Guest Blogger: Erica England is the Marketing Communications Manager for GuildQuality, the leading customer satisfaction surveying company for remodelers, home improvement contractors, and home builders. Supported by comprehensive reporting and marketing tools, GuildQuality helps its members promote their quality to stand out in a competitive market. For more information, visit www.guildquality.com.
3 Ways Surveying Your Clients Can Add Value to Your Business
While surveys aren’t a new concept for companies, if executed correctly they can deliver significant gains for your customer relationships. Think about it, your client may not feel comfortable bringing up any constructive criticism or concerns unless they have a forum to do so. Chances are if your customers aren’t sharing their concerns with you, they are sharing them elsewhere. Avoid this scenario altogether and make the first move to open up the door to communication with your customers. If you’re thinking about introducing surveying into your company’s process, here are three ways it can add value.
1: Achieves Honest Assessments from Clients
In order to get the most out of your customer surveys, your client needs to feel as though they can be open and honest about their likes and dislikes regarding their project. The only way to ensure your customers are being 100% candid is to take yourself out of the equation and allow a third-party customer satisfaction surveying company to step in. The authentic commentary you’ll receive can help pinpoint your company’s strengths and weaknesses.
2: Measures Performance and Satisfaction
Once you have your survey process in place, it’s time to analyze what your clients are saying about their experience. Many companies calculate their net promoter score (NPS) to measure satisfaction and brand loyalty. The core of NPS is the likely to recommend score. Within GuildQuality’s surveys, a similar likely to recommend question is asked and measured on a 0 to 4 scale.
The satisfaction metric that most of our members use is the percentage of 4′s received, or, in some cases, the percentage of 3′s and 4′s. They focus on the likely to recommend question, but also zone in on other questions that are important to their business or are problems they need to address.
While surveying itself is important, it’s what you do with the feedback that can impact your business the most. Many of our members review each survey response together as a team at weekly meetings. This helps them to boost morale and create team engagement, as well as, develop a culture of customer focused employees.
3: Identifies Brand Ambassadors
Surveying clients also allows you to determine who your biggest fans are. Now you should leverage those relationships and empower your evangelical customers to promote their experience with your company. Think of these clients as your brand ambassadors. Equip them with your company’s business cards, web address, and especially social media links to share with their family, friends and neighbors. Homeowners are willing to give quality referrals for companies they appreciate.
The best remodelers and home improvement professionals understand the importance every customer’s experience has on the growth and reputation of their company. They survey customers in order to stay on point with their company’s delivery of service excellence. If you are interested in more tips for strengthening relationships with your customers download our free white paper, Guidebook to Nurturing and Leveraging Customer Relationships.
