11 tips for more responses to your customer satisfaction survey

A representative customer satisfaction survey stands or falls with a high response rate. Answers to the open questions in your customer satisfaction survey also provide a wealth of valuable insights. It is therefore important that your response to the customer satisfaction survey is as high as possible. But how do you ensure that as many people as possible complete the customer satisfaction survey? Below 11 tips.

1. Customer Satisfaction Survey Announcement Email

Send an announcement email one to two weeks before sending out the customer satisfaction survey questionnaire. This email indicates that the customer can expect an email with a link to a questionnaire. In addition, state the date when the survey was sent out, the purpose of the customer satisfaction survey and, if necessary, provide a short summary of the results and improvements from the previous wave (wave = Period that starts on the day the questionnaires are sent out and ends on the day the questionnaires are closed).

2. 100% coverage

With every customer satisfaction survey, the aim is to receive as many valuable responses as possible. This allows the correct conclusions and recommendations to be made. Make sure that at least one e-mail address per customer from the past year is provided and that this e-mail address is correct.

3. Quality of the mailing list

The address list contains the most recent contact information. In addition, check whether it meets the following requirements:

First and last names are entered
Email addresses contain an “@” and a “.”
Email addresses do not contain a space, <, >, ?
All email addresses are unique (no duplicates)
The last column contains the e-mail address from which we may send the invitation e-mail

4. Personal salutation and sender

Address the customer by his or her first and/or last name.

5. Show the NPS question in the invitation email

The first question of the questionnaire (usually the NPS) can be placed in the invitation email. This lowers the threshold for participating in the customer satisfaction survey.

6. Minimum duration of customer satisfaction survey

Indicate how many minutes it will take to complete the questionnaire. Completing the NPS, ±20 statements and the ‘one thing to change’ question generally takes ± 3 minutes. Open-ended questions extend the amount of time it takes the respondent to complete the survey.

7. Multilingual customer satisfaction surveys

For a high response rate and to get the most out of your customer satisfaction survey, it is fundamentally important that the questions are understood. Therefore always offer the questionnaire in the spoken language of the customer. If the spoken language is unknown, choose English.

8. Use a reminder

Some customers will not complete the questionnaire immediately. Some will even forget. To maximize the response, it is good to send these customers a reminder. This reminder will of course only go to those who have not yet responded and who have not unsubscribed. To avoid irritation, we do not recommend sending more than one reminder.

9. Call invitees

If your customers have not completed the questionnaire after the reminder, you can call them back (especially in B2B). Ask them to participate in the study by giving them honest feedback. They may already give you feedback on the phone and you can respond immediately!

10. Thank you for participating

Thank all respondents for their time and effort in participating in the customer satisfaction survey. The sooner after completing the questionnaire, the better. It is a small effort and ensures positive reactions. In addition, you increase the willingness to participate in future ones.

11. Close the loop

“It’s not the score that matters; it’s what you do with it to make promoters that really count.” (Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company).

Indicate that you will tackle the points for improvement and how (with what actions) you will do this. Show that you are willing to take customer feedback seriously. This allows you to differentiate yourself from the competition and turn detractors into promoters. Because the respondent feels heard, the chance that the respondent will participate in the next customer satisfaction survey is greater.

Would you like to know more about closing the loop and how we measure customer satisfaction? Then click below.

Lotte Koehorst

Project Manager