Women entrepreneurs tend to be very sensitive to customer satisfaction which is often why their businesses succeed. But sometimes they rely too much on the dreaded customer satisfaction survey that rarely tells the whole story.

So, if you can't rely on a survey what can you do to pay attention and react appropriately to what your customers want?

First, you need to know what questions to ask in a customer survey before relying on the answers to change your approach. As an example, I have reviewed many customer surveys for clients with questions that don't get at the real question of satisfaction. For example, "What was the service you experienced today? With choices Poor, Average, Good, Excellent"

What does this mean? Customers expect to get what they want, however, when asked about service they generally answer with regard to the person who served them. Therefore, just because you have a friendly, outgoing employee who engages your customer does not mean that the customer found what (s)he was looking for with your product/service. Yes, we want our employees to provide an excellent experience for potential customers and current customers, but we also want to make sure that the customer is satisfied with our offerings.

Customer satisfaction is not just how your customer feels about the experience of doing business with you. It is also about learning whether or not your offerings compete in the marketplace for your customer's financial resources.

Studies have shown that the answers to these types of customer satisfaction surveys often has more to do with the personality of the respondent than it does about their experience. For example, the majority of respondents will never respond "poor" as they feel it is as much a reflection on them as it is on the business. "Excellent" also often does not reflect anything more than "if I say it was great they will leave me alone."

There is nothing to be learned from any of the above answers. Unfortunately, too many women today still spend much of their time saying "I'm sorry" for something  that has nothing to do with them. This personality trait is a blog for another time. However, this fact tends to color the response to these types of customer satisfaction surveys.

Woman-owned businesses that take the time to personally query their customers about how the business is meeting their needs are in a better position to stay ahead of the competition. Why not just call and ask your customers? As you should know, 80% of your business is coming from 20% of your customers anyway - make it personal.

(1) Ask the right questions:

How satisfied are you with the product/service you recently purchased? Explain.   

(2) Ask customer loyalty questions:

How likely are you to do business with us again? How likely are you to recommend us to others?

(3) Ask customers to help:

What can we do to improve our product and/or service?

The woman business owner that really cares about her customer's satisfaction will be always beat her competition!

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