Customer Satisfaction

Do you want to make your business better? One of the simplest ways to improve your business—and your sales—is to find out what your customers really think about your company. While it might be tough to hear about things you’re not doing well, you need to know the truth in order to make changes. The good news is, there are more ways than ever to survey your customers. Here are some ideas to get you started.

In person: If you have a business where you interact with customers, like a restaurant or retail store, surveying is as simple as talking to them and asking how you’re doing. If you regularly interact with customers, you’ll get a feel for what they like and don’t like.

Get social: You do use social media, right? Whether you’re on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, you can pose quick questions to your fans and followers as often as you like. Keep in mind this isn’t a scientific method, but it can be a good way to get a quick read on consumer sentiment.

Here at Zoomerang, we really value our customers and their input! We heard the feedback you gave us on our customer satisfaction survey, and yesterday we implemented some changes.

We saw that you were having difficulty finding certain features and functions. So we opened up the tool bar to give you easier access. Just hover your mouse over the question, and the new, expanded tool bar will pop up.

We also heard our customers say they want more flexibility when formatting their survey. Now you can choose where you insert new survey questions, instead of having them inserted automatically at the end of your survey. You also have the ability to insert a page break, move your question around on the page, or move it to a different page all together.

These great updates are available to all of our customers. We’re continuing to listen to your feedback and improve our product. We have more new features coming next week, so check back!

Small business researcher and educator Marc Compeau recently posted a fantastic article about customer expectations. He tells a story about him and his wife visiting a local bakery and walking away with very different levels of satisfaction, even though they shared the same experience. How did this happen, you ask? Compeau and his wife had different expectations.

Compaeau’s situation is not a unique one and it probably happens more times than many entrepreneurs know. As a small business owner, you need to understand your customers’ expectations in order to deliver a good experience. While small business owners tend to focus mainly on customer service, it is just as important to be aware of your customers’ expectations.

Compeau mentions three ways that customers set an expectation:

Introducing Chat Support for Pro and Premium Customers!

While our product says we are in the business of online survey software, we actually think of ourselves as in the business of helping our customers make and send great online surveys. It's a subtle difference, but it's a difference that's all about how we think about and treat our customers. With that in mind, we recently launched Online Chat Support for Pro and Premium customers.

A survey on the preferences of website or portal users found that a whopping 80% preferred to chat online with the support folks than call on the phone. And because of that, we wanted to launch chat for our own customers - you! While phone support is not something we can do away with, chat offers something that a phone never can - the ability to get answers without leaving your computer. But that's not all. Chat packs a few more cool features in its punch:

My husband comes from a large family, which makes it more convenient to host celebrations at local restaurants rather than at our house – plus, no clean-up, even better! Over the years we’ve held engagement parties, rehearsal dinners, anniversary celebrations and birthday parties at local venues,  and surprisingly not one of those venues has ever reached back out to me after I handed them the final payment. 

Did they care if I was happy with my experience? Were they curious if I would return? Didn’t they want me to refer my friends? I don’t know because they never asked! What a lost opportunity, when sending an easy online survey could potentially lead to thousands of dollars of repeat and referral business! 

Your customers may be asking the very same thing Roger Waters famously asked on the 1979 Pink Floyd classic The Wall; Is There Anybody Out There?

In today’s competitive landscape customer service is more important than ever, and a company’s reputation for satisfying clients has never been so vulnerable. Social Media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn can level the playing field enabling businesses of all sizes to interact directly with customers like never before.

The voice of the consumer has never been more powerful, or influential, and has potential to spread virally in an instant. Reacting quickly can often quell negative comments and amplify positive ones. Over 58% of tweeters who have tweeted about a bad experience, have never received a response from the offending company.

Lionel Richie sang about relationships in the famous Motown hit deciding it is much better to keep them "easy like Sunday morning." Your business can benefit from doing the same.

Online surveys are by far the fastest and easiest way businesses can survey their customers and ask them how they feel about the business, the level of service provided, and the thoughts and opinions of the services offered.

Did you know that the average company loses up to 30% of their customers every year and usually has no clue as to why? Don't allow your customer base to decay while letting your competition gain market share.

Vice president of customer interaction analytics at Verint Witness Actionable Solutions, Daniel Ziv, wrote a fantastic blog post titled Not Another Annoying Customer Survey!

You’ve no doubt heard the phrase “short but sweet” before.  In the online survey world, that little adage is truer than we can even begin to tell you.  We personally cannot count how many great surveys we’ve seen completely ruined by lengthy questions requiring lengthy answers.  In truth, people just don’t have time, or like to think they don’t, to complete long-winded surveys in this day and age.

Short AND Sweet is our new mantra and there are some very easy to follow tips to help keep your online surveys concise and directly on point.

Luckily, there are a few things you can remember when drafting your next online survey to avoid dreaded survey fatigue or worse, survey abandonment.

If you keep things simple and remember a few key points, your response rates will boost and the quality AND quantity of information you receive back will increase.  Here are a few things to remember:

At Zoomerang we are blessed to work with some of the brightest and greatest minds in the industry.  One of those minds, Anil Gupta recently wrote a brilliant article over at Sandhill.com and it’s packed full of some of the best and most enlightening information.  If companies are looking to extend their CRM systems to actually capture and harness their customer’s insights, this article is a perfect read. He has some great ideas.

In the article Anil states that many mid-sized organizations question how client information can be more efficiently stored and retrieved in quantifiable ways from their CRM systems

They say that we’ve nothing to fear but fear itself, but for Domino’s Pizza, all they had to fear was the wrath of their seemingly unhappy customers.  When it comes to admitting your own shortcomings, doing it can be a challenge…doing it in public and on National television can be a seemingly insurmountable task.  Using surveys, Domino’s Pizza actually asked all of their pizza-eating customers what they did and did not like.  The results came in fast and were shockingly honest:  enough with the “ketchup sauce and cardboard crust.”

By using those surveys, it did two things very effectively: