Customer Service Questionnaire

Rarely are we asked the question, What is a survey? Typically questions follow the path of, Why do I need a survey program? What am I going to get out of conducting online web surveys to collect customer feedback? Or How do I get started measuring employee satisfaction with online questionnaire templates?

However, sometimes it's good to define market research and what it means, and answer the rarely asked question, What is a survey?

Market Research Definition (mahr-kit-ree-surch)
The gathering and studying of data relating to consumer preferences, purchasing power, etc., especially prior to introducing a product on the market.

Survey Definition (ser-vey)
Collect quantitative information about items in a population. Surveys of human populations and institutions are common in political polling and government, health, social science and marketing research.

Chances are though, you're still wondering about those other questions. These posts may help you answer those ever burning questions about why you should create and design surveys.

Cvent offers a variety of Pre-Designed Survey Templates you can choose from for your first online web survey. These internet survey templates contain default questions, email, welcome and thank you text which you can utilize when designing a questionnaire. You can also choose from over 50 different graphical templates to suit the look and feel of your survey forms. Here’s a list of the different pre-created survey templates that you can use to build the base of your survey:


Besides this vast list of pre-designed questionnaires and graphical survey templates, Cvent also offers you a Question Library, which is filled with Customer Service, Demographics, Event, HR/Training, Marketing/Sales questions that you can utilize in your survey.

So! Go ahead and Sign up for an online web survey free trial account now and enjoy these á-la-carte features absolutely free.

Completing a study is just the first step in the market research process. A good researcher knows there is plenty of work left to be done analyzing survey data and taking action on survey results.

Stay in touch with the client and schedule presentations of the research. If you have a client contact assigned to the project, go over the preliminary survey data to see what key findings they feel are the most important to share. Create presentations around these key findings. You can also create separate market survey reports for different groups within the same company.

For example, if you have just completed a large product survey that includes feedback on customer satisfaction, the client may want a presentation simply on customer feedback for their customer service team.

A good researcher also has an eye for finding problems. If you notice an area for improvement in the course of your market research analysis, propose a solution to that problem for the client. Take this market research survey example, customers complain about being on hold too long when calling customer service. You could propose several ideas from hiring more staff to setting time goals for staff to talk to customers.

Even though the client may not agree with your solution ideas, ignoring problems you identify through the research is a bad idea. The client is paying you to compile and analyze research data, and they will likely appreciate all your efforts even if the information does not fit in with their current business plan.

This week I've shared what different colors mean and how they can effect people. The neutral color group is the last of the three groups, cool and warm colors being the other two.

Neutral Colors are good background colors because they unify diverse color palettes. When neutral colors are paired with warm or cool colors, they allow the focus to be on the other color (whether it's warm or cool). They also serve to tone down the intensity of the other color. As I've mentioned in the other two posts, neutral colors do have attributes of warm and cool colors. Blacks, browns, tans, golds and beige are considered warm. Cool neutral colors include white, ivory, silver and gray. As you might guess though, these attributes are much more subtle than those of reds (the hottest color) and blue (the coolest).

	Black - As we've discussed with other colors, black can have contradicting meanings. While black is conservative, conventional and serious it can also be sophisticated, mysterious and sexy. Black, like many of the neutral colors, match almost every color. The colors black doesn't match well with is other very dark colors.
	White - White represents purity, cleanliness and innocence. Like black, white goes well with most colors. Keep in mind that too much bright white can cause some people headaches and be a bit "blinding." For the most part, the colors paired with white, no matter the proportions, are often the ones that pass on meanings in your survey design.
	Gray - This is a neutral color, but it also has cool elements and rarely evokes strong emotions. Dark, charcoal grays show strength and mystery, similar to black. Gray is a sophisticated color, without the negative connotations of black. Grays are good background colors because they're so neutral. You can swap a light gray for white, or a darker gray for black.
	Silver - Silver can be cool like a gray, but it can also be livelier than a gray. Silver is often associated with being sleek and modern and imparts an ornate feel. Silver is a cool metal and lack the warm that gold has. When you use silver, it can give an earthy, natural, or sleek and elegant feel.
	Brown - Earthy. Wholesome. Dependable. Brown is a warm color that can be associated with all of these things, as well as being considered steadfast, simple and friendly. Not sure that brown represents dependability? What about UPS? They've built their whole brand around brown's dependability. Browns, taupes, beiges and creams all are excellent background colors because they make the other colors appear richer and brighter.
	Beige - Like a chameleon, beige takes on the attributes of the colors that accompanies it. However, on it's own, beige is a calm background color. The reason beige can behave like a warm or cool color is because it has the warmth of a brown and the coolness of white.

If you're using the Cvent Web Surveys software application, you'll notice all our pre-created survey templates take into account how colors interact with each other. So next time you're working on a world class customer service survey or creating web polls, check out the graphical survey templates in your online survey account.

I got an email today from Smarter Travel announcing the winners of their 2009 Readers' Choice Awards. Notice anything interesting?

Most survey poll creators will agree that while respondents always prefer to have choices explained clearly in words and phrases, numbers are much easier and far more effective when drawing inferences from the data collected. Take this typical sample customer service satisfaction survey question:


The client satisfaction survey sample question above from a measuring customer service sample survey looks much better by listing the choices as "Very Satisfied/Dissatisfied" as opposed to asking respondents to check one of the numbers between 1-5.


However, when the survey data collection is complete and it's time for data analysis and running survey reports, many survey administrators are left scratching their heads. What analysis do they draw from the individual number and percentage of respondents listed as "Neither Satisfied nor Dissatisfied", how to they compare these percentages to last year’s survey on a category by category basis and still draw an overall inference? How do they know the percentage increase in the level of satisfaction? Is it better to have a large number of people fall into the neutral category?

The answer to all these questions is the same – Export Values. The ultimate tool for anyone looking to analyze the data they have collected. Using Export Values the survey builder can assign a number (or a different word or phrase if you like) to answers as well as questions in their survey! In other words, instead of going through the never-ending text of questions and answers trying to find some semblance of meaning in the data, the questions in your report could be listed as CS1, CS2, CS3, etc. and the answers as 1,2,3,4 and 5 for each question. After exporting the Expanded Answer Details for All Respondents (the survey report with Export Values) to Excel, you can even use these numbers to calculate a mean or average – how much easier would it be for the decision makers in your organization to see the response to the above question summarized into a single number:


A case in point is our survey clients who go a step further and used this feature to export just such a report to Excel and then analyze it using SPSS and other survey research analysis software. For those of you who are already drooling over the prospect of generating such accurate feedback for your organization, export values are pre-included in your Cvent Web Surveys Professional or Enterprise account. Go on, generate that perfect report – you can thank me later.

Customer care and client service novices (and professionals) often wonder: What is the best survey formula to ensure customers have the ability to share their satisfaction, concerns, evaluations, etc. of their company?

My customer service suggestion: Whenever your customer care employees speak to a new client, make sure they make that client aware that your company does quarterly (bi-annual, annual, etc.) customer satisfaction surveys, as well as surveys pertaining to satisfaction of other aspects of your company, events, product enhancements, new marketing initiatives, etc.  Let them know that data is benchmarked and used for important decisions pertaining to customer initiatives. Validate that the customer information is being assessed and acted upon.

Do you want higher response rates? Do you want data that is useful from your customers? Set the stage early with your customer service team, and your customers WILL REMEMBER to give you feedback!

Don't be frustrated with survey data after the fact. Deal with client expectations up front so your customers give you data time and time again.

Have a question? We're here to help! Here at Cvent we're always trying to help people improve their survey projects. Whether you're trying to write new employee feedback survey questions, create a customer service performance reviews or simply get a better understanding of how our online survey research software and enterprise feedback management solution works, we're happy to answer your questions!

To make it easy to get all your survey questions answered, we've added a chat to our blog. Someone will be happy to answer your questions during normal business hours (9am - 6pm ET). So go ahead, click to chat and ask our experts your questions about employee feedback software, data collection methods, customer survey questions, or any other survey questionnaire related question!

Although question order effects are believed to be stronger for interviews than for online research surveys, it is still important to take a look at your market survey format and how the questions are ordered throughout your survey questionnaire.  By following the general guidelines listed below, you can reduce possible order effects and response bias from your customer survey samples.

Start broad, then get more specific.  Ask your customers or respondents general questions about your organization and the concepts you are interested in first, then get down to the more detailed questions you want them to answer (such as those about individual products, specific preferences and how to improve customer service).

Ideally, you’d like to find out if the order of your questions can induce biases before you send it to your entire survey population.  Use online survey software that allows you to randomize parts of your online survey, and compare the results with those from predefined orders.  This is an excellent way to pretest your survey questionnaire for possible order effects.

Devote some time and effort to making your survey “flow.”  You want the overall survey instrument to be cohesive, not disjointed or seemingly all over the place.  A big part of allowing for a logical flow throughout a survey comes from writing smooth transitions.  Let your respondents know that you want them to change gears.

Ask demographic questions at the end of your survey.

If you are asking sensitive questions (about topics like income, personal behaviors, etc.) try to place these toward the latter parts of your survey as well.  That way you get at least partial completions in the event that respondents change their mind and exit your survey before full completion.

Every organization should ask themselves What is good customer service? and create their own definition for good customer service based on the answer they come up with. Giving customers the opportunity to provide feedback on their customer experience is one way to improve customer service quality, but only if the customer feedback gets back to the employees. Lots of organizations use customer service surveys to measure customer experiences and customer loyalty. What separates the organizations with mediocre customer service from the organizations with excellent customer service is sharing the feedback from the customer loyalty surveys with the employees. Seems pretty straight forward, right?

I suggest you take it a step further, however. While sharing the aggregate results of customer feedback surveys with front-line employees is important, you can use these customer surveys as assessments of employee performance or staff evaluations. If you're not already using customer surveys to support this type of employee performance feedback, here are some steps from the CRMBuyer to make this type of process possible:

• Move from random survey sampling to an attempted census. Random survey samples are great when you're just trying to get an overall sense of customer satisfaction rates. However, if you're trying to collect feedback to figure out how to improve employee performance, a random sample is unlikely to provide enough data for each employee. Like with all other types of surveys, not everyone you send personalized survey invitations to will participate, but you will likely get enough responses to support the employee assessments.

• Develop new employee reports. To improve workforce performance, organizations can't continue to provide infrequent high-level survey reports. Instead, employees should get to see weekly reports. Using standardized reports that compare the employee to the overall average and to their colleagues as a group have the most impact.

• Develop new management reports. Like with how employees see the customer feedback reports needs to change with this strategy, management reports do too. Managers should be able to see responses by employees so they can take appropriate action. Managers will have different opinions on how much information should be shared with their staff; some will want to share every customer comment from the employee performance evaluation form, others wont want to share individual survey results.

• Develop HR guidelines for the use of these employee reports. The HR department should be deeply involved in the creation of these HR employee appraisal forms and employee survey reports. If an employee constantly receives negative customer feedback, the organization may choose to terminate their employment so it helps to keep HR in the loop. However, that shouldn't be the goal of this type of customer survey program. The survey feedback should be used to improve employee job performance and mentor them. With the help of customer service assessment surveys and employee performance review forms organizations can figure out how to improve customer service quality.

As is the case with validity, there are multiple aspects of reliability in survey research.  In general though, while validity refers to accuracy in question design, reliability refers to the consistency of your results (i.e. the probability of producing the same results after repeated measurements). 

One way to easily conceptualize reliability is to consider it as another word for precision.  Let’s use archery as an example: if you shoot ten arrows at the target and they all hit the same area, your shots can be said to be reliable or precise. 

You can test for and estimate the reliability of your survey questions in a variety of ways.  You could use a test-retest design, where you use the same questionnaire more than once to see if the results remain consistent.  You could also send your feedback form to different survey samples (consisting of similar respondents) and then compare your results for any fluctuations.  Also, if you create a set of customer service questions designed to provide you with a composite scale, you would want the individual questions to produce similar results if they are intended to measure a single concept (an overall customer service scale, for example). 

It is also important to understand the relationship between reliability and validity; results can be reliable without being valid.  If we use our archery example, the shots are reliable, but if they aren’t near the bullseye (an undesirable outcome!) they cannot be said to be valid.  Reliability is necessary for validity, but it is not sufficient alone.  You want to accomplish both objectives: shots that land near the bullseye consistently.  By creating reliable, valid questions for attitude surveys, online market research, employee reviews or public opinion polls, you can be confident that your results are not due to chance.

If there's one thing that can be frustrating about building surveys online, it's putting together the appropriate questions and responses that will give you the survey data you're looking for.  Furthermore, manually inputting questions you re-use in different surveys can be tedious at best.  But you don't have to continue this repetitive task.

Cvent's feedback management solution comes equipped with both question and response libraries designed specifically to save you time and energy when building out your surveys.  Once you've crafted that perfect question or set of answer choices, simply save them to your libraries for future use.  Take it one step further and categorize them so you can find them quickly and easily.

In addition, Cvent's online web survey system provides standard questions in multiple categories, including Customer Service, Demographics, Marketing and Sales, HR, and Training.  Standard responses range from demographic questions, income levels, frequency and survey rating scales.

Here's my plea: Don't get bogged down in adding the same questions and responses over and over again.  Utilize robust question and response libraries in your survey software tools to springboard your thinking and streamline your survey creation processes.

Survey writers from various industries conduct surveys using the Cvent Web Surveys software tool. One of the most common industries is customer service, where the survey creator is trying to make sure their customers are happy with their products and services. Customer service surveys are used to ensure the quality standards of customers satisfaction.

When the Cvent clients conduct a customer satisfaction survey, they wait for the survey responses to be completed before running reports to see how respondents feel about their offerings. What about the respondents who were dissatisfied with the product or service and want to be contacted immediately?

Email alerts are one of the most useful features that survey designers can use to identify and then take action, where appropriate, when respondents say they are unsatisfied with the service or product. Email alerts provide the option for the person creating the survey to set alerts on questions, this can be a question where the survey respondents are asked about their satisfaction level with the organization's offering.

Take this example customer satisfaction question: "How satisfied are you with the quality of the product?” If emails alerts were set up, an email will go out to the specified people letting them know a customer selected the survey question option of “Dissatisfied."

When someone answers the question and says “Dissatisfied” an email will be sent to the people who were added to the email alert. In some cases, it may be the same person who created the survey, in others, it may be the sales person who owns the territory the respondent is located in or even the customer service manager. The employee or group of employees can quickly get in touch with the customer to inquire more about their experience. Why do organizations want to do this? Because closing the feedback loop can make the respondent feel valued and in some cases move them to the satisfied customer column.

The email alert function doesn't only work on the question level, you can also use email alerts on the survey level and receive an email anytime someone completes the online web questionnaire, or you can set email alerts based on respondent scores. If you're using scoring in your survey questionnaire, you can set alerts to be sent if a respondent falls above or below the specified score. While we used the example of customer satisfaction questionnaires to explain the value of email alerts, they can also be used with employment performance review forms or market survey questions or other types of web survey research.

Today we're continuing our count down of our top five posts. Today's theme? You guessed it customer, client and consumer surveys.

• Don't Just Conduct Customer Satisfaction Surveys, Also Collect User Satisfaction Feedback: In this post, we talk about how the purchaser and the user are not always the same person. So when you review your customer feedback procedures and customer survey best practices, make sure you consider who you're surveying: the purchaser, the user or both.

• Customer Service Feedback To Increase Customer Loyalty: Customers have higher standards for organizations than 20 years ago. We all want more, more more! In this post, we talk about the importance of good customer service and how to boost your customer service satisfaction survey scores.

• What's Your Customer Satisfaction Score? This post debunks the myth that customer service is the defining factor in client satisfaction. Customers switch to competitors, become repeat customers, and recommend products and services based on their overall satisfaction experience, not just customer service experiences.

• Classify Customers: Are They Secure, Satisfied/Favorable, Vulnerable Or Dissatisfied? Typically, client survey best practices say there are four distinct customer satisfaction categories: secure, satisfied, vulnerable and dissatisfied. It's important to classify customers into these groups and uncover similarities in each group. Why? Because it will help you identify new revenue opportunities.

• Customer Reviews Matter: 6 Reasons Why: It's common knowledge that customer and consumer reviews have become an important part of the decision making process. As the title suggests, the post takes a deeper look at why reviews are more important than we think they are.

What's in your business research toolbox? Surveys are one of the most popular business research methods. With the popularity and wide spread availability of the internet, online survey suites have made it easy to create online polls to survey company employees, develop help desk surveys to identify ideas for improving customer service or conduct market intelligence surveys to gain a better understanding of your business environment.

You may be thinking, Why do I need to invest in an enterprise survey solution to conduct business research or surveys? It's a fair question, but if you go with a survey research tool without enterprise survey software features you're going to have a hard time limiting user permissions, separating your customer service survey templates from your work performance evaluation forms from your market survey samples, or managing your contact database from one system.

All businesses should have a survey program in place for various forms of research. Sometimes people think surveys limit their fact finding abilities, and they may not be able to identify underlying problems. My question is, then why are you only using quantitative surveys? Surveys aren't the only business research method you have in your toolbox. There are still focus groups, employee ideas, social media conversations and good ol' fashioned internet searches.

When it comes to losing weight or saving more money, one of the most daunting aspects is simply wrapping your head around where to start. With hundreds of books and celebrity “experts,” it’s easy to feel overwhelmed before you even begin.

Administering, writing and creating survey questionnaires is no different. Ask questions, send them out and let everybody respond? Sounds easy, right? Not always. What survey questions do you ask? How do you know what’s important to ask versus what’s going to produce a meaningless data point?

Just as people turn to financial advisers and personal trainers, Cvent's Web Survey software tool offers more than 170 expertly crafted survey questions and survey templates to help you overcome the inertia associated with getting the ball rolling on your next survey research projects. Our question library helps users create customer service satisfaction survey forms, write employee questionnaires or staff attitude surveys, design marketing survey templates, and more.

From this extensive library of questions, we have created 20 fully built survey templates including customer satisfaction survey templates, training evaluation samples and employee exit survey templates.

Although Cvent won’t take those first steps on the treadmill for you or stash those first few dollars in your proverbial piggy bank, we are able to leverage our extensive experience to help you initiate your first survey project with pre-built survey templates.

Technology is bound to have its hiccups. The more we rely on the internet and computers, the more risk we take in ensuring the safety of our data. Therefore, when we encounter an error that threatens to undo our work or jeopardize the progress we so diligently worked to preserve, the only natural reaction is to PANIC. It must be a bug! It must be an error I made during the survey creation process!

These are familiar phrases and the proverbial panicked tone resonates with us here on the Cvent Web Surveys Client Services team. We've been there too. We've created online surveys, sent email invitations to our CEO and senior management team, and been immediately met with email inquiries asking why they were getting an error message or why they could not access the survey.

The first thing we do: Breathe. Take a deep breath and calm yourself before you jump into the survey application to see where you went wrong. Because, and this may go against everything we learn in customer service, sometimes it is a survey respondent error. If 200 people in your survey sample, or even 20, have completed the web survey questionnaire sans issues, the latter is most likely the culprit. There are a few common problems that can initiate on the respondents side:

1. Using a browser that does not support the Cvent's Web Survey software tool. AOL, for example, will allow survey respondents to begin the survey, but respondents often run into trouble trying to respond to survey questions. So when getting emails from your sample list about an error, ask what browser they are using. The most effective browser to use with our online survey software application is Internet Explorer. Other browsers, such as Mozilla or Safari, still work but that's why it's important to test your survey before launching.

2. Cookies. They are delicious, they seem to draw you to them and, once consumed, will follow you forever, hence the lucrative personal fitness industry. Computer cookies act much in the same manner. They are small tags that are placed on your computer once you visit a website. They are great because they allow the website to recognize you if, and when, you return. They will keep your information stored while browsing through the website, even if you click to another page within it. They are dangers in that, similarly to that of a chocolate chip cookie, they follow you.

A permanent cookie will be stored on your computer unless manually deleted. They are responsible for that eerie sidebar advertising that coincidentally relates 100% to the site you just visited or the email clicked. So, what is the moral of this analogy? Ask your respondent to clear those cookies; they can sometimes have a way of interfering with the survey.Here are directions to clear a cookie in Internet Explorer (other browsers have similar steps):
It seems hard to remember sometimes that not all the errors respondents see are your fault. Don't assume they are and panic. Instead, take a deep breath and ask some questions. You may find it's just user error.

Yesterday, Seth Godin shared an interesting post with us, Win the fight, lose the customer. Seth reminds us we can't prove we're right and acknowledge the customer is upset at the same time.

Seth has a point. When it comes to customer service, you shouldn't be trying to show an unhappy customer why they're wrong. It's only going to cause more frustration and unhappiness. Take this real-life customer service example:


So instead of trying to prove a customer wrong, a better approach is to try to understand what happened to cause the customer to be unhappy in the first place. Listen and understand the problem instead of listening for buzz words and jumping to conclusions - or trying to show them why they're wrong. Think to yourself, was there a miscommunication between the organization and customer? Was the customer met with a problem the product couldn't solve? Don't just scrape the surface. Often times what customers are complaining about is a symptom of a bigger problem.

Then, of course, it's always a good practice to put a survey program in place to see how your customer service team is doing. Conducting customer service surveys periodically to collect customer feedback will help you continue to make customers a focus and improve training methods.

How do you feel about social media and business? What about your executives, marketing, human resources and customer service departments? A recent study published through eMarketer found more than eight in 10 management, marketing and HR executives said benefits of social media include relationship and brand building. According to eMarketer, execs also view social media as a good tool for recruitment and customer service. 46% of survey respondents believe social media enhances employee morale.

It's great to see opinion survey results showing the attitude towards social media is changing. If you follow this blog, you know I'm a believer in social media and it's ability to provide real value to organizations.

Not all is bright and shiny in eMarketer's survey report, however. Executives still have their fears about social media strategies. More than half of the survey respondents who did not use social media said they didn't know enough. In addition to a lack of understanding, execs worry about confidentiality and security problems, as well as decreased employee productivity. The good news is, I think these concerns will continue to shift in future attitude surveys. In fact, we've already seen a shift since Feburary 2009.

Survey reports from a global survey conducted by a security software company in February showed 50%-60% of companies surveyed blocked social networking sites, and 62.8% of managers polled thought employees shared too much on social networks. Between the February and July survey results, we've already seen a shift. Not a huge shift, but there is a shift happening. Instead of simply ruling out social media, execs are beginning to admit there may be value they just don't know enough about it.

If you're a social media expert, I'm thinking you have your work cut out for you. There is a continued need for information about social media and their potential value to be explained to executives.

Most of us have experienced at least one customer support call that has made us grind our teeth and lowered our overall feeling of customer satisfaction. A lot of the time the extra wait time, the transfers, the holds have to do with the misuse of technology. It may be a matter of the systems your support team are using need an update, or perhaps your team is not fully trained and are misusing the systems. Either way, it's time you start looking into the issue. You'll find positive customer experiences are much more valuable than the costs associated with upgrades and additional training.

Here are a few questions you should be looking to answer:


You can keep track of these metrics various ways, using 360 survey software, with spreadsheets or the old fashion paper-and-pencil method. It doesn't matter how you track them, as long as you're identifying hold ups causing customer and client satisfaction ratings to fall - and then taking action to improve their experiences.