Nov 24

Written by: Cornerstone Administrator
11/24/2009 8:38 AM 

In a time when it’s becoming even more critical to retain customers, you might consider using surveys to understand and capture your customer’s thoughts and feelings if you do not do so already. Probably the first consideration if you have never used them before is whether to use paper surveys or electronic ones.

Whatever method you select, your rule of thumb should be to never make the survey too long or contain too many questions. Try and keep it short and focused on gaining the specific feedback which you desire. The longer you force people to spend filling out the survey, the more negative their responses will become.

Some common times when our customers send our surveys would include:

• After customer’s first purchase
• After every purchase
• When a product is returned
• When a service provided is disputed
• Whenever a case or incident ticket is resolved
• On a quarterly, semi-annual, or annual basis

Use the fact that you can create custom records easily in CRM to model one or more survey records which can serve to house the results of your records. Create a “one too many” relationship which will allow for an unlimited number of surveys to each Contact record in CRM. As your surveying becomes more complex, you can find ways to automate the flow of survey responses into your CRM application.