5 questions to ask customers to improve your customer support

Feedback in business is crucial to growing and improving. It’s beneficial for any business to take a closer look at what is working and what could use improvement on a regular basis. But how do you do that? Where do you start?

There are lots of ways to collect customer feedback—one of the most common tools is a customer survey. NPS®, Transactional CSAT, Global CSAT, and Customer Effort Scores are a few customer surveys you can use, but what should you ask your customers? Below are some useful questions to ask your customers about the effectiveness of your team and the impact it has on customer satisfaction. To learn more about how each specific survey noted above works and how you can use them to innovate your customer experience, read this article.

5 questions to ask your customers:

1. What is a recent example of how we exceeded your expectations?

Asking this question isn’t just to boost your company’s morale. This carefully worded question is important because it places the customer in a happy state of mind, ideally triggering memories of a good experience with your brand. At the same time, it enables your business to understand and do more of what your customers love and need. An open-ended question like this gives customers room to voice experiences as well as insight into your support team that you might never have expected.

2. Tell us about your most memorable customer service interaction.

A question like this gives customers the room to speak freely, whether the interaction was good or bad. By asking this question, you can show your customers that their opinions matter to your business and that they might help shape how customer service at your company grows and evolves. If a customer is dissatisfied with your company’s customer service, sending out a proactive survey with a question like this can offer that customer a safe space to voice their opinion personally with your company.

3. What is the most valuable part of doing business with us?

This question helps your company understand what your customers expect when interacting with your business and where you should focus your support efforts. Below are a few examples of multiple choice options to give your customers a starting point when it comes to assessing your company’s support.

• [ ] Quick response to the initial inquiry
  [ ] Multiple ways to contact a company
  [ ] Smooth experience (not having to repeat information or send reminder inquiries, etc.)
  [ ] Ability to find the answers myself
  [ ] A personalised interaction (i.e. recommended content that’s tailored to your inquiry)

4. How much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request?

It’s important to know how much friction your customers are experiencing with your brand—because less friction means more retention and vice versa. For instance, 76% of customers prefer self-service because it offers the least amount of interaction friction. Asking this question can help your team understand if your customers can self serve, if your support team is being proactive enough, or if you’re making it difficult for customers to find the answers they need.

5. What can we do to make your experience more enjoyable?

The final question to make sure you’ve covered your bases. This open-ended question gives customers free reign to tell you what they want and how they want it. This might sound a little scary, but this type of question could lead to some hard, but extremely beneficial feedback. Your customers know best, and they can more accurately point out areas that might need improvement.

Now, it’s one thing to ask good questions and collect valuable feedback, but it’s another to actually review your customer support strategy and goals with the feedback you receive. These questions are just a starting point for your support team when it comes to achieving your customer service goals and retaining customers.

To learn more about customising your CSAT survey, read this.