Franchise Customer Satisfaction Survey Best Practices

Key Points: 

• Define exactly what you want to measure, whether it’s loyalty, service quality, or customer needs, so you can choose the right survey type, length, and questions.

• Limit the number of questions, avoid survey fatigue, and make the experience easy and interesting to boost completion rates.

• Act on the feedback. Analyze survey data to identify trends, share back with franchisees and customers, and continuously improve your franchise system over time.

Interested in customer survey best practices that will actually engage your customers and help you gain valuable insights to improve your franchise system? Franchise Business Review (FBR) has been conducting franchise customer surveys for years, and we have effective tactics, tips, and proven strategies to share. 

Why Customer Satisfaction Surveys Matter

Customers are the heart of the franchise model, of any business model, really. Without customers, franchise owners would just be running really expensive hobbies.

Service, customer satisfaction, and the experience of engaging with your brand are at the root of the business. Collecting customer feedback is how we can understand and enhance the customer experience in our brands.

When you gather customer feedback through surveys, you can measure, assess, and understand how to improve your customer satisfaction, customer retention, and brand reputation. When all of these improve, your bottom line, franchisee satisfaction, and overall business performance improve simultaneously.

Key Elements of an Effective Customer Satisfaction Survey

Creating an effective customer satisfaction survey involves defining your goals, choosing the right format, using strategic questions, and avoiding survey fatigue. 

Setting Clear Objectives

When setting up your customer satisfaction survey, understand what you want to measure. Do you want to identify how to retain more loyal customers? Understand your ideal customer better? Having a clear objective will help you select the most effective options for survey type, questions, and length. 

Choosing the Right Survey Type 

Surveys can be sent out via email, text, done in-store, through individual interviews, or in groups. The kind of survey you want to conduct will depend on your objectives. Get in touch for more information on how to select the right survey type based on your goals.

Selecting the Right Questions

Depending on your objective and survey format, you may want to use more open-ended questions or more multiple-choice questions. You’ll want to know how much time and incentive your customers will have for completing the survey.

Here are some examples of different kinds of survey questions:

• How clean and well-maintained did you find our facility? 
• What’s the main reason you would choose us over competitors?
• How satisfied were you with the variety of options available? 
• What new products or services would you like to see us offer?
• How would you rate the friendliness of our staff?

Keeping It Short and Engaging 

Survey fatigue is real. People don’t have the time or interest to complete long, time-consuming surveys. Avoid asking too many questions in your survey, and instead focus on gaining information that addresses your main objective. Using interesting visuals, simple user explanations, or even survey reply suggestions are all useful tactics that can increase engagement as well.

How to Improve Survey Response Rates

To avoid being disappointed by low survey response rates, try these tactics to improve the rate of replies and engage your customers in the process.

Leverage Timing and Frequency

Time the sending of your surveys for the best results. It feels like a basic recommendation, but try to AVOID major holidays or times when customers may be extra busy, such as summer holidays. Mid-week, such as Tuesday, is often a good day as more people are willing to answer surveys at work rather than during personal time.

Early morning tends to work well, when customers can sit down to their emails or phones and see your survey request right away. Time your survey request within 24 hours of their last experience with your brand so the experience is still fresh.

Use Incentives & Personalization

Personalization, even just first names, can go a long way in engaging customers. Perhaps you’re a pet grooming brand that sends a photo of their groomed pet to clients after the appointment. Asking for survey feedback in that personalized email would be a great way to boost survey engagement.

Encouraging participation could also look like incentives, discounts, or an entry to win a giveaway or gift card. The size of the incentives will depend largely on the goal of the survey.

Try Multiple Survey Channels

You’re not stuck with using just one channel for sharing your survey. Depending on the survey’s objective, you could share it across email marketing, SMS campaigns, social media content, in your branded app, or splashed across the top of your website.

By using different channels, you’re more likely to capture your customer’s attention at different points in the sales funnel and be able to target more demographics or ideal client personas.

Leveraging Survey Results for Business Growth

When you have your customer survey results back, you can use the data and feedback to optimize your customer experience, operations, employee or franchisee training, franchise development, marketing, and more!

Identifying Trends and Pain Points

Based on your objective, your customer satisfaction survey results will reveal trends and common challenges your customers have with your business. Use the data analytics and feedback to spot the areas where your brand is thriving, and the areas where you need to take action to see growth.

Taking Action on Feedback

Closing the feedback loop is an important part of creating a positive customer experience. Take action on the feedback you received from your customers and share it with them! Be transparent about areas you listened to and improved, or where you’re focusing your attention based on their survey results.

Measuring Improvement Over Time

Surveys are not a one-and-done exercise. Customer satisfaction surveys are a tool that measures improvement as a company over time. Creating a continuous feedback cycle where you ask for feedback, take action, share the results, and then ask for more feedback is a winning strategy for loyal, repeat customers. Include surveys in your annual or quarterly plans for the best results.

You Can Start Customer Survey Best Practices Today

Customer experience is everything—so customer feedback is everything. You can begin the process of a franchise customer survey today by following the steps and best practices laid out in this article. Or, reach out to FBR for more information on getting started.

The important thing is you start, and allow the customer feedback loop to begin with objective-based, engaging, well-timed, results-oriented surveys. 

Want third-party, professional support with your customer satisfaction survey? FBR uses a proven survey process and our cloud-based analytics tool so you can easily:

• Filter data to pinpoint areas of success and areas for improvement.
• Create custom reports in seconds.
• Visually identify strengths and weaknesses using heatmaps.

Book a demo of the FBR customer satisfaction surveys in action! Our team will show you the survey setup, reporting dashboard, answer your questions, and more.

Related Resource

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