Customer Service Surveys: Measuring Agent Feedback To Boost Customer Relationship

A truly exceptional customer service experience is unexpectedly rare. And when you come across a brand that has mastered its customer service, it leaves a mark on your mind.  

Today, 96% of customers recognize customer service as paramount for brand choice and customer loyalty. It's no surprise that a majority of businesses are prioritizing customer service performance.

At the heart of delivering customer-centric services and experience lies a potent tool- customer service surveys.

By actively asking customer service survey questions, you can gather valuable feedback and gain a comprehensive understanding of your service team's performance, areas for improvement, and make informed business decisions.

In this blog, we will delve deeper into customer service surveys and look at the major survey questions, examples, best practices and quick-to-use survey templates. Let's get started!

TL;DR

• A customer service survey enables businesses to gauge the effectiveness of their customer service and support teams. The data collected can help measure service quality, prevent customer churn, improve standards of service, and overall, increase customer retention.  

• With customer service representatives being the frontline workers of your company, these surveys can help you build a stronger customer relationship and boost agent satisfaction.  

• When collected using the right customer service survey questions, these surveys can help you improve the overall agent, self-service articles, and help desk's effectiveness and performance. 

• Brands like Amazon, Slack, Birchbox, and others are leveraging these surveys to improve their services and enhance the overall experience. 

• You can use templates to create your surveys by simply signing up with Zonka Feedback for a 7-day free trial. Or, you can book a demo to understand how you can create your surveys from scratch or using templates.  

What is a Customer Service Survey?

Customer service surveys are used by businesses to gather feedback from customers about their experiences with the company's customer service interactions with frontline, helpdesk, service agents, and more. These surveys aim to assess the performance of the customer service department, identify areas for improvement, and ensure customer needs are met.

They include quantitative and qualitative data questions about satisfaction levels, issue resolution, communication effectiveness, and agent professionalism.

Significance of Customer Service Surveys

Conducting customer service surveys can offer numerous benefits to a business that strives to attract and retain customers while maintaining steady growth. By asking the right survey questions and following best practices for survey distribution and analysis, businesses can leverage customer feedback to enhance their customer service processes and ultimately grow their business.

Here are a few reasons why you must incorporate these surveys to deliver excellent customer service.

• Lower Churn Rate: Conducting frequent customer service surveys can help you track your agents' performance and the performance of your Customer service processes. It can help you deliver enhanced services or products to the customers, resolve their queries more quickly, and improve their overall satisfaction and experience with your business.

• Identify Areas of Improvement: A customer service survey that measures customer service performance can uncover workflow issues, product or service issues, knowledge base gaps, and training needs to make impactful changes.

• Increased Referrals: When you manage to deliver excellent customer service to a customer, they remember. Taking customer feedback into consideration, implementing changes, and keeping them informed can go a long way in gaining loyal customers, increasing Net Promoter Score (NPS) and gaining referrals.

• Improve Standards of Customer Service: Conducting customer service surveys can help you keep track of your satisfaction level with your services and products, customer service representative performance, and service quality to maintain high standards.

• Measure Agent Performance: The analytics and reports received from your service survey can help measure agent performance. It can connect the responses with each agent and help you identify their shortcomings, the info they lack, and what are the areas that require training.  

Customer Service Survey Questions You Should Ask

When it comes to conducting customer service surveys, including important customer service survey questions will not only help you gauge customer satisfaction but also provide actionable insights into areas of improvement for your support and success teams.

Let us look at these customer service survey questions that can help you gain crucial data on your organization's performance and enhance customer experience.

1. Did our customer service agent address all of your concerns adequately?

Asking this customer service survey question can help you measure customer service performance and how effectively issues are getting resolved by your support team. Once you have satisfied customers with the resolution offered by the customer agent, they're highly likely to stay connected and continue their journey further. 

Respondents can answer with "Yes" or "No," indicating if their concerns were addressed. Based on the response received, you can measure customer satisfaction and analyze the data to identify agents' query resolution performance and training needs.

2. How satisfied are you with your recent interaction with our customer service team? 

This is one of the most crucial customer service survey questions to ask your customers to understand their satisfaction level with your customer service and support team. 

This survey question aims to gauge customers' overall impression of their interaction with your customer service representatives. It offers a range of satisfaction options for customers to choose from, providing you with an idea of customer sentiment thereby improving service.

3. How much effort did you put into getting your query resolved?

Customer service surveys can help you identify the amount of effort put in by the customers to get their queries resolved. The less effort they put in, the happier they'll be with your business. And you cannot get enough of happy customers. 

In fact, less effort from customers not only means that they can get quick support but also indicates that your workflows are smooth. It can eventually lead to an increase in the retention rate.

4. How responsive have we been in answering your concerns regarding our product?

This is one of the most popular customer service survey questions that can be asked immediately after customers' interaction with your service team. It demonstrates your commitment to providing excellent customer service and shows that you are genuinely interested in their experience.

By asking for customers' opinions, you create a sense of importance and encourage them to share their thoughts openly, thereby ensuring customer retention and enhancing the overall customer service experience.

5. To what extent do you agree with the following statement: "The company made it easy for me to handle my issue."

CES survey questions like these allow you to assess the effectiveness of your product or service, find out issues that are more complex to solve, know if the customer service agents have adequate training to handle customer queries, and so on.

Furthermore, these customer effort score questions can help you gauge the level of training and expertise of your customer service agents. By asking customers about their interactions with your support team, you can determine if your agents have the appropriate knowledge and skills to effectively handle customer queries.

6. Based on your recent support call, how easy or difficult was it to interact with our agent?

Such agent feedback survey questions allow you to measure the performance of your customer service agents and their efficiency in handling client concerns. By asking your target audience about their interactions with your support team, you can identify any gaps in training or knowledge that may exist in your customer service interaction.

This information can then be used to provide additional training or support to your service team member, ensuring that they have the necessary skills and expertise to deliver exceptional customer service and improve customer relationships.

7. Were you able to reach our frontline staff easily when you needed assistance?

This is one of the most popular customer service survey questions that help you understand how much effort the customer had to put in to reach your frontline staff. By gauging the ease of access to your frontline staff, you can gain valuable insights into the efficiency of your customer service channels.

This information can then be used to streamline and improve your customer service processes, ensuring that customers can easily and conveniently access the support they need.

8. Was our customer service representative knowledgeable and helpful?

This question also forms a part of customer feedback survey and assesses the effectiveness of your support team by evaluating their knowledge and helpfulness in resolving customer issues. Positive responses indicate a well-trained team, while negative responses can highlight areas for improvement in training and support.

It also helps identify specific areas where additional training or resources may be needed to enhance the customer service experience and stand up to customer expectations.

9. How would you rate the professionalism of the customer service representative?

This question evaluates the professionalism of your customer service representative, providing insights into how customers perceive the interactions. Positive ratings indicate a professional approach, while negative ratings can identify areas for improvement in customer service training and behavior.

10. Were you satisfied with the time it took to resolve your support ticket?

This is one of the most crucial customer service survey questions for understanding the efficiency of your customer service team in resolving support tickets. If customers indicate that they were not satisfied with the time it took to resolve their support ticket regarding product or service, it could indicate a need to streamline your processes or allocate more resources to handle customer inquiries on time.

On the other hand, if customers are satisfied with the resolution time, it affirms that your team is performing well in this aspect and leads to increased customer retention.

Other Important Customer Service Surveys Sample Questions

Apart from the questions that we have discussed above, there are some other questions that you can ask your customers to capture their feedback regarding your customer success teams or support processes. Let us look at them.

a. Simple Yes or No Customer Service Survey Question

These are very popularly used closed-ended questions that can help gauge customer sentiments in terms of a simple yes or no. The binary nature of these questions also makes it easier to analyze and interpret the survey results.

Overall, these yes/no questions are a valuable tool for businesses to perform customer sentiment analysis and make data-driven decisions to enhance their customer service.

• Did our representative resolve your issue to your satisfaction?

• Was the customer service representative friendly and helpful?

• Did you find it easy to get in touch with us?

• Was our customer service representative knowledgeable?

b. Overall & Agent Satisfaction Survey Questions

It is absolutely crucial to gauge the satisfaction level of customers once any issue or customer service ticket is resolved. Using agent satisfaction survey questions for your service survey, you can easily identify how satisfied customers are with the support provided. 

• How satisfied are you with the service provided by our agent?

• Please rate your overall satisfaction with our Customer Service Agent

• How well does our Customer Service meet your needs?

c. Customer Service Feedback Survey Question to Gauge Loyalty

The next service feedback question you can ask in your survey is to understand how loyal your customers are and their recommendation level. Here are some questions that revolve around capturing Net Promoter Score as well as overall customer loyalty, and can be used in customer feedback surveys.

• How likely are you to recommend our company to a friend, family or colleague?

• On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend us to someone like you?

• What would you say to someone who asks about us?

• Is there anything else you would like us to know?

d. Questions To Measure Agent Performance

These are questions that help capture the agent's performance, their knowledge, how quickly they resolved the issues, and much more. Measuring agent performance through surveys can provide valuable insights into the customer service experience.

Here are some survey questions you can use to assess agent performance:

• How knowledgeable would you say our service or support team member was? 

• Did the agent provide a clear and accurate solution to your problem?

• Did the agent take the time to listen to your concerns and questions?

e. Rating Scale Questions for Customer Service

Be it a 1 to 5 rating scale, a 0-10 rating scale, 1 to 10 rating scale surveys, or a three-point, four-point, seven-point, or other rating scale, these can be very effective in capturing quantitative data from your customers about their interaction with the service teams.

You can use different ratings in the scale and ask the customers to rate them based on different parameters. 

These questions could include:

• How satisfied were you with the timeliness of the response to your inquiry? (Poor to Excellent)

• Rate the clarity of the information provided by the customer service agent. (1 to 5, 1 to 10, etc.)

f. Survey Questions on a Likert Scale

Likert scale surveys, with their radio button matrix, help gauge customer feedback based on their interaction on different parameters. You can use the agreement scale, satisfaction scale, frequency scale, and other scales to get customer feedback. 

Here is a quick customer service survey example with the Likert scale questions. 

• Please rate your agreement level on the following statements:

  • The customer service representative made me feel valued as a customer.

  • The customer service representative displayed a good understanding of the subject matter.

  • I would recommend this company's customer service to others.

Customer Service Surveys Best Practices

When equipped with the right tools or the best survey apps, customer service surveys can be easy to conduct, and so is analyzing their results. There are a few tips and best practices you can follow to improve the effectiveness of your customer feedback survey

1. Define Your Survey Goals

There's no point in conducting surveys if you don't know what you're trying to achieve with them or what to do with the customer's response. Setting clear goals like tracking agent performance metrics, efficiency of the Help Desk, customer success team performance, etc., can help you maximize the value of your surveys.

Make sure you have processes that can help you compare trends and analyze the survey results.

2. Be Transparent

While conducting customer service surveys, be clear about your intentions regarding what you're trying to achieve and let them know how long it will take to complete the surveys. It will bring you one step closer to getting favorable responses.

3. Avoid Survey Fatigue

To maximize engagement and completion rates, keep surveys short and relevant, avoiding lengthy forms that may not provide immediate value.

Reduce open-ended questions and make it easy for respondents to complete the survey quickly. Utilize survey throttling feature to manage survey distribution frequency, preventing survey fatigue by controlling when surveys are sent out.

Ways to Collect Agent Feedback Effectively 

Leveraging channels that are relevant to your customers is essential for effectively collecting agent feedback and encouraging more participation. By utilizing these channels, you can drive instantaneous action and gather valuable insights from your customers.

Here are some of the channels that you can use:

1. In-signature or Embed Surveys in Email

Sending surveys through email is a common and effective method for collecting agent feedback. You can include a survey link in your email or send out targeted email surveys and encourage customers to provide their feedback on their recent customer service experience. Or, you can embed an in-signature email survey in your emails and have the customer directly respond there. 

2. Live Chat

If your customers interact with your service team through live chat on your website or app, you can prompt them to fill out a survey after their chat session. This allows customers to provide feedback in real time while the experience is still fresh in their minds.

3. In-app/In-product

If you have a mobile app, you can integrate a survey feature within the app itself. This allows customers to easily provide feedback without having to leave the app. Mobile app surveys are a convenient and seamless way to collect agent feedback when customers have interacted via the app itself. Similar to the in-app survey, you can also embed a survey within your product or software. 

4. Website Widgets or Forms

Adding a popup survey right after a ticket is resolved or a feedback form on your website support page is another effective way to collect help desk feedback. You can use website feedback widgets to prompt customers to provide their feedback after they have interacted with your customer service team or received support on your website.

5. SMS or Text Surveys

For customers who prefer to communicate via text message, sending a survey link through SMS can be a great option. This allows customers to provide feedback using their mobile devices, making it convenient and accessible for them.

💡On top of all the above factors, the most crucial factor that can maximize the value of your surveys is robust feedback software. An effective tool can office you flexibility and ease of distributing & handling survey responses.

For instance, with Zonka Feedback, you can easily create engaging surveys and distribute them quickly via channels, including website, SMS, email, mobile, offline, and third-party integrations.

It also offers in-depth analytics and survey reports on the collected data by turning them into actionable insights that can help improve your customer service experience.

Customer Service Survey Templates You Can Use

Zonka Feedback offers a plethora of pre-built templates to build your customer service surveys. Here are some of the templates that you can use to capture the feedback of your customer service agents or frontline staff or the help and support team. 

1. Detailed (Customer Effort Score) CES with Key Indicators

Customer Effort Score (CES) with key indicators like knowledge base, real-time chat with agents, faster resolution, and more accuracy are essential components of a successful customer service feedback survey that you can ask in surveys for customer service.

By incorporating these key indicators into your customer effort score survey or CES surveys, you can gather valuable data on the effectiveness of your knowledge base, the efficiency of your real-time chat system, the speed of issue resolution, and the accuracy of the information provided to customers.

Here is a detailed CES survey template that you can use:

2. Support Ticket Satisfaction 

The next template that you can use is designed specifically to gauge and measure the level of satisfaction that your customers have with the support agent after a support ticket is issued or closed. This template is crucial to collect feedback and gain insights into the overall customer experience and the effectiveness of your support team. 

You can create surveys using this template and send them when the ticket status is updated, solved, or closed. This support ticket satisfaction survey template is an excellent tool for monitoring agent performance and identifying areas for improvement.

3. Customer Success Program Evaluation 

By regularly collecting customer feedback, you can identify areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments to enhance the customer experience. This can include implementing additional training for your agents, improving the resources available in your Help Desk, or refining your overall Customer Success strategy.

The customer success program evaluation survey template is a valuable tool that can be customized to fit your specific needs. You can easily modify the questions based on your goals and requirements.

How Successful Brands Use Customer Service Surveys

Many successful brands have utilized customer service surveys to gather feedback and improve their customer experience. Here are some of the brands that have succeeded using a customer service survey. 

1. Lululemon

One of the most popular brands, Lululemon uses real-time customer feedback to design its training programs for the customer support teams. They use the feedback to train their new contact center employees and help deliver better service to their customers. They analyze the feedback and use the pain points and other highlights from the survey reports to let their teams serve better. 

2. Slack

Slack is among the top platforms that know how to get good customer service surveys as it frequently collects customer feedback to improve knowledge base & its experience. The platform even allows you to raise a ticket to request a specific feature to the Slack Team and focuses on closing those tickets. 

3. Amazon

Amazon, being the largest online retailer, also ensures customer satisfaction using Customer Service Surveys. Post every customer service interaction, the company sends the customers a survey as shown above to get feedback on their representatives and provide superior quality service to improve the number of satisfied and loyal customer.

4. Birchbox

The next customer service survey example is set by the brand Birchbox. The customer experience team at Birchbox uses the feedback received from customers to identify how the agents can follow up on the concern. They flag any negative feedback and let the agents or customer service representatives know about the same to help them effectively follow up and also coach the team to avoid such negative responses in the future. 

Conclusion

Offering a great customer service experience starts with taking customer feedback at various touchpoints of the customer journey. When you conduct Customer Service Surveys and work on the collected insights, you can make your customers feel valued. Most importantly, when you optimize and improve agent performance, your customers tend to become more satisfied with your business. 

With Zonka Feedback's comprehensive customer feedback software, you can easily create and distribute surveys to capture honest feedback about your services across the customer lifecycle. You can track agent performance and get detailed survey reports.

Zonka Feedback is a powerful survey tool that makes it easy to conduct customer service surveys.

You can also avail 14-day free trial of Zonka Feedback and start creating your customer service surveys. Get started now!