How to Focus on the Customer Interview Question
Knowing what every customer thinks about your establishment is a valuable resource to creating customer loyalty and increasing sales. One way of finding out the level of satisfaction with your store or restaurant is by conducting a customer survey. This method involves more than just asking a question or two on the customer's way out. Focus on customer interview questions that will give you an in-depth insight to the needs of your clientele and ways to improve customers' experiences.
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Instructions
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Create a form that you hand to your customers as they exit your store. Make it a self-addressed, postage-paid return card or ask your customers to bring it back at their next visit and drop it in a designated box. You may choose to call customers, if you have a database of phone numbers, to survey them over the telephone.
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Offer a discount to customers who participate in order to have a large sampling of data. Give a free item on their return visit or a percentage off of their total bill.
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Establish the process that you would like to use and your objective in interviewing your customers. If you are reacting to a complaint or a drop in profits, then focus on the specific issue and why a customer may not return to your establishment. If you are being proactive to ensure that patrons are receiving consistent customer service, make your questions more general in nature.
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Know if you will offer open-ended questions or those that ask for ratings. An open-ended question requires the customer to write comments on the survey. Surveys with ratings give choices ranging from "less than satisfactory" to "outstanding" or "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree," for example.
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Write open-ended questions, such as "Please describe your level of satisfaction with the representative who served you during your last visit."
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Formulate ratings questions, such as "Do you agree or disagree that the quality of customer service was responsive to your needs?" Answer choices are: "strongly agree," "agree," "no opinion," "disagree" and "strongly disagree." Instead, you may ask, "Rate the quality of customer service during a product return." Choices would be: "outstanding," "satisfactory," "not applicable" or "less than satisfactory."
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Use an online service that focuses on customer surveys as an alternative to creating your own interview questions and help you collect your customer data (see Resources).
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Tips & Warnings
Focus on customer interview surveys before you have a problem in order to determine if changes to the way you conduct business are necessary.
