Customer Surveys – What Do Your Clients Think About You.

Many of my articles have been about educating your customer and creating a great customer journey, however, do you really know what your customers think and feel about your business and their experience.

Why not ask your customers what they think about your business, its services and experience and use this information to improve the customer experience, particularly if you are seeing similar trends in the responses.

Back in the days before the internet, surveys had to be sent via snail mail and then you had to wait for the return mail and manually enter the data from the forms. In today’s technological world, sending out surveys are very simple. You can create surveys using programs such as Mailchimp, Survey Monkey and many CRM programs have the ability to survey customers.

Don’t leave the surveys until the end of the construction. This will leave your customers frustrated at having to think back to the various stages and could even cause a negative bias in answering the questions because you are expecting them to remember back along the whole journey.

Create surveys for each stage of the journey so the experience is fresh in their minds. Approach the survey as if you have done a great job and the feedback will be positive however, if you do receive negative feedback, and you will at times, then this is the signal to contact the customer directly and discuss the feedback with them to understand why and how they didn’t have a great experience. Take this opportunity to rectify the situation for that specific customer but also look into the systems and processes in the business to ensure it does not happen again.

Just as you should be reporting on cost overruns to identify where in the construction issues can be improved, the survey feedback will ensure continuous improvement is implemented into the systems and processes that interact with your customers.

What type of surveys can be created? Well, I’d recommend seven surveys; one that seeks demographic and personal interest information, six surveys covering the six key stages of the journey and a Net Promoter Score type survey that will give you rating scale.

Personal Interest: use this survey to build up a picture of your customers. Look at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to find out the demographic ranges they use so you can benchmark against known data such as age ranges, ethnicity types, religions, and so on. Find out what your customers interests are to see if you are attracting a certain type of customer that has leisure or sporting interests in common. This information can be used to ‘target’ similar markets with you marketing and advertising.

Up to Deposit Stage: use this survey to find out how the customers were treated or responded to your marketing, sales approaches, display homes and any other key parts of your customer journey up to that point.

Deposit to Contract Stage: use this survey to find out how customers found the experience dealing with your team once the deposit was paid and a contract was presented. These two surveys (incl the one above) will shine a light on the sales and marketing team as well as the first stage of customer service and even estimating/design with the time taken to get to contract.

Contract to Site Start: use this survey to understand if there are any hold ups in the system and how the customers are treated while the waiting game is played waiting for approvals and information to be finalised.

Construction Stage: use this survey to find out how the construction team and customer service dealt with the customer while the home was being constructed. This is usually the emotional time when the customer sees the home coming to fruition and also whether their dream is what they thought it was. The construction team are under the spotlight in this survey.

Handover: the final part of the journey can also be the most emotional one and it’s important to receive feedback on this key stage as this is where the good work can come undone or any niggles along the way can be overcome. The ‘handover stage’ is not just one day but the whole process of getting the customer ready for the final day and the communication along the way. This is also the time to ask for testimonials or references if the experience so far has been good to great.

Warranty: the journey is not over until the maintenance has been attended to. This part of the journey can undo all the good work and goodwill gained during the pre-construction and construction and end up with an unhappy customer. Staying in touch, not just for the work, but also to make sure your customers are still your ‘raving fans’.

Net Promoter Score (NPS): and this brings me to getting some measurable feedback that shows how satisfied or unhappy your customers really are. NPS is a way of creating a survey with answers that give the customer the opportunity to rate your business on a scale from 1 to 10. You’ve all seen the ‘Google Reviews’, well this is the same but kept within your own environment for you to publish the results as you see fit. For example, “98% of our customers say they would build with us again. The one customer who said ‘No’ is now working with another builder, so that’s probably ok”. The survey software programs will give you the opportunity to create an NPS style of survey if you wish.

If you don’t know what questions to ask, let The 3C Mentor help you to understand your business better from your customers perspective.

The whole purpose of The 3C Mentor is to help create really great businesses in the residential building industry and delivered by our unique ‘Three Pillars to Your Success’ – Business Coaching, Business Consulting and Business Resources.