Increase the Quality of Your Products and Your Customer Satisfaction with Customer Surveys

1. What is understood by customer survey?
2. Why are customer surveys important in the B2B sector?
3. Customer satisfaction.
4. Qualitative Methods
5. Customer-Insights-Research (MaFo)
6. Customer-Insights-Research
7. Competent valuation.
8. Data protection declaration
9. Kick-off
10. Multiple contact persons.
11. In order to get the most out of your surveys, you should check the quality of the collected data and clean up the data set with the integrated functions of the survey tool:
12. In large assortment of
13. Customer Centricity

What is understood by customer survey?

• Targeted, well-considered questions, to get the most out of valuable contacts.
• A scientifically correct approach, to avoid survey errors and minimize the risk of fatal misconceptions.
• A standardized process of the survey, so that the results can be compared.
• A larger number of respondents, so that the findings can be generalized.

• Not a sales talk. It must not and should not be linked with sales intentions.
• Not customer service. It is not about discussing and solving individual problems (although this can be a side effect)
• Not a customer profile survey. The aim is not to enrich the CRM with profile information. (There are other methods for this.)

Why are customer surveys important in the B2B sector?

Customer surveys are an important additional communication channel

• Key account managers do not discuss detailed questions, but focus on the big strategic topics.
• The sales staff focuses on acquiring new customers and rarely talks to existing customers. Their questions are often perceived by customers as mere sales tactics and not as genuine interest.
• Support only deals with the problems of the customers and knows nothing about their positive experiences, the strengths of the brand and the benefits of the products.
• Customer service has little time (and competence) for talks that go beyond operational matters.

Customer surveys use insider knowledge

Customer surveys build trust

• As a surveyed customer, I believe that you really listen and genuinely read and heed my inputs.
• Your questions prove that you are honestly interested.
• When the survey remains guaranteed anonymous, I feel free to voice my honest opinion.
• I recognize your willingness, to constantly improve and serve me even better.
• Sometimes you prove real empathy, by addressing my secret pain points and unspoken wishes.

Summary: The most important arguments for B2B customer surveys

• … signal interest in your customers
• … improve empathy in your organization, i.e. your customer focus
• … are a very effective source of information (gain many insights with little effort)
• … provide first-hand information (Zero Party Data)
• … help your organization to avoid operational blindness– strengthen trust
• in you from your clientele What goals do customer surveys pursue?Customer surveys serve a variety of goals. Here are the most common objectives that companies mention when they conduct surveys:

Customer satisfaction.

• customer loyalty.Empathy. Better understand customer needs, which facilitates the design of products and services
• Product optimization. Optimize existing products / services
• Discovering market gaps. Identify new business opportunities and uncover unmet needs
• Inspiration. Receive ideas for new products services
• Testing. Agile development with iterative tests
• Advertising. Get inputs for advertising messages, advertising creations and image campaigns.
• Decision aid. Check the relevance and acceptance of products / services, measure customer preferences and priorities, to make the best decisions about product range design, communication, pricing, etc.
• What methods of customer survey are there?We must distinguish between qualitative and quantitative methods:

Qualitative Methods

In the B2B sector, the most efficient method is the

Quantitative methods are only worthwhile if you can invite at least 300 customer addresses to the survey. If there are fewer, you should choose a qualitative method.

Customer-Insights-Research (MaFo)

1. Customer-Experience-Surveys(CX)
2. . Systematic satisfaction measurement at all touchpoints, usually with very short standard questionnaires that are automatically played out at certain events (website visit, support contact, etc.).  Customer satisfaction measurements(KuZu)
3. . Standardized surveys at periodic intervals, which measure customer satisfaction. The subject of the survey is not a single touchpoint, but the customer relationship as a whole. Testing(NPD/UX)
4. . Testing of product ideas, new product development (NPD), optimization of existing products and services to improve the user experience (UX).  Example questions for customer surveysBelow are some typical questions for the various customer survey categories:

Customer-Insights-Research

How did you come to our brand? Why did you choose us?

• Use: When, how, where do you regularly use our product / service?
• Benefits: Which needs does the product meet, what does it do for you and your team?
• Evaluation: How do you rate the product in terms of …[insert various criteria and ask with a scale]. Please mention the most important strengths and weaknesses [text field]
• Optimization: Is there something we should improve about our product / our service?
• Image: To what extent do you agree with the following statements about our brand: [insert statements about the brand and ask with a scale]
• etc.Customer-Experience
• Net-Promoter-Score (NPS):

How likely are you to recommend [product] to friends / acquaintances? [Scale 0 to 10]. Evaluation: Grades 9–10 minus grades 0–6 = NPS

• Customer-Effort-Score (CES): Required effort to use a particular touchpoint. Example:
• How strenuous was it for you to get the information you requested from our support? 1= very effortful … 5= completely effortlessImprovement wishes: What do we have to improve so you can give a higher grade?
• etc.
  Customer Satisfaction
• Overall satisfaction:

How satisfied are you overall with [company]? Extremely satisfied / Very satisfied / Satisfied / Less satisfied / Not at all satisfied. => Justifications [text field]

• Detail Evaluation: How satisfied are you with … [inquire about individual areas / services]
• Praise & Critique: What do you like, what less? [Text fields]
• Relevance of Features / Services: How important for you and your team is …[insert features, services etc. and ask with scale]. Tip: Also take a look at the
• Kano model on this topic. etc.Testing
• Understandability:

How easy is it to understand what the product does and how to apply it?

• Implementability: If you had this product, how would you realistically integrate it into your processes / daily work?
• Usefulness: How useful would this product be for you? What would change for you / your team if you could use this product?
• Optimization: What suggestions for improvement do you have?
• etc.What are the advantages and disadvantages of a customer survey?
• What customer surveys bring

Competent valuation.

Good customers are superusers. They have a lot of practice and experience with the use of your products. They have encountered your brand x times, reacted to it, rejoiced in it or even got annoyed about it. Therefore, good customers are masters at assessing, interpreting and explaining your product / service. Use this source of information – it is irreplaceable!

• Usage and benefits. Customers can show what makes your product / service valuable to them, what it is useful for and how it is actually used in everyday life.
• Competitor Info. Most of your customer companies are in contact with several providers. They receive offers, newsletters, sales calls etc. from your competitors and get to know competitor products first hand. They can tell you what your competitor is doing better / worse than you.
• Zero-Party Data. Since
• Third-Party Data is legally restricted, self-collected data (website visits, orders etc.) have become more important. More interesting than passively collected data (First-Party Data) are, however, information that your customers give you directly (and voluntarily!): Zero Party Data. Exchange. Customer surveys are customer communication. They signal to your customers that you take their needs seriously, want to involve them and are interested in their opinions. They give your customers hints on how you think about them and what is currently occupying you. You learn something about them, they something about you – a real exchange.
• Possible risks and side effects of customer surveysNegative influence on the customer relationship.

Again: Customer surveys are customer communication. Good communication strengthens the customer relationship. Poor communication can damage it: Your customers could react irritated, bored, annoyed, amused or offended if the survey is poorly done.

• 0% ROI. If a customer survey does not yield any usable insights, you have achieved nothing with a lot of effort. (That's why good questionnaires are so important.)
• Distorted image of reality. If the wrong customers respond or do not respond because the survey invitation was poorly written, the results will show a distorted picture of reality. (The technical term for this is «
• Representativeness»)Mistakes. If questions are asked or understood incorrectly, you get misleading results. (Researchers call this problem «
• Validity».). The same happens if the data evaluation is handled wrongly. Legal problems. As personalized form of communication, customer survey is subject to strict legal rules. The most important pitfall is the GDPR. More on this in the next section.
• Are customer surveys data protection compliant?Customer surveys are based on data that you have about your customers (e.g. email addresses, names etc.) and partially collect sensitive information. Therefore, the requirements for data protection must be taken very seriously. Here are the most important recommendations:

Data protection declaration

• Anonymization. If possible, you should anonymize the survey. There are various instruments and procedures for this.
• No upload of personal data. Never upload identity features like names, email addresses etc. into the survey tool. (Especially if the survey server is not in Europe.)
• Clean up text fields. If the questionnaire contains text fields, caution is advised: Here, respondents can write things that violate data protection. For example names, e-mail addresses and the like. Before evaluating, you must check answers and eliminate such information.
• Voluntary de-anonymization. Sometimes it makes sense to offer the respondents at the end of the questionnaire to voluntarily give their name and email, so that you can contact them and discuss their feedback in more detail. (Tip: Survey tools offer an automatic email alert, so you will be immediately informed if respondents request you to contact them.)
• How is a customer survey created? A short guideBelow is a short guide for a MaFo customer survey via online survey. This is the most common form of customer surveys. The described process can also be adapted for customer satisfaction surveys and qualitative methods.

Kick-off

1. Preliminary analysis
2. Detailed concept
3. Questionnaire development
4. Survey programming
5. Survey distribution
6. 1. Kick-off
7. The goal of the kick-off phase is to pave the way internally and to get allies on board. The most important steps:

Write a mini-pitch.

• Involve stakeholders. Who should have a say in defining the contents of the survey? From whom do we need inputs so that we don't forget any important topics?
• Define responsibilities. Who makes the final decision about the content? Who takes professional responsibility for the survey? Who is responsible for following CI/CD guidelines? Who provides the customer addresses? etc.
• Coordination. What other activities must the customer survey be coordinated with at all costs? (Examples: newsletter, other surveys, product launches, sales campaigns etc.)
• Budget. What internal and external effort can we afford? Typical external costs concern incentives for respondents, orders for freelancers/agencies and possibly software tools.
• 2. Goal definitionIn the second step, the goals and the topics/contents of the customer survey must be finally defined.

Goals:

• Topics/contents: What do we want to find out from our customers? Organize a workshop with the stakeholders for this or start a small internal survey.
• Decide in the project team about the final topics or contents of the survey. Here you need courage to the gap – you can never consider all topic requests.3. Preliminary analysis
• So that you don't have to reinvent the wheel, you should build on the existing knowledge:

Desk Research.

• Internal interviews. A good source of information are colleagues who deal with customers on a daily basis: Key Account Managers, Sales People, Customer Service Employees etc.
• Qualitative customer interviews. For important or particularly complex customer surveys, a qualitative pre-study is worthwhile. For this, you carry out some qualitative interviews (phone or video call) with selected customers. This helps you to find out which questions are difficult to answer, which aspects you have overlooked so far and how to best design the questionnaire process.
• 4. Detailed conceptWork out the detailed concept («Research Design») for the survey:

Survey Methodology.

• Participant Group. What criteria will be used to select the customers for the survey? (Examples: Minimum one year customer, no cancelled relationships, no employees etc.)
• Target Person. Which role/function in the customer company should answer your survey? (Examples: Managing person, main contact person etc.)
• Languages+Regions. Tip: Pay special attention to survey tools on how external translations can be integrated (multilinguality). You should avoid automatic translations.
• Data protection regulation. Should the survey remain anonymous? If yes, how is anonymity ensured?
• Distribution. By what means will the survey be invited? (Examples: Newsletter, personal mails by your sales, letter with QR code)
• Quantity framework. Number of invitations, estimated response rate, expected number of answers. Rule of thumb for response rates: 10 % is normal; with good customer relationships up to 25 % are possible, with a strong fan base up to 40 % or more.
• Incentivizing. How do we reward those who fill out the questionnaire? Vouchers and raffles are common; the promise to deliver an exclusive summary of interesting results to the participants after the completion of the study is also motivating.
• Timeline. When does the start happen, when do we send a reminder etc. Tip: The bulk of the answers come in the first 3-4 days. A reminder after one week is usual. After a maximum of two weeks it's over.
• 5. Questionnaire developmentThe aim at this stage is to write a good questionnaire with as few iterations as possible. The following procedure has proven its worth in practice:

Outline: Clear sketch of the questionnaire process, yet without detailed formulation of the questions and the answer options.

1. Formulate questionnaire (text document); feedback loops
2. Final approval of the formulated questionnaire by the relevant stakeholders (also approval of translations).
3. Tip:
4. Measure the filling time of the formulated questionnaire as accurately as possible. It should not exceed the maximum duration that was defined in the detailed concept.

Implement questionnaire in tool (usually works with Copy&Paste from the text document)

1. Test thoroughly – Desktop & Mobile, Windows & Mac …
2. Approval by the relevant stakeholders.
3. 7. Survey distribution
4. In addition to the usual survey invitation via

Email

Multiple contact persons.

• Personalization. You should consider information already available in the CRM. Your customers expect this. Good survey tools allow you to upload profile data to survey participants and use it in the survey. (Caution: Take into account data protection! Use running numbers for identification, not names.)
• Incentives. Unlike B2C, cash rewards are unusual. Think about a «thank you» for filling out the survey, which suits your clientele.
• Feedback. B2B customers usually expect feedback after the survey. The easiest way to do this is to send an (automated) email with a thank you and a brief outlook on how things will proceed (incentive, possibly summary).
• How is a customer survey evaluated?1) Data cleaning

In order to get the most out of your surveys, you should check the quality of the collected data and clean up the data set with the integrated functions of the survey tool:

• Identify and filter out unusable answers. Good survey tools help you with sophisticated «quarantine» functions.
• 2) Statistical evaluations
• Most

In large assortment of

Online Survey Software

• , , Alchemer, SurveyMonkey, Questionstar, SoGoSurvey. LamaPollOpen Source: easyfeedbackis free in the Community Edition, but requires expert knowledge to set up demanding surveys.
• If you need a powerful, fully integrated LimeSurveyCX solution
• , then take a look in the category Experience Management Software. Here you will find tools like , Confirmit or . The prices are relatively high. MedalliaLess suitable for customer surveys are form generators like Google Forms, Microsoft Forms, Jotform or Typeform. Here you quickly hit the limits, and creating surveys becomes tedious. QualtricsQualitative Surveys

• Recording function
• Screen sharing
• Private chat messages, so that you can exchange with colleagues without the interviewed people noticing.
• Frequently used solutions are
• ,

• For permanently activated surveys (customer satisfaction, customer experience research etc.)
• Business Intelligence Platforms
• like , , Tableau, Qlik Sense® etc., which aggregate many sources and can display them in real time, are recommended. Microsoft Power BIConclusion SAP Sales CloudCustomer surveys are becoming increasingly important because

Customer Centricity