Our customer surveying process
GuildQuality’s survey response rate presently stands at 72.0%. We use a pretty straightforward calculation of response rate: The number of customers who responded divided by the number of customers attempted.
Our response rate over time. Roughly 50% respond within two weeks of us starting our process; 60% within 30 days; 70% within 60 days; and then we gain a few extra points after that. Those late respondents are generally customers who let their builder or remodeler know that they missed the original survey and would like to receive the survey again.
Delivering feedback in real-time. As soon as we receive a survey response, the appropriate person (or people) in the member’s office receives an email notification with the response details. At that moment, all of the member’s online reporting is updated to reflect the new response. Those that don’t receive notifications, can see the history of recent responses on the dashboard of their account.
Mail, email, and phone. Every customer receives a survey mailer. If our members provide us with email addresses and phone numbers, their customers will also receive surveys that way.
Our telephone surveying office is in lovely Eatonton, GA. By complete coincidence, it is in the same office building as one of our members.
We get lots of comments. In addition to ratings, customers provide about 25 words of commentary per response. Overall 65% of respondents elaborate with comments. That percentage is lower for email and mail responses, and much higher for phone.
I snagged a few recent comments at random to give you a better idea of the sort of things we hear:
“Darrel, the project manager was wonderful. He did everything very promptly and professionally. Jenny was very informative about the neighborhood and the homes.”
“I was particularly taken with their ability to adapt to the inevitable ‘gotchas’ that show up in almost any job. They were very flexible and extremely accommodating to our needs.”
“They just have too many people working for them messing things up.”
“I love the big kitchen and pantry. I also love my balcony porch on the second floor.”
“We still have an outstanding sprinkler issue. They were supposed to come look at it sometime soon.”
I’ve written a little more about our surveying process and customer satisfaction surveying in general here, here, and here.