How Customer Service Teams Can Measure Shopper Satisfaction with Customer Surveys

In retail, especially in brick-and-mortar stores, how you interact with customers partially determines their level of satisfaction. Plus, with access to digital platforms like social media, it’s easier than ever for customers to discuss their experience — which is why customer satisfaction can make or break your business.

Did you know that 28% of customers who submit a complaint to customer service said they’d spend less money at companies that had bad service. In 2016, this slow down in sales amounted to £37 billion in lost revenue! In customer service, actions speak louder than words, so building a flawless customer service philosophy is key.

Fortunately, customer surveys are one way to get to the heart of how satisfied customers are with your store. Surveys take time to create, send, and analyze, but it’s worth it to figure out what’s important to customers and where issues exist.

Instead of a reactive response to revenue loss, adopt a proactive approach to leveling up customer satisfaction. To get started, here are five types of surveys and a look at how they help you learn about and improve customer satisfaction.

1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

As a retailer, you sell to many different types of customers. They have different interests and preferences, so they buy different types of products from your store. But with so many different interests to cater to, how do you know if you’re satisfying all of their needs?

One option is the Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey. It’s designed to help you identify the customers most likely to promote and refer your store to others. The way the survey works is you ask customers one question, and they have to rate their likelihood to recommend your company on a scale of 1 to 10.

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Based on how customers respond, they can be split into three groups:

• Detractors – these customers aren’t satisfied with your products or service.
• Passives – these customers are likely to shop elsewhere if there’s a better deal.
• Promoters – these customers are loyal repeat customers and are satisfied.

The difference between your percentage of ‘Detractors’ and ‘Promoters’ gives you your NPS score. A good NPS score for the retail industry — specifically, ecommerce — is 63. Whether your score is high or low, the resulting data gives you an idea of how much work you have to put into improving customer satisfaction. For example, a low score means you need a new strategy to impress customers, so you have more ‘Promoters.’

To encourage customers to complete this simple survey, send it as an interactive SMS after a customer buys something. This gives customers the option to immediately share their experience and offer feedback. For more insights, add an open-ended question to the end of your NPS survey. This lets customers share more details about why they feel the way they do. Take this information and fix your service standards, products, and more.

2. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

A more direct way to measure customer satisfaction is with the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). When a customer calls into customer service because their order arrived damaged, or they went back to a store to return something they bought a month ago, a CSAT sent after these interactions tells you how satisfied customers are with your response.

Like an NPS customer survey, most CSAT surveys consist of one question. Where these two surveys differ is the CSAT asks customers how satisfied they are with your store:

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Once you have the results of your survey, your CSAT score is calculated by adding together individual scores and dividing by the number of respondents. For example, if you send 100 CSAT surveys and get back 85 responses, and 65 of those responses were ‘very satisfied,’ divide 65 by 85 to get a percentage — this is your CSAT score.

A great way to send this survey is as an Interactive Voice Message (IVM). Home Retail Group is an example of a company that uses IVM to send surveys. Home Retail Group wanted to reduce the number of inbound customer calls while improving the overall customer experience. They used a combination of IVM and SMS Messaging to automate customer service communications and improve call center efficiency.

Mark Fox, Real-Time Manager for Home Retail Group’s contact centers, explains, “The huge benefit is that we can proactively contact customers en masse without impacting the front line.” He continues, “The major reason we chose VoiceSage in particular is because of the ability to set up campaigns on our own – ad hoc and very quickly. With rival solutions, we would have to put in a request to the service provider and wait for them to do it. We wanted the freedom that VoiceSage gives us.”

Read more about how Home Retail Group improved customer satisfaction: SMS Text Messaging Solution for Home Retail Group

3. Customer Effort Score (CES)

If you’ve ever made changes to your store — for example, you redesigned your ecommerce website — you’ve probably found yourself wondering how easy is it for customers to navigate. For example, do they have to click more links to find your product pages? If they have a question, is it clear where your customer service contact information is located? How easy it is to shop with you factors into customer satisfaction.

To help you figure out how much effort it takes customers to solve a problem and/or find the information they’re looking for, use the Customer Effort Score (CES) customer survey.

This survey includes one question that focuses on a specific part of the customer experience. For example, you can ask customers how easy it is to:

• Place an order
• Update their contact information
• Find and save products
• Interact with customer service online
• And more

Customers can rate the effort on a scale of 1 to 5 or 1 to 7, where one is ‘lots of effort’ and five or seven means ‘very little effort’ is required. If you find that the majority of responses are ‘very little effort,’ it’s safe to assume that your customers are satisfied with their interactions with you. On the flip side, a low score indicates there’s some work to do to improve the customer experience. For example, do you have a knowledge database for your team that stores problem-solving documentation? Are customers saying it’s hard to find certain information? If so, make changes to cater to these needs and to improve customer satisfaction.

4. First Contact Resolution (FCR)

On any given day, your customer service team is exposed to a mix of calls, live chats, and emails. To gauge the success rate of your team across all mediums, use the First Contact Resolution (FCR) customer survey. When customers reach out with a question, it’s their expectation that it’ll be resolved, and they’ll be able to continue shopping.

How well your team is able to resolve issues after one interaction factors into customer satisfaction. For example, having to respond to multiple emails or interacting in a live chat that takes several minutes but doesn’t resolve the problem is frustrating and can lead to customers leaving the sales funnel before they buy something.

The FCR customer survey is calculated by dividing the total number of calls — or live chats or emails — resolved after one interaction by total calls received within a time period. If your call center has a large call volume, consider calculating the FCR based on one-hour call intervals. This will tell you if the high call volume is affecting call quality — and indirectly, customer satisfaction — and whether you need to implement new processes to manage inbound calls and improve your team’s efficiency.

A high FCR — 70-75% is the industry standard teams should aim for — means that your customers are satisfied. This is good, considering higher satisfaction results in customer loyalty. The FCR also gauges how well your customer service team is performing and whether training and access to resources impact customer satisfaction. For example, is there regular training? Is your knowledge bank up-to-date? Are calls recorded and reviewed by management to help improve service? Your score will tell you how satisfied customers are so that you can make adjustments to improve their experience and satisfaction.

Read more about how to make your customer service team more efficient with RMM: How to Manage Customer Support With Rich Media Content

5. Customer Survey Response Rates and Times

Oftentimes, when a customer sees a request to complete a survey in their email or text inbox, there isn’t an immediate response to complete it. In fact, 80% of people wait a week before completing an emailed survey. That’s why when your customers make an effort to complete your survey, it’s an indication of their willingness to share information with you to help improve their experience and satisfaction. Response rates for surveys shared via text are better since people check their phones frequently.

This is why it’s important to also track the response rates and times of your customer surveys. This is a metric rather than a type of survey, but it’s valuable because it refers to the amount of time it takes each customer to respond to surveys and how often they respond. Calculate response rate based on how many surveys are sent and how many are completed.

To maximize response rates and shorten response times, send your customer surveys during times when it’s most convenient for respondents. For example, don’t send surveys in the evening when customers are most likely spending time with their families. Consider sending your surveys later in the evening when the average person spends hours surfing the web on their mobile device.

With a tool like ours, you can schedule your surveys to send to customers at specific times. Simply use the campaign builder feature to create mobile surveys like the one below, and plan when to send them.

Best practices to consider when you send your surveys:

• Use a campaign builder that offers a drag and drop option. This simplifies survey creation so you spend less time building and more time analyzing customer insights.
• Keep your surveys short. You’ll notice the examples we shared consist of just one question each.
• Brand your surveys so that it’s immediately clear that the survey is from you. This improves response rates.
• Personalize your surveys. Include the customer’s name or reference their recent purchase.
• Add an incentive. For example, share a discount code or enter respondents into a product drawing.
• Include graphics, like face emojis, so customers can easily share their satisfaction level. Include a comment section below this so that respondents have the option to add more details about their satisfaction.

Keep in mind that rich media messaging makes it easy to follow through on these best practices.

When a customer buys something, wait a few days before sending a survey so that customers have time to use their new product and form an opinion.

Customer surveys are a doorway to long-term growth

You have lots of options when it comes to learning about your customers’ needs and improving their satisfaction. In addition to using mobile messaging to share your surveys, use additional mediums to support your efforts. For example, incorporate social media. Audiences spend a lot of time on social media, so use this to your advantage to improve response rates and times.

When it comes to mobile messaging, experiment with different types of surveys and messages to find the combination that gets you the most responses. The idea is to get the information you need to continue to improve so that your store grows as customer loyalty grows.

Get started today, connect with us and book a demo.