Customer Satisfaction Sample Error #1: Non-Response Bias

Just because you openly invite all customers to take your survey does not mean that your survey has been randomized. And the difference between an open invite and randomized responses is critical because satisfied customers are more likely than neutral or dissatisfied customers to complete your survey. Similarly, you are more apt to hear from repeat customers than one-time customers, yet it may be more important to hear from customers who don't return. Here's how you can broaden representation in your customer satisfaction surveys:

• Start by making sure your customer database is divided into categories. For example, you might include current most-profitable customers, current less profitable customers, lapsed customers, long-gone customers, etc.
• For each customer category, determine how many customers you need to survey to achieve a reasonable confidence interval and error rate. Then randomly select customers from each category you want to test.
• Proactively contact the customers you selected in the above step. You may need to use an incentive to get customers to take your survey. Test different types of incentives, but make sure they are not directly related to your products or services because then only people still interested in your product will be motivated to answer your survey.

Customer Satisfaction Sample Error #2: The Medium Controls the Audience

Are you offering your customer satisfaction survey online? Through an IVR? In the Mail? Through Email? Via Mobile? How you provide your customer satisfaction survey has a huge impact on who takes it. Here are a few ways to increase your customer satisfaction survey response rate:

• Tell customers you have a short survey and then keep good on the promise.
• In all likelihood, your survey is web-based; this provides you with lots of delivery options. Set up your customer satisfaction survey so that customers can dial an 800 number, visit a URL or use their mobile to text their answers. The more options, the more respondents you’ll get.
• Be willing to take survey responses in the way that customers want to give them. For example, if you email your customers with a link to your survey, tell customers that if they prefer, they can reply to the invitation with what they thought about their experience. Or, ask if they would like to be called so that someone can take down their comments. Your creative customers may resist multiple choice questions and the usual 'transactional' survey style, so encourage your customers to give their two cents regardless of how they want to provide their answers.