Year End Survey

dumplin1078

I was thinking about doing a year end survey this year and I was wondering what some of you thought about it. Does any one do it? What I was thinking was a short survey with the usual questions about our performance etc. I was thinking about doing a drawing or something for the customers who return the survey. Any ideas?

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"I hate to tell you this, but you're a man. You're going to spend your life gettin' up one more time than you get knocked down." John Wayne

dirt diggler

I did this last year

I'd say the best effect this had was that everyone was impressed that I was doing this. Some just thought it was "cute" (wasn't sure how to take that one)

I made each one anonymous so that each client could give their honest opinions.

By the time they all came back, I had already done some reflecting of my own --- and any criticism was already known, or made aware of.

But a great idea --- and it's just one more excuse to keep in touch with past clients (the main idea)

dumplin1078

That's pretty much what I was thinking. First I am always looking for ways to improve, and second it keeps my name out there. Right now I do thank you cards one week after job is finished, and christmas cards. I had that same response from the thank you cards, "that's so profesional your wife must have thought of that."

__________________
"I hate to tell you this, but you're a man. You're going to spend your life gettin' up one more time than you get knocked down." John Wayne

Debookkeeper

Sound like you are on the right track Rick! My GC after doing large jobs will send a nice flower/fruit basket to his clients. We also have an annual xmas party for vendors and customers. Good customer relationship is what gets the verbal referrals. All is work is either repeat or referral.

Mike Finley

Why would you do a survey at the end of the year? If you're truly interested in improvement and finding out how you are doing, wouldn't it be a bit better to do them right after each job?

A follow up done once a year, means some people would be getting a survey 12 months after the job and others would be getting a survey 1 month after the job.

copusbuilder

The BBB has a little form that you can give the customer that grades your services, saleperson etc. The customer thinks it is going to the BBB and it is directly mailed back to you...... it has been valuable in customer feedback for us...That said it is the only thing worth a crap from the BBB
That is from the what it's woth department

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Debookkeeper

Ya know - Mike has a point. Maybe it would be better to do it quarterly. That way the it would range from 3 months to a few weeks since completion. I don't think 3 months is too long, because if there was an immediate problem - they would have called you.

dumplin1078

That's a good point Mike, I hadn't really thought about it that way. Maybe quarterly is the way to go. I thought about the christmas party thing too.

__________________
"I hate to tell you this, but you're a man. You're going to spend your life gettin' up one more time than you get knocked down." John Wayne

dayspring

I leave a survey after each job is complete, along with a stamped and addressed envelope. I ask the client to complete it and stick it in the mail at their conveinence. Most are happy to do this and I use them (with permission) when meeting with new clients.

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marc

We send out a survey after every job. We also call it a warranty activation form and we get 100% of them back. We learn a lot from it. We even ask them their age, income, value of the home. This helps us with our demographics so that we can target the same type of people.

Mike Finley

Maybe after each job is the way to go?

Really, all you have to do is ask yourself what do you want to get out of this?

• If you want to know where you do well and where you need improvement then survey right after each job.
  
• If you want to know how your work is holding up, survey 3 months after each job.
  
• If you want to stay in touch with your customers and drum up some repeat business, call them 12 months after their job.

Melissa

Would it be anonymous though if you hand it to them immediately after the job is completed? I think complete honesty is important and the year end might be better for this.



What are some of the questions you ask?

dayspring

wrong one.

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dumplin1078

Mike, Really the answer is all of the above. I want to make it anonymous too so that I know that it is honest. I have had a couple customers who were very satisfied and said they would call for future planned work and then I don't hear from them, out of the two times I can remember this happening I checked up on one and found that it was being done by someone else. I am wanting to avoid this, if possible, in the future. Was there a quality problem I was unaware of? Did they find someone cheaper, or better? If so why did they not call me? I know some of this is unavoidable, and I only remember this happening twice. But that is something I want to prevent.

__________________
"I hate to tell you this, but you're a man. You're going to spend your life gettin' up one more time than you get knocked down." John Wayne

Mike Finley

What you get back should be pretty honest. Somebody who hates you will probably take great relish in telling you so in a survey. Somebody who loves you may or may not send it back. Either way people who take the time to send it back are going to be pretty honest. Phone surveys are a bit different, people will always tend to grade you up on a curve so to speak over the phone because not everybody can sack up when it is that personal. If you want to do it over the phone and are very worried about honest, have somebody else call and have then identify themselves as a 3rd party hired to rate you. You'll get plenty of honest answers doing that!

We ask people to rate us on a scale of 1 to 5 on subjects such as quality of craftsmanship meets our expectations, quality of materials meets our expectations, project was completed as promised, did everything possible to minimize disruption to our lives, job site cleanliness, and of course would recommend to others?

Keep in mind you can effect your answers depending on how you word your questions, our cleanliness rating went up when we changed the wording from:

Jobsite was kept as clean as possible

to

Jobsite was kept as clean as was appropriate

Subtle difference but our ratings went up because of the way people considered the question. "clean as possible" opens up for some people the idea that since anything is possible, (we could have supplied a maid to come in every night), so if there was even a little dust then I can't give them a top rating for cleanliness. This might sound trivial, but you should consider that you are reinforcing the way you are going to be remembered by your customer with an end of job survey. The higher you get them to rate you the more highly they will think of you, the more they will focus on how great you were and the more likely they will be to tell people about you. We include dozens and dozens of these surveys in our marketing materials that is part of the materials we show prospects during an estimate. There is nothing better than when a potential customer sits there and slowly turns the pages of your book with survey after survey with hand written praise about you!

One more thing, we survey for many reasons, in order of importance:

• To have one more tool to use to close new business
• To get testimonials (bottom of survey has a section for them to describe their experience with us)
• To get permission to use them as a reference
• To keep track of how we are doing

Later the surveys will be attached to certain employee's pay plans and bonuses.

dayspring

Ok, here is a copy of my customer feedback form in PDF, it's rather simple customer feedback.pdf

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Mike Finley

I would say you are barking up the wrong tree. You really just need to look into ways of keeping in touch with your customer base. Yes, a year later survey is a way of touching base with them. Ideally I would recommend you survey after the job and use surveys for the power they have as I outlined in my last response and keep in touch with your customers in other ways. The two can be the same, but they don't have to. You're going to find it more powerful if you do both.

As for losing 2 people to competitors, in the big scheme of things 2 is nothing, it's a statistical probability. There are dozens of reasons why people will call somebody else instead of you first. Even with the best program in place, even if they do think of you first there can still be reasons for somebody to call somebody else that have nothing to do with you at all.

Keep in mind if you did something really wrong to a customer that turned them off of you, it really shouldn't be too much of a secret to you.

A further note - I would avoid asking questions about pricing on a survey, the only reason I would do it is if you are looking to be the low price leader in town like Wal-mart and you want evidence of it for showing potential customers. My thoughts in order to get this survey, the customer already hired you, so price wasn't an issue, so what purpose does it serve to open a can of worms if suddenly they feel pricing was now too high for what you did? If that's the case they aren't a customer we would want to do business with in the future anyways.