How Effective are You? Administer a Survey to Your Client To Find Out

 A standard sample client satisfaction survey contains a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions that solicits feedback from the client regarding their interactions and experiences with the company. A free client satisfaction survey has been provided for your download in the Bright Hub Media Gallery. This is a generic questionnaire. Feel free to modify this questionnaire to suit your business and customer.

The first section of the generic client satisfaction survey requires the client to rate specific service-related questions as “excellent,” “good,” “average,” “below Average,” or “poor” with comments to substantiate the ratings.

• The “overall quality of the product or deliverables” captures the extent of client’s satisfaction with the output. The output could be a product, a service rendered, some information provided, or anything else depending on the business. Guide the client to consider factors such as ease of use or comprehension, overall appearance of product, robustness of the product or the efficiency of the process, and other apparent factors.

• The “technical competence of the team” is relevant when the client has a long relationship with the company, such as when the company is developing software or designing a product. Capture the client’s perception on the competence of the people working for the client in technical matters, independent of soft skills such as interpersonal behavior or communication skills, unless such skills themselves constitute the core technical skills, such as when performing technical support role for the client

• “Professionalism in handling requests” tries to ascertain the extent of client’s satisfaction with the performance of the company in non-technical issues. The issues under consideration include communication skills, explaining things clearly to client, having good systems and procedures in place, promptness, and similar factors.“Responsiveness in attending to your queries” is an important sub-set of professionalism, and tries to measure client perception on the depth in which the team tried to engage the customer and valued patronage.

• “Timeliness in delivery” directly measures whether the client thinks the deadlines for the deliverables, or the timelines in the project schedule were met.

• The "extent to which the deliverable matches specifications” directly measures whether the client believed the company fulfilled initial promises

• The “extent to which the deliverables meet requirements” asks the client to determine the utility of the product or service to the wider business community in general with an eye to the future potential and marketing of a similar service

Descriptive questions in the sample client satisfaction surveys seek to gain valuable insights about the company from the customer perspective, with no right or wrong answers.

• What promoted you to select us? This question helps in highlight the USPs in the marketing plan, or which component of the marketing exercise attracted the customer.

• Do the reasons that prompted you to select us still hold? This question helps determine the extent to which the company lives up to its claims.

• Have you found any thing positive in our services that you did not expect when you initially selected us? This sheds light on some hidden or undiscovered USP, which the business possesses but may not be aware.

• What can we do to improve our services further? This is a direct question aimed at understanding what clients expect and the company cannot deliver, with a view to improving service.

• How would you compare our services with any other vendor you deal with? This helps in benchmarking performance against that of competitors.

• The questions "Would you come back to us for future requirements?” and “Would you recommend our service to others?” try to capture the depth of client satisfaction, and further insights from the client.

• How do you rate us in terms of value-for-money? This asks the client to rate service in relative to the cost for the services. Competitors may offer the similar product or service for lesser costs, but such product or service might come with lower quality or functionality.

Adding an option for general comments is a good practice in any survey. Very often, respondents have some valuable tips or feedback that the survey creator may have forgotten to ask about or for which there would not be a place to fit it into the answers of any of the asked questions.

1. CAPTEC. “Customer Satisfaction Survey.”http://www.captec.co.uk/data/pdfs/Customer_Satisfaction_Questionnaire.pdf. Retrieved May 01, 2011.
2. eSurveys Pro. “Customer Satisfaction Surveys.”http://www.esurveyspro.com/customer-statisfaction-surveys.aspx. Retrieved May 01, 2011.

Image Credit: freedigitalphotos.net/Jeroen van Oostrom