What are Customer Surveys?

Customer surveys are tools organizations use to collect feedback from their customers about any number of topics. Customer surveys can take several forms, including paper-based documents that are mailed to customers, digital surveys that appear after website transactions, and surveys facilitated by outbound phone agents. Contact centers often use customer survey applications to acquire input following customer service interactions.

The best customer survey tools allow end-users to configure surveys so that they measure exactly what organizations want to measure. Below are some common types of customer surveys:

• Customer satisfaction. One of the most common customer survey types, customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys measure how customers feel about a company's products, services, customer support, and more. Customers are asked to rate their satisfaction on a scale (for example, a 5-point scale, where 5 is extremely satisfied) and there may also be fields where they can enter additional feedback.
• Net Promoter. Net Promoter surveys ask one question: "How likely is it that you will recommend [company] to friends or family?" The customer selects a response from a 10-point scale and all the ratings are compiled and ultimately lead to a Net Promoter Score (NPS) for the company. NPS is considered to be a top indicator of customer loyalty.
• Customer effort. Customer effort surveys measure how much work customers have to perform when doing business with an organization. In other words, it measures if a company is easy or hard to do business with. This is a particularly appropriate customer survey for contact centers to administer, because it indicates how much effort customers have to invest to get their issues resolved.