The key elements you need to think about when designing a customer satisfaction survey are: what are the right questions; is the survey in a format that is easy for the customer to answer; and how will you compile, interpret, and using the data you gather from the survey to improve your customer relations.

Traditional customer surveys were conducted in person while the customer was at your store of office or by telephone or a mailed survey after the customers had concluded their business with you. Today email and online customer satisfaction surveys are more popular choices.

Once you collect your customer’s email addresses an email or online survey is easy to deliver and easy for you to create and update. The email or online surveys are convenient for the customer to respond to, and the information provided is easy to compile and sort for your information and use. You can even set up an automatic response thanking the customer for returning the survey.

There are customer satisfaction survey software products available that allow you to easily create customized customer satisfaction surveys and to analyze and interpret the data with built in cross tabulation and filtering tools. These customer satisfaction software products range from basic to sophisticated and variations of the customer satisfaction survey software  is used by small business owners with little or no technical support and Fortune 500 companies.

Regardless of the method you use to deliver the survey you need to keep it simple. A good survey should take the customer only a few minutes to answer.

Ask the customer what you need to know. Don’t load the survey up with esoteric questions. Ask relevant questions like:

• Are you satisfied with the purchase you made?
• Are you satisfied with the service you received?
• Are you satisfied with our company overall?
• How likely are you to buy from us again?
• How likely are you to recommend us to others?
• What did you like about our product?
• What didn’t you like about our product?

You will get a higher response rate if you offer incentives to those returning the customer satisfaction survey. Maybe a coupon, cash or offer to enter the respondents in a contest or drawing.

Regardless of the delivery method you need to ask these questions in a timely manner after the customer receives your product or service. If too much time elapses between the time the customer makes the purchase and the time they answer the survey the responses will be less reliable. As time passes recollections fade and the customer may even be confused as to which company or product you are asking about making the customer’s answers totally useless for your purposes.

These are lean times and there have been changes in virtually every department in your office as your company seeks to improve its bottom line.  As a professional however you have  a job to carry out.   Can you do your job effectively when the point of your survey is to come up with changes and you don’t want anything to change?  You can’t if you let your personal feelings get in the way.

The survey is a vehicle that’s driven by your customer’s likes and dislikes.   This isn’t a two way conversation and if you approach it that way then you’ve already failed.  In fact,  far too many surveys or questionnaires fail to the point where many people don’t take them seriously anymore.  That’s a shame because when used properly its a powerful tool.   Furthermore,  there’s no other way to carry out certain jobs and this makes them essential in nearly every walk of life.  Its unfortunate that surveys have been misused.   So how do you create a survey that people will take seriously?  I usually know after the first couple of questions whether or not the survey I’m taking is a waste of my time.

Think stupid Facebook quiz. They tend to ask you a series of vague questions so you can be categorized into the same category that nearly everyone that has nothing in common with you is also placed into.  The questions lack objectivity and while some people find them entertaining almost no one takes them seriously.   If you’re using surveys in professional setting you want to get as far away from Facebook quizes as possible.  That starts with eliminating preconceived notions of how the survey respondent is suppose to respond or how the data you get is interpreted.

You are here to impartially gather information.  Your respondent should not know you or what you think.   Stay away from provocative or emotionally charged questions.   They may be entertaining but your job is not to entertain.  Also, keep your questions simple and to the point.   If your questions are vague or mentally taxing to your survey respondents then you’re going to jeopardize the quality of the data you are collecting. In most cases its better to create a series of short questionnaires with simple questions.   Be careful of leading your respondent on.   If you were to mix your questions up would they answer them the same way?   Are you inserting your opinions into the conversation?

We’ve all been around with people that try to dominate questions and the only opinions that are heard are theirs.   In a survey the only one who should be dominating the conversation is your respondent.  Finally, remember that the survey isn’t about you its about the respondent.  The survey is an instrument for gathering information. It will only be taken seriously if its used as such.

Thurstone Scaling

The three methods described for this are equal appearing interval method, successive intervals method, and paired comparisons method.  This was the first formal technique for measuring attitudes when it was introduced and it does this by asking respondents to indicate whether they agree or disagree with each of a large set of statements about attitudes.   This scale calculates a weight or attitudinal value for each statement.  This weight is calculated on the basis of a rating assigned by a group of judges.  Because the importance of each statement is determined by judges it reflects the absolute rather than relative attitudes of judges.  The scale indicates the intensity of attitudes and changes in this intensity can be measured should this study be reconstructed.  This is not often used today because it is expensive and time consuming.  A major criticism is that judges and respondents may assess the importance of statements differently and thus the respondent’s attitudes may not be properly reflected.

Likert Scaling

This ordered one dimensional scale gives equal weight or attitudinal value to items or statements when reflecting an attitude toward an issue in a question.  Generally done using a five point or seven point scale. Respondents are typically asked to select from choices ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.”  This is an extremely popular means of measuring attitudes.  Because it is the most commonly used scale for responses to survey questions it can be argued that it is the most commonly misused.  Choices are assumed to have equal distance between them and can even be numbered.  This is often referred to as a summative scale as this is often scored by summing up numerical assignments to the responses given.  In scoring, numbers are usually assigned to each response in a question (for example 1 to 5).

Continuous Rate Scale

Alternately referred to as a Graphic Rating Scale,  respondents rate items by placing a mark on a line that is usually labelled with numbers (for example 1 to 100).  The form this scale takes may vary.

Phrase Completion Scale

This was developed in response to problems associated with Likert Scale.   These are concise unidimensional measures that taps ordinal data in a way that approximates interval leval data.   This consists of a phrase followed by an 11 point response key in which 0 represents the absence of a theoretical construct and 10 represents the theorized maximum amount of the construct being measured.  Just as is the case with Likert Scale this is considered a summative scale where after the questionnaire is completed the score on each item is summed together.

Semantic Differential Scale

This is a five or seven point itemized ordinal scale with dichotomous pairs of descriptive words or phrases representing two extreme point of views and a neutral response.  The extreme points are meant to be interepreted strongly or extremely.  An example would be a statement a statement that said “Reading about scaling techniques is:” and on the left side you would see “boring” and on the right side you would see “interesting.”  The respondent would then mark one of the five to seven blanks to indicate their attitude about the attribute.  As a control for tendencies of those with either a very positive or a very negative attitude sometimes the negative adjective or phrase appears on the left and sometimes it appears on the right.  Items on this scale may be scored on either a -3 to +3 or a 1 to 7 scale.  This scaling tool is frequently used in linguistics and social psychology.

Stapel Scale

Similar to the Sematic Differential Scale with some exceptions.   Points are assigned as numbers which is not the case in a Sematic Differential scale.  Instead of two dichotomous descriptive words or phrases only one word or phrase is used.  If the respondent disagrees then a negative number is marked. Word choice has the potential of biasing respondents. This is not widely used as it is thought to be confusing to respondents.

Mathematically Derived Scale

A scale in which researchers infer respondents answers mathematically as in the case of multi dimensional scaling and conjoint analysis.