Five Questions You Must Ask in Your Customer Surveys

Allow me to be provocative for a moment…in my experience, most customer satisfaction surveys are “feel good” surveys. They’re superficial, offering few insights, and are more of an opportunity to pat ourselves on the back— hardly a basis for decisive action. 

Sure, customer surveys may alert you of a glaring problem, but they rarely go much deeper to guide your business to better serve its customers. 

Over 15 years and several hundred studies, I’ve narrowed in on five questions that consistently hit the mark, meaning they provide a reliable appraisal of your performance AND an actionable roadmap that steers you to focus on improving the customer experience.

If you ask these five questions properly, you’ll quickly discover a clear picture of how your company is performing and where there is opportunity for both improvement and market share. 

1. The NPS “why” question

Net Promoter Score (NPS) asks “How likely would you recommend us?” (on a scale of 1-10). It’s a great barometer of overall customer loyalty and satisfaction and the answer provides a revealing, and predictive, view of future behavior. 

Unfortunately, many customer satisfaction surveys ask only this initial rating question, failing to get to the reasoning behind the score. 

Instead, following the initial NPS question, you should strive to understand customers’ reason for their rating by asking, “Why did you rate us the score that you did?”

This is the “bullseye” question because it pinpoints the single most important issue to address to increase their loyalty to your business. You could ask fifty more questions, but no one question will offer more insights than asking why they would or wouldn’t recommend you to others. 

2. The “ranking” question

While NPS is insightful, determining how you compare to your competition is often more predictive of future success. Why? A good NPS score alone doesn’t guarantee that you’ll grow and gain market share. Instead, it’s relative performance — how you perform versus your competition — that’s more predictive. 

So ask your customers, “Presuming you source from more than one company, how would you rank Company X (you) vs. the others in this category, all things considered?”

Then, the key, similar to the “NPS why”, is asking them their reasoning, “What is your reasoning for this ranking?”.

If you’re ranked first, you’re in the lead position to win more business. If you’re ranked second or worse, you’ve got work to do. 

3. The “rate-our-people” question

Whether you sell cement or supercomputers, the key differentiator is often great customer service. A good quality product rarely equates to a superior customer experience. It’s the personal touch. It’s whether your team goes the extra mile for the customer that sets a company apart. This follows the adage “customers work with people, not with companies. If they like the person they work with, they’re more likely to be loyal to the company.”

If you agree with that belief, then your customer survey needs to measure how your people perform. Depending on your business and the nature of the interaction with customers, you’ll need to tailor the wording of the question, something like “Thinking of our customer service, how would you rate your experiences?” should get you started. 

For this question, you’re striving for an A grade. Anything less is not good enough. Make sure to probe further for a “why” like with NPS and ranking, especially if the score falls short. You’ll want to know why so you can focus on improvements accordingly. ‍

4. The “ease of doing business” question

I’ve found many clients over the years believing that their product’s superior technology or their company’s advanced capabilities rule the day. Unfortunately, they’re often sadly mistaken. 

More and more, ease of use is a driving factor that creates customer loyalty, whether it’s buying online (think Amazon), using a piece of software, or seeking technical support when a problem occurs with a recent purchase. Customers are impatient. Time is scarce. People are easily frustrated. The smart companies have figured this out and have re-engineered their businesses to be easy to work with. 

Thus the imperative to ask the question whether your company/product is easy to work with. Something as simple as a Yes/No question like, “Do you find Company X easy to work with?” can get you your answer. 

If you’re rated easy to work with, great. If not, you guessed it - find out why not and act on it.

5. The “delivering the expected” question

Does your business deliver what the customer expects from your product or service, day in and day out? Is your product good quality? Is your system reliable? Is your equipment durable? Is your product delivered when promised 100% of the time? Often a business takes for granted the basic fundamentals of what it’s supposed to deliver to its customers. So long as customers don’t loudly complain, it’s good enough. That view is naive. 

Falling down on the basics (good quality, reliably delivered, etc.) is a surefire way to undermine a superior customer experience. Every satisfaction survey must ask some form of questioning that covers this point. Try a general “Was your product/service as expected”, followed by the tried-and-true “Why” to get started. It’s not sexy, but it’s fundamental. 

The bottom line

Customer surveys can take on many shapes and forms. They can serve many purposes. 

But regardless of intent and method, they should provide revealing feedback that will guide your organization to make business improvements and gain market share. 

Consider these five questions and weave them into your next survey or interview exercise. The results of your efforts will make a marked difference in better understanding customer views and charting a course to improve your business. Moreover, you’ll learn what customers are telling you to do to win more of their business, what could be more “feel good” than that?