Posted by Charlotte Lamb.

I to Eye had never undertaken a survey before when we decided to find out what our existing customers thought of us. We intended to reinvent our marketing materials and we wanted to discover our customer’s perceptions of our service. We thought that through understanding what we are good at, or not so good at, then we could improve our services and promote the things we’re already getting right on our materials.

We set up an online survey, designed the layout and set up the questions and spaces for the responses. Then we emailed the link to our customers to ask them to fill in the blanks with their opinions. The survey software would collate all the information and present it to us when we logged in.

Our first job was to work out what we wanted to know. We decided to start with a general question about what service we had provided so we could also measure which jobs made up what percentage of our work as well as helping put subsequent comments into perspective. We then asked how we were doing on several aspects of our work and asked respondents to rate us over a 5-point scale. We also gave our customers a space to put any specific comments or complaints they would like to bring to our attention.

Another space on the form enabled customers to tell us if there was a service they needed but we don’t currently provide. This speculative question was not filled-in by most customers but the ones who did have given us three ideas for new services that we are going to use in our new materials.

We also wanted to find out if we would be able to count on our customers coming back to us with more work, and if they would recommend us to anyone else they knew or worked with. Were we doing well enough to count on our customers becoming our advocates to others? Lucky for us 100% of respondents said they would use us again and they would recommend us to others they knew.

The results have made us much clearer about our strengths and the areas we need to improve but the important thing is that until we asked we were in the dark. Now we intend to go away and come up with plans to improve our service for all our customers.

If you were one of those who responded to our pleas for information, thanks so much for filling it in. We promise we are going to be even better from now on.

Would you like us to design and build a survey for you? We can also help you put the results into action. Get in touch, we are sure the results will help your understanding of your business and eventually, help you make more money! Call I to Eye on 01962 737989 and speak to David Woodroofe about your survey today.