Know your customers – Market research will help you better understand your customers in a number of ways including demographic information such as their age, gender and geographic spread. The better you know your customer the easier it is to fine tune your product or service towards the target market.

Know your target market – Who exactly are your existing customers and where do they live? Does your product or service appeal to specific age groups? Who are your potential customers and where do they live?

Know your competition – Market Research will help you measure your service compared to others. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your organization and are you improving in the right areas?

Products and services – Do you have the products or services that people want? Are your products and services value for money? How do your services and products compare to those of your competitors? Can you deliver, do you deliver, should you deliver?

Ease of doing business – Do your customers find it easy to deal with you and when they visit your store and/or website do they find what they want? Is there sufficient advice and assistance on hand be it in the form of notices, leaflets or human assistance? Do people find it easy to buy from you? Are all your staff properly trained, knowledgeable, helpful and available?

Marketing – Is your marketing reaching the right people and is the marketing message clear and effective. Which are the most effective marketing channels?

Do people correctly understand your marketing message? Does your marketing material accurately represent your brand? Do you advertise through the right channels? Are you reaching the right people?

With the power of the Internet it is now very easy to conduct market research using one of the many online survey software sites that make conducting surveys and collating good market research intelligence quick, easy and extremely cost effective.

Good customer service is the life blood of any business. New customers are important but good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and repeat business. With each satisfied customer your business is likely to win many more customers through recommendations and remember, if you are not taking care of your customers, your competition will.

A customer satisfaction survey will help by not only identifying problem areas but will also demonstrate to your customers that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.

Where to start?

Objective – As a first step decide what the main objectives of the survey are, in that way you will be able to retain focus and find it easier to decide what questions to ask.

Analysis – Having completed the survey consider how you will analyze the answers.

Keep in mind that ‘closed’ questions (where a respondent is asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are much easier to analyze than ‘open’ questions (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).

A lot will depend on the expected volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analysing the results.

Opportunity – As well as obtaining valuable market research data keep in mind that customer surveys are also a good way to advertise areas of your service that your customers may not be aware of.

It is important that before you publish the survey that you check that the questions you have asked will provide you with market research data that when analyzed will help you make informed decisions.

Then, from a marketing view point read through the survey, confirm that you have phrased each question so that every opportunity has been taken to promote your business?

The ideal question will perform the following three functions:-

• Market research – provide valuable feedback to help you improve your customer satisfaction levels and in turn your business
• Marketing – promote aspects of your business
• Information/Education – advertise a service that you provide that your customers may not have been unaware of

For example:- Do you find the in-store baby changing facilities useful?

By asking this question not only will the store receive good market research feedback on the facility they provide but they will also promote their facilities and advertise themselves as a family friendly store, even beyond those customers who have a specific need for the baby changing facility that has been provided.

Warts and all – to benefit most from a customer survey you need to be prepared to dig deep and accept the worst.

A well designed customer satisfaction survey will enable you to identify problems so that they can be addressed; regular customer satisfaction will prevent complacency and give you early warning on where you might be losing out to your competitors initiatives.

What are the questions you should ask?

Although each business is likely to have specific and unique factors that are important in providing good customer services there are common areas that are relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online internet store or a service industry. The following are key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication – Are you confident that you make it easy for your customers to communicate with you?

When a customer telephones is the phone answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services properly handled? A good business will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, politely, quickly and fairly.

If a problem cannot be resolvable immediately do you promise to respond in a given time period and do you deliver on your promise?

Use a customer satisfaction survey to ensure that all your staff are considered by your customers to be courteous, helpful and knowledgeable.

Location – Do your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical store, is it conveniently located with good access?

Making it pleasant, making it easy – For a virtual business it is important to ensure that your website is easy to use and aesthetically pleasing.

Regardless of the store being a bricks and mortar or purely online web based store, is the store properly laid out and can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient detailed information and help on hand to explain how a particular product works?

The right quality products – In addition to measuring the quality of the service that you provide you should ensure make sure that the products and services that you provide do fully match your customers’ requirements.

Value for money – Cheap or expensive is rarely a good measure, value for money is.

Is your business associated with value for money by your customers, if not, why not?

Speed and attention – Regardless of the business most customers will want to be dealt with quickly but attentively.

Are you doing everything to prevent any delays?

Customers like to be treated as individuals, how do you treat your customers? Customers appreciate attention but only if it leads to a quick and satisfactory resolution of the query.

Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example what is their age group and where do they live?

The more knowledge you have of your customers the better you will be able to target your business.

Encourage customers to highlight their specific problems and provide contact details.

What next?

Having completed the survey analyze the results.

Trends – Identify specific and common areas where the service needs improving.

Ask yourself honestly if any criticism that you receive is valid and if there anything that can be done to resolve or minimise the problem?

Training – Are all employees properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?

If customer service training programs have been implemented have they improved the customer experience?

Follow-up – If a customer who has completed a survey has raised a specific issue ensure that they are contacted and their complaint addressed.

Don’t lose a customer by squandering an opportunity to resolve a problem.

Continuously Monitor – Make changes based on the survey results and then re-measure by issuing further surveys.

To view a sample customer satisfaction survey for a store that demonstrates some of the above advice please visit:- Sample Customer Survey

With more and more people owning cellphones, getting an answering service is becoming increasingly practical, as traditional answering machines cannot be plugged into cellphones. Any person who gets a lot of calls will never worry about missing out on important messages with an answering service.

For busy people, answering services are useful in screening their calls. This is particularly true if they are out, if they have an appointment elsewhere, are working on a deadline, or are busy with clients. Since they need to be made available during off hours, doctors utilize medical answering services in order to triage the many requests that come to them by phone.

Answering services are popular with an increasing number of companies. People who order merchandize via phone or call a company’s customer service department will often come across an answering service at work. These companies often have a lot of incoming calls, and they employ an answering service to place a customer on hold until they can be attended to personally. In some cases, answering services prompt customers to leave a message so the party they call can get back to them immediately.

Answering services are considered a more practical and inexpensive way to take in multiple calls. Answering services make up the bulk of most companies’ telecommunications, handling and managing most incoming calls in a professional and reliable manner. They can choose from a 24/7 all-year-round service, or one that provides the same service part-time. This way, all incoming calls that are recorded can be accessed by the recipient at a later time.

Some of the top answering service companies have a wider range of services to offer. They have a fully-trained staff of telephone operators to receive calls, as well as take sales orders, provide product support and customer service for the client company. If you want the experience to be more personal for those calling your business it would be best to utilize a live answering service. These operators are also equipped to handle sales, as well as help customers sign up for advertised company events or seminars.

Having an answering service is more cost-efficient for companies compared to maintaining additional staff on payroll to simply answer the phones. Less employees mean more savings for the company in terms of wages, taxes, benefits, and other costs. Without human error involved, answering services do the job of taking calls in a professional and prompt manner. Calls are received and recorded accurately, and are relayed through phone, email, voicemail, and even PDA. This allows the company to focus on growing the business instead of spending countless hours handling incoming calls.