How to Analyze Customer Satisfaction Survey Data The Right Way (2023)

As a marketer, I can relate to the love for numbers. Knowing exactly how many people make purchases on your website or having a clear insight into the exact numbers of returning users is a rewarding satisfaction. But what about measuring customer satisfaction?‍

More often than not we tend to find examples of companies pushing the responsibility of metrics regarding customer satisfaction over to customer success or service teams.

So what is the difficulty with measuring customer satisfaction? It is, after all, such an ambiguous metric.

But treating it as such is a grand mistake. Not sure why you should care about customer satisfaction?

Check out our infographic about the importance of customer satisfaction.In this article, I will show you how measuring customer satisfaction is a chore worth taking and how the right approach to tools and methods will make these metrics ease to collect, clear and interpretable.

Let's start with quantitative and qualitative data.

Quantitative Data

That is measurable, countable, convertible into numbers, and statistics data. Analyzing such data with a tool like Google Analytics to get the first glimpse into customer satisfaction.

In theory, you can assume that a customer that buys from you again is satisfied with your services and offer.

Otherwise, they would choose another vendor.

So the percentage of returning visitors and customers can be a good basic measure of customer satisfaction. The easiest way to check this is to dig into Google Analytics to see how many orders come from returning customers.

Keep in mind that depending on the type of business you run, repeat purchases might not necessarily be a good customer satisfaction indicator (car dealers for example).

Therefore quantitative data is not enough. A good qualitative analysis will fill in the blanks.

Qualitative Data

Never forget that customers are real people - their feelings and opinions will speak better for their actions than raw numbers. Here is a very simple but powerful example:

People buy from you on a regular basis.

Why, you should be happy, right? Business is moving and apparently, you are the best around.

However, you do not know the reasons. What if they hate you but buy from you out of necessity, as you are the only option they have? This means that a new entrant will destroy your business and customers will not think twice about going to them instead. Your business will practically die overnight.

That’s why it’s worth to collect qualitative data – it will uncover their motivations, it will show you what customers appreciate, what they dislike, what you should improve, etc.

It will help you build a strong position in the market and you will worry less about possible newcomers.

But most of all, it will create a lasting relationship with your customers.Here are a phew good options for collecting meaningful qualitative data.

Targeted Website Surveys

Before we dive into researching customer satisfaction with targeted website surveys, let’s see what they look like:

Usually, they are used to assess website experience or to research and improve website usability. But you can do far more with them. Firstly, you use them to run a post-purchase survey that will appear on a ‘Thank you’ page.

Secondly, you can use the fact that many (or at least some) customers will return to your website after making a purchase.

You can identify them (based on their cookies and viewing history) and ask about their satisfaction.

It’s an especially useful technique if you don’t have expertise in email marketing – when you want to run email surveys for measuring customer satisfaction you need some know-how on:

• how to avoid spam filters
• how to land in the primary inbox
• how to write an effective email copy encouraging people to give you feedback

But if you’re familiar with email marketing, you can use email surveys, which bring us to the next point.

Targeted Email Surveys

Email marketing is an important way to keep in touch with your customers. This is why so many companies send newsletters, promote special offers via email, etc.

This distribution channel is one of the best ways for measuring customer satisfaction with two different approaches.

As a first option, you can create a standard customer survey and link it to it in an email inviting to participate in the CSAT survey. You can use Google Forms to run a survey this way.

Keep in mind, this isn't the most efficient method, but it gets the job done if your volumes are low.

The second and far better options is surveying with the first question embedded in the email. Whatever the respondent chooses gets counted as a response to the first question and the next question is displayed on a new tab.

Even if the respondent abandons the survey, their first answer is still recorded.

Pro tip: Learn more about email surveys in our complete guide.

Whether you choose targeted website surveys or email surveys, there are a few features you should look for in customer satisfaction and survey software you want to use to research customer satisfaction.

• Skip logic (or question/conditional branching): It’s a must-have of all survey tools. It allows you to show a different question based on an answer to the previous one. Both the user experience and the validity of results are improved this way.

  For example, instead of asking “What car do you drive if you own a car?” just ask “Do you own a car?”. If the respondent answers yes, the following question can ask to specify the model. Also, throwing one direct question per one step makes a online survey seem straightforward and easier to complete.

• Custom design: customer surveys make a part of your overall customer experience at the company. So, make your customer surveys convey the branding and comply with your visual identification. Implement your company colors and logo on customer surveys proudly. So make sure the survey software you are using offers custom CSS to give you control over design.
• Multiple survey question types: The simplest survey tools will most probably limit you to asking single-choice questions or open questions. In this case keep in mind, a good survey software will provide you unlimited survey question types. Smiley Scales, ticks, sliders, etc.

Define What to Measure

Now, you know how to start measuring customer satisfaction – targeted website surveys, email surveys, or both.

It’s time to define what exactly to measure. Customer satisfaction is a wide term and you must narrow it down to several survey questions you will ask customers.

If you the question ‘How satisfied are you with our company’ don’t expect high response rates – people will not know what you mean and what kind of answer you expect. In such case, survey results won’t be very actionable.

Instead, I recommend 2 closed-ended questions.

Net Promoter Score. Ask an NPS question

‘How likely are you to recommend our company to a friend or colleague?’

Next follow-up with a 'Why' question.

‍Pro tip: If you want to learn more about NPS take a look at our Net Promoter Score Guide.

Free-to-Use NPS Survey Template

Likelihood of returning

‍Loyal customers who buy from you again and again, they are the key to the profitability of businesses.

That’s why you should ask new customers how likely they are to buy from you again. Ask them a question like

‘How likely are you to buy again from us in the next 3/6/12 etc. months?’

Do you like this survey idea? Use our post purchase survey template right away (or at least try it free)!

Free Purchase Survey Template

Those two survey questions work best if you want to measure overall customer satisfaction and then transactional customer satisfaction. They will get you some meaningful insights to analyze.

Of course, there are also other survey questions worth asking your customers to examine customer satisfaction but numbers are easier to track and help you to spot some trends.

Most importantly, you can easily push numbers and answers to closed questions to Google Analytics.

We highly encourage you to learn more from our the complete guide about customer satisfaction metrics to measure in 2021.

How to Combine Qualitative and Quantitative Data

Now, I’ll show you how to can combine qualitative and quantitative data. You will need Google Analytics and a good survey software like Survicate that offers native integration between the tools.

‍Here’s the trick:

1. Integrate a survey tool with Google Analytics.
2. This way your survey responses will feed GA data as events.
3. Then, create an advanced segment to observe the user behavior who gave you certain CSAT scores or answered customer satisfaction surveys in a certain way.
4. Thanks to that, you see how survey responses translate into behavior like visits to your website and purchases!

That’s the ultimate trick of people who are really into measuring customer satisfaction. 💪

‍After a while, you’ll be able to observe some meaningful trends and see how survey responses translate into user behavior.

For example, you’ll see that 50% of people who say they will purchase again actually do it. As a result you will be able to cut the guesswork and start calculating LTV more accurately and thus better allocate marketing and sales budgets.

‍Pro tip: Learn more about Survicate Google Analytics integration.

Conclusion

To sum up, you can measure customer satisfaction using quantitative and qualitative data.

Qualitative data can be gathered with customer satisfaction survey like this one ‍

and conducted with targeted website surveys or surveys distributed via email. Combining survey responses with data collected by Google Analytics will help you relate answers to user behavior and this way observe customers satisfaction trends. In order to achieve it, choose a survey tool integrated with Google Analytics, like Survicate.

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Read next:

• How to implement customer satisfaction process
• 10 tips how to improve customer satisfaction