Measuring the satisfaction level of your guests can help you understand a lot of things about them including an overview of what your customers perceive of your product and you will also get an idea of what can be done to change it through a guest satisfaction survey.
The guest satisfaction survey comes in different forms which have different objectives like segmenting customers based on client satisfaction surveys, finding areas where we could improve the customer experience and so on.
A guest satisfaction survey shows how happy or unhappy a customer is with your business and poor survey ratings mean that you are not in the good books of your customers.
Why Is Guest Satisfaction Survey A Must Have?
The best part about guest satisfaction surveys is that it gives your customers an opportunity to air their grievances if any. The company gets to know if there are problem areas that need to be checked immediately, thanks to such a survey.
It is better that your customers spill their problems about your product to you instead of spreading a bad word about you to their friends and family on social media or any other platforms.
Since people are more likely to share a negative review than a positive review, it is imperative that you create checks and balances so that constant guest satisfaction surveys are taken to ensure that any issues written in the feedback are taken care of immediately.
Remember that when people are buying your product, they ‘expect’ it to work well and believe that it will give them the value for the money they have paid.
This is why you see a lot more negative reviews than positive reviews on consumer-based businesses, it happens because even a small let-down in your product can affect their experience very much.
The 4 Types Of Guest Satisfaction Surveys
Like we have discussed above, there are different goals for which guest satisfaction surveys are used. Here are some of them:
1. NPS Surveys
The Net Promoter Score tells you (read measures) how loyal your customer is going to be. It comes with a simple question-”How likely are you to recommend our product to a friend?”
The answer to the question lies between a scale of 0 and 10 with 10 being a customer saying that they are highly likely to recommend the product. There are follow-up questions that can be asked too if you want a detailed analysis. The respondents are sorted into Promoters, Neutrals, and Detractors.
2. Product Surveys
In this type of guest satisfaction survey, the respondents are asked about the product and their opinions about its various attributes like quality, design, support, longevity and so on.
This helps the business identify the product’s quality vis-a-vis the customer’s expectations.
3. Service Quality Surveys
Another make or break aspect for most businesses is the kind of support they offer. This type of customer satisfaction survey will tell you how the clients feel about your company’s service.
This will help you unearth service gaps, improve customer service processes, complaint resolution, responsiveness to queries through any mediums and so on.
4. Pricing Surveys
Pricing is always a gray area because unless you talk to your customer you never know what is the correct pricing based on the kind of value you provide.
Ask your guests about what they think the price point should be and what they felt about the pricing before and after they became a customer.
4 Benefits Of Guest Satisfaction Surveys
Finding the opinions of customers has become increasingly important for businesses around the world as your customers are spoilt for choice.
They are useful for your marketing initiatives, help you with establishing customer-centric initiatives and is connected closely with business practices.
Knowing the views of the customer, let it be positive or negative, both are important.
These surveys also help them understand if the company has introduced anything new. Companies that spot and analyze the changes that customers ask for and implement it would be happy and satisfied.
As An Effective Tool Of Communication
While newsletters, webinars, and email blasts are a great way to send a message out to the customer, these are just a one-way form of communication.
Surveys, on the other hand, is asking for the opinion of your customers, it shows that you value them and then when you implement the feedback, it builds more trust and your customers will understand that you value and appreciate them.
To Focus On Customer Retention
Customers remain loyal to you as long as they know that you only have the best interests for them and you remind them of the same in all your actions.
Customers want to know if they are being valued. If you work doggedly towards keeping your customers happy, they will stay. There are no secret formulas. It is that simple. Provide incentives for your customers to participate in the survey.
To Nurture And Grow
Customer satisfaction surveys are an effective tool to check as well as foster growth.
If you want your business to survive as well as thrive, then you need to use the power of guest satisfaction survey to know what your customers want and execute them without any hiccup.
By engaging with your customers and asking them for their opinions, you are helping yourself towards growing for the better.
To Develop Connection And Trust
Apart from being a two-way communication activity between the customer and the company, guest satisfaction surveys initiated at regular intervals also makes the customer feel closer to you.
When you keep them apprised of all the activities that happen from your side, you build a connection with them. If your competitors don’t do this sort of activity often, you can safely say that you have the goodwill of your customers for long.
9 Steps To Design A Perfect Guest Satisfaction Survey
To produce actionable insights to completely change your business prospects, guest satisfaction surveys are a must and we are going to teach you how to craft such a survey.
The below parts will deal with various aspects of a guest satisfaction survey like planning, developing, distributing and gathering responses of the survey.
Step #1: Plan The Survey
You need to consider a few things before you can go full-fledged on developing the survey questions and sending them out to your customers. Here are some of them:
- What are your objectives for doing the survey? Tip: Have just one or two. Not more than that.
- Which survey tool are you planning to use?
- What are the channels you are going to use to reach out to your guests?
- What is the kind of follow-up plan that you have?
- How do you plan to execute the changes required according to the inputs from the guest satisfaction survey?
Step #2: Define Objectives
It is important for any business to have goals in mind before venturing into anything, let it be buying stake in a company or asking your customers about your products.
Having clear goals is important, only then will you get clearer answers from your customers. If you need meaningful results from the guest satisfaction survey, then you need to be extremely clear about what you want. Have one or two goals, it could either be a guest satisfaction survey for learning your customer’s opinion about the product or knowing about the service quality.
Step #3: Zero In On The Survey Tool
There is no way you are going to use paper surveys, right? We thought so. Manually collecting, sorting and analyzing the survey responses is almost impossible to think of today, isn’t it?
That’s because we know there are a lot of online survey tools using which you can do guest satisfaction surveys in an instant and without much difficulty.
You need to narrow in on a tool that is easy to use, has features that you are looking for and is in accordance with your budget too. Some of the features that you want are customization abilities, rich dashboard, ability to automate the process, skip logic, ability to send follow-up messages and so on.
Step #4: Structure Your Survey
The structure of your guest satisfaction survey should be in such a way that your customers would feel like responding, which is why its design and flow is important.
In the initial part of the survey, tell the customers about the objective of the survey, tell them how you will track the survey, whether they can go anonymous, a short explanation on how to fill the survey, time taken to complete the survey, and anything else that you might want to add.
Step #5: Drafting Your Survey Questions
This is easily one of the most critical components of the guest satisfaction survey as this is what your customers are going to see. Before we get into understanding the questions you can ask, you also need to know the type of questions that you can ask.
Framing only multiple choice questions can be boring and uninspiring for the customer to reply to.
Some of the questions that you can ask in the guest satisfaction survey are open and close-ended questions, single answer questions, multiple answer questions, rating scale and so on.
The kind of words you use will significantly influence how your respondents get back to you. Either they answer you with a lot of sincerity, or don’t, and sometimes, they are not sure how to respond.
It is your duty to make sure that the respondents are informed about the nature of the survey and the reason behind sending them one.
Step #6: Survey Distribution
If you are connected with your customers by having them subscribe to your email newsletters, then there is no better way to reach them although it is wise to connect with them for the survey using other channels.
How do you find that? Think about the places where you will find your customers most and where they are most likely to interact with you. Some of the means to reach out to your customers are phone calls, in-person interviews, and so on.
You can try reaching out to your customers through as many channels as possible, the more they see about it, the more likely they are to reply.
Make your survey available on the newsletter, share it on your Twitter handle, Facebook page, the home page of your website, and so on.
Step #7: Collecting Customer Responses
Once you start receiving responses, the next step is categorizing the email into different segments, analyze and assess the information you have collected so that the objective of the survey is met.
For those who have given a negative feedback, make sure you reach out to them immediately. Use automation if need be to respond to all negative feedback, but the next step should be personal where you either make a phone call or visit them.
Step #8: Using Feedback
Once you have the feedback from your customers, there is a lot of clarity that develops because now you know where exactly there is a problem.
Try to find patterns of problems that are showing from the point of view of your customer’s through the guest satisfaction survey.
Here is a small plan on tackling this step:
- Areas that you need to focus on according to your customers
- Processes that need to be set according to the feedback
- Lay down the responsibilities of each stakeholder involved
- Resources required to make the change happen
- Milestones should be set.
Your methodology and execution will get better with each survey. So do not worry if you think you aren’t doing justice to a customer satisfaction survey.
Step #9: Plan Your Next Survey Strategy
Once you start seeing results with your first guest satisfaction survey, start thinking about the subsequent surveys to your customers. Make sure you implement the changes that you wanted to make and once you do that, send a thank you note to all the customers who replied to your survey. When the customers know that you took the feedback and worked on it, it will make them trust you more.
Conclusion
Now that we have taught you how to create a guest satisfaction survey, you can start implementing it. If you ask the right questions and follow the correct steps while also automating most of the work, then you can expect the best results.
Use feedback to improve your product and make sure that you keep achieving success by keeping your customers happy and satisfied.
Once you have customers who are happy with your offering, they will be more than glad to spread the word about your product.
Since you are reading this article, we understand that your objective is to pick the mind of your customers with the help of guest satisfaction survey.
SurveySparrow has excellent features using which you can employ a guest satisfaction survey with aplomb. Sign up for a free trial and see if it aligns with your expectations.
