Customer survey goals: priorities and examples

Customer survey goals

The goals you want to achieve are the most important aspect of a customer survey

The goals influence the entire customer survey process, from planning and implementation to conducting the survey, analysing the results and deciding which actions to take. The goals of the customer survey determine, among other things:

1. Which survey tool is right for the customer survey
2. Which target group to approach and where, such as at the point of purchase or during a support interaction
3. Which questions need to be asked
4. Which answer options should be provided
5. How the customer survey results will be analysed
6. Which actions will be taken

Customer survey goals: an example

The goals often arise partly from the reason for conducting the customer survey:

• Have sales fallen significantly or has demand for support increased?
• Have you noticed an unwanted change in your image, or has competition increased rapidly?
• Are you launching a new product and want to examine price sensitivity and ask customers what they want?

At the start of a customer satisfaction analysis, or any other type of customer survey, you will naturally face many unanswered questions.

• Sales have fallen – why?
• Demand for support has increased – why?
• The website bounce rate is high – why?

You therefore know your overarching goal, such as increasing sales, improving customer satisfaction or enhancing support. You now need to divide it into sub-goals. Sales, for example, depend partly on customer satisfaction, perceived product quality, the accessibility of support and price. These provide tangible sub-goals: improving product quality and customer satisfaction, enhancing support and adjusting prices.

Who can tell you whether your support is good or your product meets customers’ needs? The customers themselves.

With this knowledge, you can proceed as follows:

1. Goal: improve support. Integrate a short customer survey directly into the support process. For each support ticket, ask whether the support was helpful and satisfactory. Your customers may prefer email support to telephone support, allowing you to improve support and reduce costs.
2. Goal: improve customer satisfaction. Start with a general customer survey among a selected sample to identify weaknesses. In the second step, conduct a survey tailored to a specific topic. Your customers may be satisfied with the price, product quality and support, but not with the product itself. Questions about the product might then reveal, for example, that the packaging is difficult to open.
3. Goal: optimise pricing. Divide customers into segments, such as different income groups, so that you can interpret their answers about price. The preferred price will naturally always be low, so also ask about alternatives and their cost.
4. Goal: quality management. As part of complaint management, online forms provide a straightforward way to collect customer complaints, assess their urgency and respond individually according to priority. This is also important for customer retention and quality management.

Other customer survey goals

A customer survey can also pursue other goals:

1. Create customer profiles
2. Identify customer needs
3. Ask about customers’ wishes and expectations
4. Measure the effect of actions
5. Increase customer loyalty
6. Understand the customer perspective

Use our customer survey templates as a guide. These free questionnaire templates and online forms cover a wide range of purposes and use cases. You can add them to your LamaPoll account with one click and adapt them as required.