Is your customer survey a happening?
- Do you do a customer survey a year?
It is not uncommon for customer surveys to still take place with the management of customer lists, a lump in the stomach and a management report that shows what the customers think, but does not answer what you should do?
- That's what I did before I understood why.
I wanted to gather the knowledge from customer surveys without using industry terms and at the same time punch holes in old truths. That's advice to my younger self when I conducted a traditional customer survey for our company at the time.

Magnus is certified in NPS®. Educates in customer loyalty and is behind one of the world's most visited websites in the field.
With 15 years in the industry, he has conducted surveys for over 15,000 organizations including many of Scandinavia's largest companies.
Why do you do a customer survey?
The only honest answer to that question is because you want to make more money. All other answers are just paraphrases of steps on the way to that.
I really wasn't convinced when I entered the industry. To me, "satisfied customers" was a fluke and something that my former company did just because every other company did it. That's also why we didn't get anything out of it.
Here is the short explanation why:
- It's never about satisfied customers! - So, now I've said it!
- It's about lowering the cost of getting new customers.
- It's about keeping customers longer, so that each new deal means more customers and not just replacing a lost one.
It is a tool to grow the customer base and if done right, that effect will come.

Lower the cost of new customers
The cost of new customers is all the costs you spend on salespeople, marketing and PR. Divide all such expenses by the number of new customers you get and you have the cost per customer. The best way to lower that cost is to:
- Let others market you for you.
You already have customers who brought you new customers or that customer who changed jobs and now the new company also buys from you. If you work in an industry with guests, you have some guests who always bring their friends.
You must know who your ambassadors are.
Your task is to activate them. It is much cheaper than advertising and you must make it easier for them to help you.
Retain customers longer
Acquiring new customers costs money. If you want more customers, all sales and marketing efforts first need to replace the customers you lost.
If you lose 5 customers, you need to acquire 6 new ones to be able to grow at all. Imagine if you only lost 1 or 2 customers and therefore instead gained 4 or 5 more customers. Then the growth rate increases significantly.
You must know which customers you will lose and why. You must avoid losing them to increase the customer base.
Any effort that retains a customer and at the same time costs less than acquiring a new customer has paid off immediately.
The first step is to know who is to be saved.
Anonymous is doomed
If the customer survey is done anonymously, it therefore needs to be changed immediately.
The purpose is to identify your relationship with all your customers. If your customers are companies, you need to know what each decision maker (not just your daily contact) thinks.
An important thought exercise is to see each response to the customer survey as an email from a customer and not as part of a stack. It was from Lisa and not from 2% of the customers.
If your best customer emailed you and said they might as well switch to one of your competitors because you're not paying attention. Hadn't you acted on it then?
Your way of working with a customer survey must be customer by customer and answer by answer, not bar by bar.

- No anonymous survey
- Customers will respond anyway
Unnecessary questions that do not help
Surveys almost always have too many questions. It's easy to get stuck on questions and they can stop the whole process. Everyone can have opinions on issues and if the customer thinks it is important, they will mention it anyway.
All you need to know is:
- Is the relationship with the customer good? Or does it need to be improved.
- Why? What will you do? You must be able to act on the answer.
If you ask questions in the survey where the question does not tell you exactly what to do, they can be removed. Then that question is not there to make something better but to see how bad something is, to satisfy a curiosity or pure internal politics.
It does not help the customer relationship.
An example is hotel surveys that ask what you think about the cleaning (1-5 stars). There are two problems with this:
- Nobody cares about the cleaning if it was good.
- A response with a low cleanliness rating drowns out everyone who rates 5 stars because they didn't care.

- How is the relationship with the customer?
- What should be fixed?
A customer survey is not an annual report
There is no management that controls a company in the annual report. Measuring and acting on income and costs takes place in everyday life. A good customer survey also tells you what effect comes from the changes you make during the year.
If you are to act on all customers' responses in the way I describe, you will not be able to cope if you receive all responses for two weeks a year. You have to spread it out, but it's only good. Listen to your customers a little every day instead.
You will be able to fix their problems and answer them if there are a few answers a day. They can get the focus needed to save those you risk losing.
The work with annual surveys works against improvement. The focus is wrong in the organization. The focus is on sending out the survey and who will receive it and not on what must be done for the customers who respond.
Customer lists are discussed and reconciled with customer managers. There are an infinite number of arguments for why a certain customer should not be included in the survey. They are always rooted in fear of tackling a problem which does not improve your business or the relationship with the customer. If you have a problem, it needs to be visible. Sometimes they are not problems but just worries.
Do not allow the ostrich method by connecting the survey directly to your customer list, CRM or booking system. Everyone who knows who you are should join so that you know who are ambassadors and who you need to work with.
Then the survey can also be automated and the work with mailings disappears. The focus shifts to acting on what the customers actually want!
If you include customer feedback in everyday life, you will be able to handle what comes in and thus retain more customers. Why aren't the customers in your Teams or Slack so that their voice is always present and motivating?

- Contact information directly from the system
- Stop ostrich tactics
- Stop cheating with results

- Act on customer feedback.
- Make feedback natural.
The mistake of celebrating with cake
If I had conducted the customer survey like this when I conducted my first customer survey, the effect would have been completely different.
We got a high level of customer satisfaction and celebrated with cake, but at the same time didn't know what to do with the result or how well we stood in comparison to other companies.
But at least we got a cake.
If you follow the advice, you will get more out of your customer survey and get more customers.