Every year, your company has a key opportunity to gain deep and direct insight into its reputation through an annual customer survey. Don’t let a year go by without diligently asking the most important questions of your business life.
Local marketing expert Terrie Wheeler, internet and in-person coach to professional services firms, and I recently shared and compared advice on how to use a survey to learn what your most important stakeholders think of your business, and how to link their answers to future solutions that can benefit both sides of the relationship.
The key to a very valuable survey for everyone involved is to go beyond the basics to garner relevant information that you can use to expand your businesses and grow revenue, together. This type of survey is more psychographic than demographic. It is designed to “get into the heads” of your key clients. Begin by learning how your company is perceived. Ask your customers:
» Why do you work with us?
» Which other companies do we compete against to
earn your business?
» What, in your opinion, makes our company different from the others?
» Knowing what you do about our firm, would you refer us to others? Why or why not?
» If you would refer us, what would you say?
» Within and among your industry peers, what have you heard others say about us?
» What have we told you about why we are unique? Have we told you? What do you remember? Do you recognize these promises in our work together—do they play out for you?
» Of the team members you work with, who best represents our brand promise to you? What do they do they makes it come to life?
» Does our external perception—if you believe one exists for us—match up with what you experience? How?
» Our reputation is one of our most important assets.
How do you think we can improve it?
With this last question, you begin linking your reputation—what you work hard to be known for—to how you actually deliver on it. You’ve established that you’re working together for many of the things you aspire to; this next set of questions helps connect those reasons to your client’s specific needs. The key is to begin to match—or notice the gaps—between how and why a client works with you and their most important needs as a business.
» What pressing business issues keep you up at night?
» What do you consider to be the key trends in your industry and how well are you prepared to deal with them?
» More than likely you and your business have been challenged over the past 24 months. As we begin to slowly emerge from this economic crisis, how have your expectations of us—or any of your suppliers—changed?
»What and how do you need to work with us in the future?
»How will a supplier stay relevant to the new norm of your business?
Now it’s appropriate to segue into questions that allow the customer to enumerate which of the services you offer now and plan to in the future he is using, interested in or may not be aware of.
All of these probing, open-ended questions require a candid conversation during which body language and even the amount of time spent together can reveal much about the strength of your relationship. It’s a dialogue that can’t happen online or over the phone. Use your intuition about the state of your relationship with a client to determine if you are the one to have this critical conversation, or if a trusted third party is a better choice to bring forth the most honest responses.
Taking your customer survey to this new level not only lets you check on your reputation with those that matter most; but just the fact that you’ve taken it to a much more meaningful (and mutually beneficial) dialogue is a reputation enhancer in and of itself.