Customer feedback surveys

Customer feedback surveys are how your business gains vital information on what your customers think and feel about your brand and products. With RingCentral, it’s easy to create and disseminate different surveys and to generate actionable insights from them.
  • Capture feedback across channels
  • Visualize insights with dashboards
  • Improve agent performance quickly
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In an era where opinions are effortlessly shared across various digital channels, it’s crucial to take the time to listen to the voice of the customer and understand what makes them want to keep doing business with you. Customer feedback surveys are a great way to do this. They’re a direct and honest source of information that answers why loyal customers enjoy their experiences with your company, why others don’t, and what you can do to improve.
With RingCentral as your omnichannel contact center software provider, you can quickly and easily create and disseminate feedback surveys. What’s more, it’s simple to take your customer survey feedback and action the insights to make real improvements to customer experiences.
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What is a customer feedback survey?

Customer feedback surveys are one of the most used market research tools. They’re designed to capture comments, reactions, and suggestions from respondents. This includes both positive responses and negative reviews about a company’s new product usability, service, or customer support.
Traditionally, businesses would collect feedback through paper comment cards or suggestion boxes. Nowadays, organizations have switched to a more digital approach and opt to gather customer feedback in real-time through:
  • Email surveys
  • In-app surveys
  • Website pop-up surveys
  • Phone surveys
As well as different means of supplying surveys, there are also a range of different types. What type of survey is used for customer feedback, depends on the precise goals of your business.

4 Types of customer feedback surveys

In order to effectively collect customer feedback, it’s important to ask the right questions and choose the most suitable template for your demographic. You wouldn’t expect your customers to respond to a snail-mailed 5-page survey or a random robocall, would you? A well-designed questionnaire not only prioritizes the inclusion of easy-to-understand survey questions, but also takes into account the convenience of the people answering it.

Here are four of the most common varieties of customer feedback survey:

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys

CSAT surveys are one of the most used questionnaires in the business world. Survey responses are used as metrics to measure customer sentiment and happiness in relation to brand, product, and customer support experiences. Positive customer satisfaction scores show you what you’re doing right, while negative feedback tells you there’s a problem that needs immediate attention.

Customer satisfaction survey templates typically consist of the following:
  • Questions with Likert scale ratings (e.g., rate from 1 to 5, highly satisfied to highly unsatisfied, or not at all likely to extremely likely)
  • Open-ended questions with follow-ups (e.g., “How would you rate your satisfaction with our product? Please share your comments with us.”)
  • Binary yes/no questions or similar (thumbs up or thumbs down, smiley face or sad face, etc.)

Customer Effort Score (CES) surveys

This survey measures the amount of effort a customer has to exert to be able to get an issue resolved, a question answered, a task completed, or a request fulfilled. It’s believed that customers tend to be more loyal to a product/service that’s easier to use. With CES, businesses can evaluate current processes and optimize them to increase customer loyalty and reduce customer churn.

The types of questions in this kind of survey are usually coupled with rating scales and are designed to gain relevant customer insights. Here are some examples:
  • How easy was your user experience with us?
  • To what extent do you agree with this statement: “My issue was resolved promptly”.
  • Was it easy to find the information you wanted on our website?
  • Were the instructions you received during the onboarding stage easy to understand and follow?

Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys

NPS surveys measure how likely customers are to recommend a product/service to a friend, colleague, or relative. Measuring customer satisfaction levels allow businesses to rank their customer base according to their level of enthusiasm:
  • 0-6: Detractors – Unhappy customers whose opinions can negatively affect your brand
  • 7-8: Passives – Satisfied customers who are vulnerable to competitor swaying
  • 9-10: Promoters – Loyal customers who will continue to buy your products and will serve as ambassadors of your brand.
Because customers prefer a brand recommended by people they trust, NPS is a key KPI you should consider when establishing a customer relationship and market research strategy.

Exit surveys

Exit customer surveys offer a glimpse of the main reasons for having low customer retention and high cart abandonment rates. Feedback data can be used to gain actionable insights so businesses can meet existing and new customer expectations. These surveys can also be used to capture information that can be used for future email marketing campaigns.

This online survey usually consists of close-ended questions or multiple-choice questions that limit survey responses to a focused area (e.g., reasons for canceling their SaaS subscription, switching to another e-commerce platform, and more).

Varieties of customer feedback survey questions and when to use them

A customer feedback survey form can be created using different types of questions depending on your goals and target audience. So, let’s run through some customer feedback survey examples to understand how different questions work and when they should be used:
Likert scale questions are multiple-choice questions that use a five-to-seven-point rating scale to measure customer sentiment.

Let’s say you want to measure customers’ satisfaction with your live chat support. A Likert scale question might ask customers to rate their experience from 1-5, using the following format:

How satisfied are you with the quality of our live chat support?

Very dissatisfied
Dissatisfied
Neutral
Satisfied
Very satisfied

You can use different prompts depending on the question you ask. For example, you might ask how likely the customer is to recommend your product to others and provide answers ranging from “Very unlikely” to “Very likely”.

Likert scale questions provide more nuanced insights than yes/no questions. So, they’re very useful for measuring satisfaction and loyalty.
Open-ended questions give customers space to communicate their thoughts in their own words. Unrestricted by the limitations of stock answers, customers can share their unique likes, dislikes, and experiences in detail.

Common open-ended questions include:

What did you like about our product?
What improvements could we make to our product or service?

Open-ended questions provide qualitative data, making them invaluable for deriving contextual insights to use alongside quantitative data. That said, they’re harder to analyze and more time-consuming for customers to complete, which can lead to fewer responses.

The best way to use open-ended questions is as a follow-up to a Likert scale question. For example, after asking a customer to rate your product out of five, you could include an open-ended question to allow them to provide specific details.
Next up you have multiple-choice questions—a type of closed-ended question that supplies you with quantitative data. This type of question gives customers a list of pre-determined answers to choose from.

Let’s say that you want insights into how customers perceive your product. You could ask them to rate different factors, such as “ease of use” or “value for money”,  out of five stars.

Worded answers are also an option. For example, you could ask customers what their favorite and/or least favorite product features are and list all of your features for them to choose from.

Multiple-choice questions are crucial for collecting standardized feedback that’s easy to analyze for patterns and trends. However, they do lack context, which is why they work best when paired with open-ended questions.
Binary scale questions give customers two options, typically “yes/no” or “agree/disagree”.

An example of a binary question would be “Did you find what you were looking for on our website today?”, with either “yes” or “no” as options.

Include binary questions at key points in your customer experience, such as after transactions and customer support interactions. Their quick, easy format means that they don’t disrupt the customer experience. And, they can still give you a general idea of whether you’re meeting customer needs.
Usage frequency questions gauge how often customers use specific products, features, or services.

For example, you might ask:

How often do you use [specific product feature]?
How often do you use our mobile app?
How often do you use our self-service chatbot?

Use usage frequency questions to evaluate user behavior, usage patterns, and the value of specific product features.
Demographic questions collect data relating to the respondent’s background, such as age, gender, income, ethnicity, and so on. They deliver contextual information about your target audience, allowing you to segment your audience, spot relationships, and personalize experiences.

Only use demographic questions when they serve a clear purpose, such as segmentation.
Psychographic questions pinpoint the psychological characteristics of respondents. They ask questions relating to things like values, opinions, lifestyles, and aspirations.

For example, you might ask:

What are your primary motivations for using this product?
Which of the following are most important to you? [Price, quality, ease-of-use, etc.]”
What do you do in your free time?

Use psychographic questions to uncover customer motivations and intentions behind purchases and actions. They can also tell you how customers feel about certain topics, products, services, and brands, offering deeper insight into the psyche of your target audiences.
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How to create a customer feedback survey that will help your business

The best customer feedback surveys are engaging and actionable, delivering valuable insights that lead to improvements. But how do you create them? Here are some customer feedback survey best practices:
Start by identifying what you’re hoping to achieve with your survey. Do you want to identify sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction? Gain insight into customer needs and pain points? Build customer loyalty?

Clearly defining your objectives helps you align the type of survey you create with the responses (and insights) you’re looking for.
Who are you targeting with your survey? Your answer will closely align with your survey goals and help you optimize for engagement. Consider the stage of the customer journey that your target audience is in, along with the specific actions they’ve taken.
High-quality questions generate high-quality answers. So, pay special attention to the wording and formatting of your questions to boost engagement and collect responses that align with your goals.

Here are some best practices for crafting high-quality questions for your customer feedback survey questionnaire:
  • Keep questions short and simple.
  • Avoid double-barrelled questions.
  • Add a variation of multiple-choice and open-ended questions.
  • Avoid bias and leading questions.
  • Provide an “other” option with space for elaboration to avoid restricting answers.
Distributing your surveys on the right platforms at the right time can increase response rates and generate more accurate, insightful responses.

If you want to measure how customers felt about a specific part of your customer experience, send your survey immediately after the action is taken. This could be after a transaction, for example, or immediately after an interaction with your customer support team.

However, if you want to know what customers think about your product, send a survey a week or so post-purchase. This gives the customer enough time to try out your product and form a well-rounded opinion.

You also need to decide how to send your survey (via email, app, website pop-up, etc.). Email works best for longer surveys, while in-app and website alternatives are best for quick surveys that include one or two binary or multiple-choice questions.

Understanding your goals and target audience helps you shape your surveys. And, crafting the perfect questions and distribution methods maximizes engagement and the quality of responses. That said, there’s one thing that matters most—putting the feedback data you collect into use.

How to take meaningful action with your customer feedback

Writing a customer service feedback survey by following the above tips is just the first part of the process. Once you have the feedback, you then need to properly organize, manage, and act upon it to make it truly worthwhile. That’s the only way to turn customer feedback surveys into tangible improvements to your processes and customer journeys. The following is a simple four-step process for turning customer feedback into meaningful action:
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Be where your customers are

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01 Ask

Gather feedback from your customers through the channel of their choice. Meeting your users where they are and selecting the best type of survey tool is essential in collecting information.

02 Categorize

Organize and translate feedback into digestible graphs, dashboards, Excel spreadsheets, and charts. Then, analyze the feedback data to properly identify trends, recurring problems, and areas for improvement.

03 Act

Share your findings with relevant departments (product development, product management, marketing, sales, support, etc.) in order to create new processes or policies. Implement changes with a sense of urgency to show that you’re invested in making your customers happy.

04 Follow-up

To complete the customer feedback management process, you need to follow up with your respondents. This is a crucial step in building relationships, letting them know they have a voice, and showing appreciation for the customers’ time and efforts in helping you improve.
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How RingCentral helps with customer feedback analytics

Gather unbiased user feedback through the communication channel of your choice: email, IVR, SMS/text, social media, and more.
Stay up to date on the latest industry trends with peer benchmarking and effortlessly visualize data through an interactive survey results dashboard.
Eliminate misinterpretation by funneling service and product feedback straight from the customer to the agent.
Identify positive and negative patterns in agent behaviors during interactions, and craft personalized coaching plans based on completed survey data.
Review NPS and CSAT performance for your entire industry and understand where you stand compared to your industry peers.
Increase response rates and agent engagement, reduce turnover rates, and empower staff to self-coach and identify opportunities for improvement.

How RingCentral helps with customer feedback analytics

Gather unbiased user feedback through the communication channel of your choice: email, IVR, SMS/text, social media, and more.
Stay up to date on the latest industry trends with peer benchmarking and effortlessly visualize data through an interactive survey results dashboard.
Eliminate misinterpretation by funneling service and product feedback straight from the customer to the agent.
Identify positive and negative patterns in agent behaviors during interactions, and craft personalized coaching plans based on completed survey data.
Review NPS and CSAT performance for your entire industry and understand where you stand compared to your industry peers.
Increase response rates and agent engagement, reduce turnover rates, and empower staff to self-coach and identify opportunities for improvement.

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