There are questions in life that have answers you could contemplate for a lifetime and still find no certainty. Fortunately, customer satisfaction isn't one of those unfathomable topics. It's refreshing to grapple with a business question that really does have clear answers, ones that are actually pretty easy to obtain with the right customer satisfaction survey.

Curious about how to solicit and use feedback from your customers?

Fortunately, I have lots of experience in this area.

1. Define your goals.

If you want to achieve 'em, you've gotta define 'em.

Customer satisfaction surveys can deliver answers to a number of questions. Before you launch your survey, spend a little time thinking through what you want to accomplish.

Do you want to know if your customers believe they're getting good value for their money?

Keeping in mind that the customers most likely to speak up about your service are the ones who might be displeased, make the effort to reach everyone, knowing that you'll only get a small percentage to respond.

Do you want to know if there's more you could do to cultivate serious fans of your brand?

Are you curious about what aspects of your brand or products your customers find most appealing?

Are you contemplating a price hike and wondering if your customers will accept it?

All of these questions and issues can be explored with customer satisfaction surveys, but—and here's the important part—the questions will be quite different depending on what your goals are.

Knowing what your goals are helps you develop a more precise survey.

2. Use what you already have.

Yes, of course there are boatloads of customer survey tools. But before you go invest in shiny new CRM software, check to see if you already have survey tools at your disposal.

For example, if you use Nextiva's business communications platform, it has built-in survey tools. So does Gmail and a host of other platforms and providers you may already use.

There's no need to reinvent the wheel if you already have survey capabilities.

3. Keep your survey simple.

The best surveys are the ones customers actually answer. In fact, you can have elegantly designed, polished and precise questions that do you absolutely no good if you can't get customers to reply.

The key is brevity. Your customer satisfaction surveys should be brief, and it should be as easy as possible for customers to answer. If you're really dying to explore issues that require a longer survey, your best bet is still to start with a single, simple question and invite customers who take the time to answer to participate in a longer, more nuanced survey at the end. Present customers with a wall of text, and you're going to lose them.

4. Ask the right customers.

In a perfect world, your customer satisfaction surveys would reach a perfect cross-section of your clientele, but we don't inhabit that ideal world.

Keeping in mind that the customers most likely to speak up about your service are the ones who might be displeased, make the effort to reach everyone, knowing that you'll only get a small percentage to respond.

Whether you reach out via email, direct mail or in person at a retail location, do your best to ensure that every customer has the opportunity to provide feedback.

5. Provide incentives.

Some days it feels like I get dozens of surveys a day via email. And here's a secret: I don't answer very many. If you provide incentives to your customers, though, you can improve your response rate.

Whether it's a drawing for a gift certificate or a discount code for future purchases, when you dangle a carrot, you may be happier with the volume of responses your customer satisfaction surveys brings in.

6. Be prepared to make changes.

The point of a customer satisfaction survey isn't just to high-five yourself. The point is to find out how you can improve the customer experience. And that means you have to take your survey results and transform them into actionable insight.

Do some customers question the value you deliver? Add a bundle of options with a slight discount to deliver better value.

Are customers generally happy with your service but unlikely to promote you via social media to their friends? Find a way to improve brand engagement and foster closer relationships.

The key is to take your survey results and use them to up your customer service game.

It's easy for entrepreneurs to get wrapped up in the busy world of running a company. But it's vital that we remember to check in with our customers every once in a while. The right customer satisfaction surveys can deliver results that help you keep your company on track and ahead of the competition.

Read more articles on customer feedback.

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