Customer Survey Template

Does your customer survey have "survivor bias"? I'm betting it does. Why? Because when most survey designers create business questionnaires or client satisfaction surveys we only collect feedback from individuals who are still customers. What about lost business? Why aren't those customers who left asked to complete your client feedback form? You better believe they have feedback.

In her post at the Dimensional Research blog, Customer Satisfaction Surveys: Avoid "Survivor Bias", Diane Hagglund defines "Survivor Bias" as drawing conclusions only from data that is available or convenient and thus systematically biasing your results. AKA biasing your survey sample by only asking "happy" customers. They may not be over the moon about your product, but they're at least happy enough with your offering if they're still paying you.

I agree with Diane on this one, it's pretty ridiculous to allow this bias to creep into your customer market research. It's easily avoided considering you should have all the customer data you need to send them the same client survey template. Make sure you're measuring client satisfaction among customers who left you for a competitor as well as those who simply decided not to renew the service (and didn't go with anyone else).

When you begin writing customer survey questions to create client questionnaires or update your annual template for a client satisfaction survey make sure you think about your former customers. If you don't know who they are, this is a good time to find out. Thank goodness for internet research software and customer insight solutions to make the act of surveying clients a little easier.

Developing the right survey questions when writing a satisfaction survey for clients can be a challenge. There are many client survey templates available that include essential customer and client satisfaction survey questions.

When you begin writing survey questions for your online survey questionnaire, be sure not to forget this important client satisfaction survey example question:


This example client satisfaction survey question also works well for other customer and consumer surveys. That may seem obvious, but it's often a forgotten question. You should also consider asking employees if they would recommend your product/service/company. It's a good employee satisfaction survey example question because no matter what else they say in the survey, if they wouldn't recommend you, then they're not as satisfied as they should be. As we've mentioned before, unsatisfied employees are not going to provide customers with great experiences either.

It's been awhile since we've provided any customer survey templates or customer satisfaction survey example questions. Here are some sample survey questions from an online customer satisfaction questionnaire:
Now, you can't see behind the scene's of this survey so I want to point out what I've spent a lot of time talking about this week: using data you already have in conjunction with pipe question logic to personalize the respondent experience. Every place Gadget A appears in the survey is intended to be pipe logic from a question I already know the answer to: what product do you use? In my opinion, it makes your organization look much smarter to the respondent because each question doesn't say something to the effect of "our products and/or services."

I was looking through a customer survey template the other day and the first question was "Which of these products do you use?" The options were Product A, Product B, Product X and Product Y. Umm, hello? The point of a customer questionnaire is that you're surveying customers, which means you should already know what product survey respondents bought. Now if you're a B2C organization that distributes products through retail stores, this statement might be a little unfair since a consumer can go into any Target and purchase your product. But for now, let's assume you don't have this channel for product distribution.

Why are you making your business survey longer instead of shorter? You already know the answer, put this information in the contact record. Since you have the data, I would even recommend including the question, hiding it and importing the answers to this question for respondents before sending out any email marketing soliciting survey responses. This way, you can utilized online survey tool features like Pipe Logic. Using Pipe Question Logic allows you to personalize the respondent experience and keep them more engaged. Customer survey best practices tell us more engaged respondents are less likely to abandon your survey, aka increase your response rates.

What other common questions could you eliminate during customer research studies because you already have the data somewhere in your organization?

Our library of templates has been steadily growing based on the feedback we receive from our own clients. Cvent provides over 110 survey templates, ready-to-use questionnaires and feedback forms for clients to effectively get started asking the right questions.

Customer survey templates are some of the most popular. Below is one of our most frequently used:

Customer Survey Template