Write Effective Customer Satisfaction Surveys
by Citrix Online

Maintaining a constant dialog with your customers is a good idea if you want to foster a healthy, long-term relationship with them. What better way is there to find out what they think of your company and products than to talk to them?

Large companies hold annual customer symposiums during which company executives have a chance to meet with key customers to better understand their needs. But what do you do if you don’t have the budget to invite your customers to a five-star resort and pamper them with golf tournaments and cocktail receptions? A customer-satisfaction survey is a quick, cost-effective way to find out whether your products and services live up to your customers' expectations. Be careful though: Your customers won’t tell you what they think of you if you present them with a 10-pager full of complicated questions. You have to make it easy for them to give their opinion.

Here are a few tips on how to write effective customer-satisfaction surveys that will give you the data you need to conduct a meaningful analysis:

• To get started, involve a select group of leaders from other departments in the creation of the survey. Involving others will help you write survey questions that will uncover the information that your entire company is looking for.
  
  
• Ask your customers whether they have previously encouraged someone to purchase or to avoid buying your products and services. The answer will reveal whether you have a problem that needs to be addressed.
  
  
• There are times when companies show evidence of high customer satisfaction, but continue to loose business to competitors. Try to drill down to the bottom of this by asking your customers whether they’re simply “satisfied” or truly “delighted” with your products and services. As a follow-up question to those who answered with “satisfied,” ask what you can do to make them feel “delighted.”
  
  
• If a customer didn’t buy one of your products or didn’t buy it as often as he/she used to, try to find out why that is. This scenario doesn’t automatically mean that your customer thinks that your product is poor. To find out whether there are, for instance, new budgetary constraints imposed upon your customer, you need to ask specific, detailed questions.
  
  
• Less is more, so keep the survey brief. Concise surveys generate a higher response rate, gather more accurate data, and cost less with respect to production time and analysis.

Timing is of the essence, so make sure your survey fits well into the overall marketing and customer-communication schedule. If you’re looking to gather customer feedback on an ongoing basis, you might want to include an optional questionnaire that’s available 24/7 on your support Web site or at the end of every support session. This will let your customers provide instant feedback on their support experiences.

About Citrix Online
Citrix Online, a division of Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS), offers the leading Web-based access, support and collaboration software and services. The division offers Citrix GoToMyPC®, the easiest-to-use solution for remote, secure and managed desktop PC access over the Web; and Citrix GoToAssist™, the most secure, reliable and powerful solution for Web-based technical support and customer collaboration. Citrix Online products are used by more than 4,000 companies worldwide, including Cisco Systems, Siemens, Intuit, Cablevision and Microsoft Business Solutions. The division is based in Santa Barbara, California, and is on the Web at www.gotomypc.com, www.gotoassist.com and www.citrix.com.