How to Design Customer Satisfaction Surveys that Get Results (+ Templates)

Turning your head away from a problem does not make it go away. And yet, more often than not, that's the modus operandi of most companies. Measuring customer satisfaction lets you analyse possible problems, and more notably, it shows you the path to improvement. Well then, how do you measure customer satisfaction? The answer is customer satisfaction surveys.

Customer satisfaction surveys are used to understand customers' perceptions of your company. They measure customer satisfaction scores (later as CSAT). This is a measure of how happy the customer is with your service. You can ask whatever you need to know at different points of the customer journey.

In this article, we will talk about the best practices to create an efficient customer survey, some industry examples and how to create such a survey. Read on to find out.

Customer Satisfaction Survey: The What and Why

Customer Satisfaction Surveys are the kind of surveys that measure how satisfied a customer is with your service or product. This feedback is used in myriad ways by the companies to formulate their strategies around:

1. Sales and marketing:
Based on customer’s preferences companies can create their marketing campaigns around the most liked features. Likewise, sales reps can highlight the features most that they found to be helpful to the customers through surveys.

2. Product Management:
Customer feedback is the important information for product owners to shape their product to become customer centric. They can readjust their product roadmap, redesign their dashboards, enhance features and so on, based on the customer feedback.

3. Customer Success:
Knowing what customer wants helps a great deal for customer success managers to engage with them more effectively. They would know when and how to hit the right spot in their engagement to drive favorable outcomes.

4. Customer Support:
In most of the cases, customer satisfaction is the clear reflection of your customer support quality. If it is low, most of the customers would unhesitatingly share it in their responses.

Customer satisfaction survey can range from just one instantaneous question to a large set of questions drilling into further details. And we are going to see below their types and how to design them.

Best Practices to Create a Customer Satisfaction Survey

Here are some practices to keep in mind for getting answers you can actually use.

Choose the correct tool for your survey: Before collecting feedback, you need to choose the correct customer feedback tool. Choose a tool that can help you collect answers in different forms - images, sliders, mcqs, etc. It should also let you examine basic metrics, and set an automated response email after taking the survey.

Mobile-Friendly: A survey that isn't optimized for mobile can be quite off-putting. After all, few people will go through the trouble of firing up their PC just to complete a survey. This underscores the importance of ensuring that your survey is mobile-friendly.

Keep your survey brief: Finding the right length for your survey can be a tricky endeavor. Asking too few questions might leave you with insufficient data, while an excessive number of questions could lead to survey abandonment. Striking the proper balance between these two extremes is crucial.

Choosing the right questions: Ask questions that can help you identify problems. Take a step back and carefully craft your questions.

Apply the feedback: The most effective way to demonstrate your commitment to your customers is by translating their feedback into action. Merely collecting feedback without making decisions based on it is a futile endeavor.

How to Design a Customer Satisfaction Survey?

A survey is the best way to collect feedback when it comes to measuring customer satisfaction. Here is how you can design a customer satisfaction survey:

1. Pick an Editable Template

Choose any template that best suits your brand. There are 300+ ready-to-use templates available. They are easy to use, and you can make any edits you want. It is easy to change every aspect of the templates from design to functionality.

2. Customise the Design

There are multiple things you can do. You can change the template's background to match your brand's design, add a touch of personalization by adding your brand's logo. You can upload your fonts to align with your brand identity. You can even set the roundness of the buttons used in the template.

3. Ask Your Questions

The correct questions will get you actionable customer feedback, and wrong questions will lead to unusable, generic feedback. Keep your questions concise, easy-to-understand and relevant.

You can ask questions in multiple formats – text only, image answers, multiple-choice questions, or a drop-down list. If you are unsure which questions go best with your survey topic, you can also consider A/B testing.

4. Put Happy and Unhappy Customers in Different Buckets

When setting up survey questions and final pages, you can easily segment your customers into promoters, passives and detractors. You can create different Thank You! pages for each group.

For example, with an unhappy customer, you can show a result where you apologise, give them a coupon and let them know you will be working on their feedback. With a happy customer, you can thank them for taking the survey, give them a coupon, and maybe some additional incentive to leave a review on your website Amazon, G2 or Trustpilot.

5. Embed It into Your Website

After you have completed the survey, have a look at the preview. If you think everything is good to go, you can publish it. Then you can share it however you like – on social media, in emails, or embed it on your website.

5 Best Customer Satisfaction Survey Examples

1. Uber

Uber actively seeks feedback from two distinct audiences: passengers and drivers. Their surveys are remarkably effective at gathering input from both groups. These surveys are characterized by their brevity, transparency, simplicity, and directness, making them highly efficient in fulfilling their purpose.

2. Netflix

The platform's algorithm recommends movies and shows to users, a task made possible by their deep understanding of their customers. They actively track user preferences and dislikes, using this data to inform their recommendations. The survey at hand aims to further refine this understanding

3. Drift

They use a simple Net Promoter Score (NPS®) system in their survey. Their sole question is the likelihood of receiving a recommendation from their users. This can be a sufficient measure of a customer's satisfaction with your business in many cases.

4. Skype

Skype asks for customer feedback after every call. Although it can be annoying at times, this practice allows them to gain an intimate understanding of their users. They use a straightforward three-question survey as their standard method for gathering feedback, which effectively covers all aspects of their service. Additionally, they offer users the option to provide written comments

5. McDonald’s

McDonald's employs a clever strategy to encourage feedback. After successfully completing the feedback, users have the opportunity to redeem an offer. This approach ensures that respondents pay attention and provide accurate information. Another notable aspect of this survey is the placement of the receipt on the right-hand side, ensuring that users understand the questions they are being asked.

Free Customer Survey Templates You Can Use

Researching and creating a customer satisfaction survey can be an arduous task, and it is a time-consuming and difficult task. You can use free customer satisfaction survey templates to save time and effort, and several businesses provide such amenities online. Online survey templates are often designed and created by a dedicated team, and they provide an easy way to create surveys without much effort. In addition, many online survey providers will also give you supplementary analysis tools. All these pair perfectly with pre-built survey templates, allowing you to examine your survey result in more depth. Here are 5 free customer survey templates that you can use

1. Customer Satisfaction Survey Template

Want to know if your customers are satisfied with your service/product or not? Gathert relevant data with this customer satisfaction template. You can edit it according to your brand design, and ask questions more relevant to your product/service. Get this template ->

2. Customer Feedback Survey Template

Gather relevant and actionable customer feedback with this template. Ask interactive, short and easy questions. Give your customers the option to answer these questions in an interactive way with image answers, multiple choice questions, slider answer options, etc. Get this template ->

3. Customer Satisfaction Survey Template

This template here helps you to get a comprehensive view in your customer’s minds with different types of questions – multiple choice questions, image questions, and an open text box as well. Collect the data and understand if your customer is happy with your product/service or not. If not, look for a common point in all the surveys and solve the problem! Get this template ->

4. Customer Support (Bug Report) Survey Template

Want to make sure there is no bug in your product bugging (pun intended) your customers? Run a customer satisfaction survey to ask your customers to report any bugs they have encountered in your product. This is the best way to not only know about the bug but also increase your customer satisfaction rate. Get this template ->

Wrapping Up

Customer satisfaction surveys are strong tools for collecting feedback and insights. On average, customers share a good experience with nine people, while a poor experience with 16 people. This is why it is important to solve all customers' issues immediately.

Knowing and understanding how customers feel about your business is vital. Design a compelling customer satisfaction survey today!