Now that you have decided to proceed with a customer satisfaction survey, what to do first?

CSSL suggests that you proceed systematically, in the following steps:

Educate yourself about customer satisfaction surveys using the valuable information, including sample surveys and reports, at this website and elsewhere.

Brainstorm among your colleagues and decide upon the major issues to research and target customer (or prospective customer) groups.  

Think about frequency of the survey.  Is it a one-time event or will it be a tracking (ongoing) survey?

Check your budget, making sure there are funds available for a customer satisfaction survey.  Note that telephone surveys are generally more costly than mail surveys.  Obviously, larger surveys of either type are more expensive.

Decide whether you are going to design and manage the survey yourself or outsource it to a qualified market research company such as CSSL.  

Note that outsourced surveys are usually cheaper in the long-run, due to economies of scale and specialized staff, expertise, and software available through companies like CSSL.  The outsourced survey may also be more credible to your customers, as they will see it as coming from an independent party.  Resultant data may be more meaningful.

Contact CSSL for initial discussions.  Be prepared to discuss objectives, target group or groups, timetable, and any special requirements you may have.  CSSL will then prepare a detailed proposal, discussing objectives, methodology, costs, etc.

Upon approval of the proposal, CSSL will go to work cooperatively with you to formulate strategy and questions for the research.

Review the draft research instrument  (questionnaire).  Make any necessary changes.

If it is going to be a complex telephone survey, CSSL will program the questionnaire for administration through a computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) system.  You must check the online version for accuracy of skip patterns.  What if you are planning a telephone survey involving paper questionnaires?  Check skip patterns.

For mail surveys, CSSL will prepare a draft research instrument (questionnaire) for your review.  Make any necessary changes and work with us to finalize the document.

Work with CSSL to develop standards for coding of answers to open-ended questions.

If you have any preferences about format for presentation of survey findings, please let us know.  Most CSSL reports generally involve written analysis, combined with charts and graphs and, sometimes, PowerPoint slide shows.

Designate a contact person for reports, remote monitoring of telephone interviewing, etc.

Alert your management, customer service staff, and field sales reps that a survey is underway.  Brief them on survey objectives and methodology in case they hear questions about the undertaking from your customers.

Prepare an action plan for dealing with survey findings.  Many companies set up formal management committees to quickly react to important findings.  Others simply circulate the report of survey findings to all departments.  CSSL advises against the latter course, as it invites leaks to the competition.

Schedule a meeting, teleconference, or videoconference with CSSL to discuss survey findings.

CSSL looks forward to planning these next steps with you!