Call Center Survey

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Profit From Call Center Survey With Unorthodox Strategies Like These!

Source: The Statista Research Department: Share of organizations using mobile surveys in market research worldwide from 2014 to 2020

 

According to statistics, the phone is the top tool for conducting call center surveys because of the speed, eliminating delays, and accuracy of data. Such channels as live chat, social media, email are also powerful yet never stand out from the phone surveys. 

Below, you’ll define the blueprint for the relevant survey questions. And you’ll know when customers tell the truth. Read this article till the end and prepare yourself for conducting successful surveys.

Why is collecting feedback from a customer valuable? 

The answer is simple - based on customer survey feedback, define what your customers want from you. And knowing what customers want and need is the winning strategy for achieving large returns in any business.

CEOs and staff may deliver a great product and service, yet they constantly need to keep in touch with customers to always know what their products really do for customers. And the feedback from satisfied and dissatisfied customers is the surest way to improve business relationships.

There is no single successful company in existence, which never conducted a call center customer satisfaction survey and survived. At least, they discover the customer's intentions through sophisticated research. However, successful ones know what and when to ask questions. And how to filter the information they achieved.

Additionally, customers will feel you care about them when you conduct the customer service survey. They’ll gladly share with you their thoughts once they assure you of your inclinations for collecting their feedback.

What are the best customer satisfaction survey questions?

As a matter of fact, through call center feedback questions you conduct a survey to reach one of the following goals. here's the most proven strategy sample survey for customers and beyond: 

  • To improve sales;

  • To find out the customer’s intentions about your product and a company;

  • To find out the weak sides of your company;

  • To forecast their business relationships with you; 

Call center survey questions related to improving your sales are the most important. Your genuine interest should focus on collecting data to increase your sales. Here are the top 10 customer service survey questions for sales improvement: 

  • Is our product superior to others? Is there a company that delivers a better product or service? 
  • Has our company delivered the promise? If not, what does our company promise and not deliver?
  • Is our company trustworthy? If not, what fact makes you think so? 
  • Do you achieve information from our company that claimed for urgency? (Discounts, run out of the stock, etc)? 
  • These answers listed above have a supreme value in your sales. 
  • Are you promoting our product to someone else?
  • Have you experienced problems with the delivery of products and services?
  • How long have you been purchasing and using our product (months, quarters, or years)?
  • Is our product durable (technical stuff), reliable, and accountable?
  • What is the major reason you’ve purchased our product/service?
  • What other brands have you considered before?
  • Do you think our product needs improvement? If so, tell me what exactly you wish to improve or add?
  • Which is the most relevant way for you to order our products or services? (phone, face-to-face, website, live chat)
  • Is it easy for you to order our product or service? If not, tell me what exactly you wish to change?
  • Do you wish to see more similar products and services in our company?
  • What is the best day and time for you to purchase this product or service?
  • Is our company fair and honest with you?
  • What is the top product or service in our company?

Universal survey call center questions to find out customer’s intentions about your product and a company:

  • In your opinion, is our product good, average or bad?
  • Does our product solve your issues, and would you like to keep purchasing from us in the future?
  • Are you looking for another brand or are you satisfied enough with our company? If you look for another brand, please tell us why.

Questions: To find out the weak sides of your company. 

For instance:

  • In your opinion, the sales department, technical assistance, and customer support were professionals?
  • Did our company provide you with the full information about the product, terms and conditions, and discounts? 
  • Do you wish to achieve more data about a particular issue? Please tell us what type of information you wish to achieve.
  • Is the menu before a conversation with an agent (IVR) helpful or frustrating you?
  • Does the chat bot of our company deliver relevant info to you?
  • Does the FAQ, knowledge base, and Q&A section on the website help you?
  • Did you route to the precise agent within one call? Or were you forced to wait until the connection with the relevant agent?
  • Is there something you wish to see in our products and services?
  • Have you reached our technical support/customer service easily?
  • Is it easy for you to reach us through phone, chat, or email?
  • Is the price of our product fair?

Outbound call survey campaign for call center need also aim at these questions, to forecast their business relationships with you:

  • Do you wish to remain in business relationships with us in the next year? If not, tell me why.
  • How frequently do you wish to purchase this product? What makes you increase purchasing from us? (in the case of increasing). Why do you begin to purchase less from us? (in a case of lowering)
  • How many products or services do you wish to buy from us in the future (same, increase, or lower amount)? 
  • Could I reach you again to ask similar questions in order to improve the quality of the product or service?

Questions to inform and create engagement with a customer:

  • Would you like to know how much money you’ve spent with our company? (in this quarter or year)
  • Would you like to know your current account status and what you can do about it?
  • Would you like to achieve information about discounts you might miss?

Proven Ways to Encourage Customers to Take Customer Satisfaction Surveys

You don’t need to know dozens of ways to attract customers to your survey’s participation. All you need to do is to know the most effective one. Here are the most powerful ways to encourage your customers to participate in your survey:

Make the survey brief and easy. One of the most frequent mistakes committed by companies stems from launching too complicated and long surveys. 

Customers will participate in surveys only when they’re short and easy. In terms of the brief, you need to make your survey no longer than 5 minutes, or even 3 is better. And in terms of ease, let your customers give you short answers that don’t require deep thought about the subject.

  • Know when to call. Really, you don’t want to call at the moment, when a customer says to you: “Sorry, I’m busy right now, call me later”. You want to call at the moment they’re ready to talk with you. Moreover, the moment when they’re honest and satisfied.

    It’s better to call on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Monday is a busy day when everyone has a lot of things to do. Friday, as well as Saturday or Sunday. These days everyone rests, and it's hard to survey them. Plus, it is better to call in the afternoon, because people are more relaxed and ready for conversation, instead of morning and late hours.
  • Ask questions that are relevant to your company. The survey is not about entertaining, but slightly asking customers a favor in order to improve your business. And you know customers will give you approximately 3 minutes to conduct your survey, so you need to use this time wisely. Thus questions must be related to the subject, and the agent needs to have a call center survey script in front of the eyes to keep the subject line.

    For instance, you’re interested in the reason a particular category of customers declined their purchasing activity, instead of previous years. Or you’re interested in a high customer churn, so your questions will target this subject. Make your survey personal to the customer.

  • When you ask someone to participate, don’t forget to include their second name in the questions. One of the greatest and personal call center survey questions samples you can have, looks like this: “Mr. Jones, you think this product is not superior to others? Please tell me, why do you think so now?”

    The more personal your conversation, the more likely customers will participate with you, even if your survey is not convenient for them right now.

    Take a look at another example: “We interviewed the category of customers, which is you in, to find out the reason they think this product is not superior to others”. See the difference? It’s a much more vague way to interview people. 
  • Make surveys important to the customer. Of course, the survey is important not only for the customer, yet for your company first. You wish to collect the relevant data from them and do it in a great fashion. 

  • Tell customers that this survey was designed with the purpose to increase their products and services, so the company could satisfy their needs. For instance: “Mrs. Jones, we conducted the surveys, with the purpose of increasing the quality of product/service. Would you take 3 minutes to answer my questions?”

  • Catch customers’ ideas in real-time. Sometimes, you wish to ask the relevant questions, yet customers interrupt you to express their view on the situation. At this moment, they want to say what is really important. Don’t interrupt them, let them vent, notice what they said.

    And afterward, you will have the opportunity to ask your questions. Plus, you achieve real feedback from customers upfront. And who knows, maybe it’s the relevant topic for your current or future survey.
  • Thank you in conclusion. Always thank customers for participating and wish them a good day. Here’s an example: “Mr. Jones, thank you for answering these questions. They are highly relevant and we’ll try to improve our product or service, based on your answer. You have a good day, Mr. Jones.” Customers will be delighted by such treatment. And likely to have good relationships with your company in the future, because you show them human-like treatment.

    There are other tips for improving engaging customers in surveys, but these are the most valuable and will create 95% of responses in surveys. 

Top call center survey questions for customer satisfaction

Customers appreciate solving their solution from the first call and ease in customer effort score (CES). When customers call, they expect the company to be ready to solve their issue so there’s no necessity to call again with the same issue. 

Thus, create the image in the eyes of customers that your company is reliable and accountable. And your brand will be the first in the mind of the customer when they decide to purchase this product. 

Always ask in your surveys how many attempts on average, customers made to reach a desirable result.

The solution: Improve your FAQ, knowledge bases, Q&A sessions, thus customers could solve their issues single-handed. And of course, train your agents better, insisting on knowing their products and services, so they could answer nearly any question.

Customer effort score is another top frustrating situation when customers constantly reach your company to solve one issue. Thus, 1 attempt to solve and achieve the desired result is a very easy effort score. 

But, 5 attempts to solve one issue (call again, chat again, email again, explain again), rates are very hard. And you know that all people in the world wish to solve their issues within one call. Mention in your surveys, efforts customers make. Let them rate the effort as described above from 1 to 5.

The solution: Find out why your customers can’t solve their issues from the first call. Certainly, there is a flaw in the information published on your website, or the agent’s knowledge is insufficient.

Long waiting times. Whether it’s waiting in a queue or resolution, the longer your customer waits, the lower their impressions about a company’s performance.

The solution: If your agents are incapable of answering all customers, the problem might be in the number of seats in your call center. Increase the number of seats. These are the most relevant call center satisfaction survey questions you should constantly revise. 

How to define the truth in customer surveys in your outbound survey call center?

Well, when customers tell you about their inclinations and actions that are part of the story. The other part of the story is whether what they said to you is the truth and whether the call center satisfaction survey helps you. It may surprise you, but sometimes regiment on customer surveys could produce a catastrophe if you do not distinguish the truth from lies. 

Of course, most of the people are honest, but sometimes they’re telling you what they presume you want to hear or they’re superficial about the subject. Here’s a real example of what customers say and how it works in the real world.

Once upon a time, a beer company did a survey to find out which of their products customers preferred and you know what? To their astonishment, they found that 80% or so of the people they surveyed preferred their premium beer as opposed to their regular beer.

Why were they astonished? The answer is easy. You see, their sales figures were showing that most people bought their regular beer and NOT the premium. What’s going on here? Well, for one thing, it is very common. You see, the surveyed people were trying to give the “right” answer and so they put down as an answer the beer they felt they should drink.

It happens all the time. But pity the entrepreneur who decides to go into the brewery business based on this kind of erroneous marketing information.

Here’s another example of how people struggle to give the “right” answer. How many people do you know who read the “National Enquirer”? Not many huh? Almost everybody I talk with really puts down the “Enquirer”.

But guess what? The “National Enquirer” is the largest selling newspaper in the world - by far! Yet nobody reads it. At least not here on earth. It must be all those Martians.

What do people read? I’ll bet if you took a survey you would discover that the most read book of all is the Bible. It’s just not true. Hardly anyone (percentage-wise) has actually read the Bible. 

A lot of people own a Bible, a lot of people display their bibles, some people are given to swearing on a Bible but damn-few people have actually read the Bible.

And who can blame them? The Bible is repetitive, hard-to-read and most of it is deadly boring. Yet people feel guilty and, in their attempt to give the RIGHT answer, they will say (and often convince themselves) that the Bible is their favorite reading material.

Do you want to know what some people would consider a sickening statistic? Here it is: 

“MORE PEOPLE READ THE “NATIONAL ENQUIRER” IN ONE SINGLE WEEK THAN HAVE EVER READ THE BIBLE IN THE LAST 2,000 YEARS!” 

Sorry. But that’s the way it is. And, if you want to be a top-notch marketing professional and entrepreneur you have to know how it is. How it really is. Not how people (or you) wish it was or how they think it is.

Here and now, to distinguish the truth from the “right answer”, in your call center customer service survey questions, look for numbers, figures, sales, and reports. Then evaluate answers on surveys with real information at your fingertips.

You will have a picture of what is real and what is just the “right answer”. Doing otherwise causes numerous financial losses and failures of marketing campaigns.

The supreme goal of call center customer service survey and “heavy users”

The real purpose you need to initiate surveys is to improve your product and service. Plus, betterment of your position in the competitive market. Isn’t it? Of course, all other subjects such as gender and age of customers use your product are important. 

But, if your competitors prevail and you lose the edge on the market, there’s no point in collecting any data about customers whatsoever.

So, the supreme goal of customer service phone survey questions is to collect data and achieve intelligence about the real intentions of your group of customers that use only similar to your product or service. You should emphasize your audience because they’re those who constantly generate a bundle of money for your company.

Now, did you know that your questionnaire for call center surveys should aim at heavy users? These are the most active buyers. Do they generate the biggest revenue in your market? For example, 20% of investors buy 80% of financial newsletters. 20% of beer drinkers drink 80% of beer.

And this situation with 20% of heavy users is almost in any market, the percentage slightly go up and down, depending on the market. But every market has its heavy users.

Know who these users are, what they want the most, and show them how to get it. And always target them first in the surveys to achieve the real voice of the customer and to drastically increase Net Promoter Score (NPS). Their product’s intentions and financial activity always differ from occasional users. 

And forget about questioning everybody, because those who aren’t in your heavy user group, will give you wrong answers. Thinking of your heavy users first is the winning strategy for designing a successful sample of a customer satisfaction survey.

Voiptime Cloud intelligence and tools

Actually, by keeping our customers intelligent in the questions such as conducting a successful customer support satisfaction survey, we were asked for tools. And one of the most proven and powerful tools we furnish entrepreneurs, small and mid-sized businesses is the contact center software.

For more than a decade, Voiptime Cloud is the company that delivers cutting-edge contact center & call center survey software for conducting outbound, inbound calls, and post-service survey campaigns. Using our dialers (Predictive, Preview, and Power), you will reach customers in the most convenient and effective way. 

The software integrates with the CRM, so your customer’s data will be ready for calling. The software reduces from the customer service team all manual dialing or chore, leaving only challenging conversations with customers.

Moreover, you will easily reach customers in a precise time, because Voiptime Cloud software has a function of call scheduling within a proper time zone. Thank you!

Eugene Siuch

Content Manager and Copywriter

Focused on customer service measurement and improvement, SaaS marketing and industry insights, and researching different methods of staff motivation and performance management in the field of customer service providing.

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