Customer Relationship Surveys | Telephone and Online Research

Customer Relationship Surveys

Telephone and Online Research

Customer Relationship Surveys

In today’s challenging business environment, companies are struggling to maintain a competitive advantage. Much emphasis is placed on developing better products and services, which are vital to continued success. At the same time, a “company centric” approach often overlooks those who buy your products and services—your customers. Successful business owners realize excellent products and services are only part of an effective business model. Maintaining and improving customer relationships is vital to continued growth. For this reason, more and more companies are turning to companies specializing in customer relationship surveys to achieve their sales objectives.

Why Customer Relationship Surveys are Important

Acquiring new customers is more difficult and expensive than maintaining existing ones. If sales revenue is declining, or if your company is facing the prospect of losing a vital customer, consider the following:

• A 10% increase in customer retention typically increases profits by 30%.
• It costs five times more to acquire a customer than keep an existing one.
• The average business does not hear from 96% of their unsatisfied customers.

Most business owners recognize the need to develop formal customer retention strategies, but are confused on their implementation. Is an in-house program better than calling in a team of “experts?” What questions should be used in the survey? Should the survey be conducted with an online tool, or with a more traditional offline approach? If you are asking one or more of these vital questions, then consider a consultation with the survey experts at Direct Opinions.

Aligning the Type of Survey with the Customer Lifecycle

Obviously, depending upon where in the client life-cycle your customers are will determine what kind of survey is required. For existing customers, we often develop a strategic customer satisfaction survey to measure the ongoing relationships you have. This type of survey best gives insight into areas for improvement in how your organization handles interactions with your existing customers.

Developing a survey to assess your Net Promoter Score® will in some cases, provide the benchmark to measure ongoing success and identify areas that need improvement. NPS – Net Promoter Scoring® gives your organization a dashboard view of how likely it is that current clients will recommend your firm to others.

For newly-won customers, a new customer welcome survey may be a way to ensure your firm is perceived as getting off to a solid start at the beginning of the relationship. Despite your best intentions, customers can and will be lost. Direct Opinions has pioneered the concept of Re-Winning lost, inactive or former customers. In fact, we have developed expertise specifically around surveying past customers.

Contact The Customer Relationship Survey Experts

At Direct Opinions, we tailor each survey of your customers to your information objectives. We do not use a canned presentation but develop an appropriate mix of custom telephone, and online surveys, and one-on-one interviews based upon what you want to know and how this information will be used within your company. Some projects naturally lend themselves to telephone based surveys while others are best completed using a more hybrid methodology. Regardless of which method is used, the results accurately capture the voice of your customer, providing actionable data that will help your business grow. Ready to get started? Contact Direct Opinions today for a quote on a customer relationship survey today!