on your survey.

This approach focuses on your survey objectives and emphasizes the importance of an overall strategy prior to implement changes to your business. This strategy can aid companies determine where their resources will be most effective.