Five questions your customer survey should answer for maximum business impact

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We've all seen those spiral-bound survey reports with page after page of colorful charts and tables crowded with numbers and percentages. Survey reports of this type usually provide demographic breakdowns and highlight strengths and areas for improvement.

Charts, tables and ranking reports give you a good overall snapshot of your customers' perceptions. But in many cases they do not go far enough. To drive business decisions, customer survey results should answer our "Big Five" business questions. Answering these questions makes you eligible for the "Bonus Question." We explain all six questions below.

1. What drives your customers' overall satisfaction, intention to continue the relationship, and willingness to recommend your company?

A customer satisfaction survey may have 10 or 100 questions about product or service attributes, but only a handful of those questions bear a strong relationship to customer satisfaction and loyalty. Which ones? The answer is unique to each company. And within a single company, the answer may be unique for each product, service, geographic region, customer industry, or any combination of background factors.

2. What do customers value most about your products and services?

Identifying what customers value is not the same as identifying what they think you do best. Think about it: You may offer great food on your airline, but what people really want is wider seats. If that's true, investing in meal service won't improve customer loyalty; investing in wider seats- and promoting that innovation intensively - is more likely to keep your old customers coming back and bring in new ones.

Your executive report should clearly distinguish between what customers think you do well and what they value about your product or service.

3. How do customer segments differ?

Let's continue the airline example above. It may be that there is a small but highly profitable customer segment that truly values a great on-board meal. Wider seats are not so important to this segment. An obvious example is First Class or Business Class passengers. They already have wide seats; it's a given. So it just might be that a truly outstanding meal (complete with exquisite deserts and the finest wines) is just what you need to entice them away from your competitors.

The decision to invest in those gourmet meals should not, however, be based on a hunch, a few casual conversations with passengers, or even "expert judgment." It should be based on sound research, properly analyzed.

4. Which profitable customers are most likely to defect?

To answer this question, your survey clearly needs to include an item that asks whether the respondent intends to repurchase or renew with your company. To identify a specific customer who is likely to go elsewhere, you either have to ask identifying questions, or use a technology that enables you to link responses directly to invitations. To identify a category of customers who are likely to go elsewhere requires in-depth analysis of your results.

5. What changes are most likely to increase customer satisfaction, repurchase, and new business referrals?

You can always ask these questions directly in an open-ended format (If you rated us below 3 on satisfaction, what could we do to increase your satisfaction?). However, finding patterns in the responses is not always easy. You can also use statistical regression techniques to determine which survey items or categories have the greatest impact on these important outcomes. A sample of what you can learn from this type of analysis is presented  in our article, When Less is More: Fewer Reports, More Business Intelligence.

Mine Your Data for All It's Worth

To sum up, if your survey reports fail to provide statistically valid answers to the Big Five, the analysis has not gone far enough. There is a great deal more business intelligence waiting to be mined from the data you already have. Isn't it worth a closer look?

For assistance finding answers to the "Big Five" Customer Survey Questions, call toll-free, 877-666-2486, or complete our information request form [link to form].

Call us toll-free, 877-666-2486, to discuss how we deliver results that matter for your business objectives. Or complete our contact information form to let us know how we can reach you.