How to Create a Customer Satisfaction Survey

Objective:

In this How-To, we will learn about the best way to create a Customer Satisfaction Survey using the new Core iQ Survey Templates. We will explore the following topics:

• The various features and question types that are available to you within Core iQ’s Survey templates
• How to create a trackable survey using both Core iQ Standard and Custom Questions

If we are interested in getting to know how happy our customers are with our financial institution, a good place to start would be the Market Reputation Score survey. This is a preformatted survey within Core iQ that already contains invitation copy and a single, trackable survey question. For this How-To, we will be taking that template and walking through how to customize it to fit your unique needs. To get started, we want to create our Market Reputation Score survey from the Core iQ templates area. To do this, head over to the Communications Templates area of the Communications menu. Click on the Add New Template button to create a brand new Core iQ template, and then search for the Market Reputation Score survey template.

Before we begin, it is important to state that it is best practice to never ask for customer data that you wouldn’t ask for within an email. Never request any sort of personal data from your customers within a survey, including items like their account number, PIN, social security number, and other identifying information. We connect all customer responses directly back to the respondent’s account, so there is no need to ask for this information within a survey. Core iQ implements highly secure communications in all forms, but we want to stress this best practice as an additional safeguard against a potential leak of sensitive information.

Once you have completed that step, it’s time to begin modifying the template in the Settings area. Here are your options within this section:

BANK & TEMPLATE NAME

This area lets us choose which bank we will be sending out our communication from, as well as what we want to name our final survey. As always, be as descriptive as you can with your Template Name so that it is easier to track at a glance.

EMAIL SPECIFIC QUESTIONS

The four questions in this area will determine what a customer sees in the email they receive regarding the survey. We want to create a compelling subject line, as well as a clear Call to Action. The CTA will populate automatically within our email invite where the [Survey_Invitiation_Url] field is. Core iQ also allows you to set a specific time period that users can submit their responses. This is great for communications in which you want time sensitive information, such as reactions to a service change or a recent visit to a branch location. Finally, we can choose the sending email for this survey campaign. That can either be dynamically populated by Core iQ based on the customer’s Assigned Banker, or it can be a bank-wide address such as ‘[e-mail]’.

COMMUNICATION CATEGORY

Those familiar with Core iQ will recognize these choices, as they are standard on all templates. The Communication Category will automatically be populated with ‘Surveys’, and for most instances that is how it should stay. The next option allows you to choose whether you want recipients to be able to opt-out of future communications in this category. The final choice is a safeguard which is built into Core iQ to help prevent over communication to your customers. We recommend the standard 14 days between communications from this template.

After you have finished with the Survey Settings, click SAVE and then navigate to the Survey Invitation area. This is where you can customize your survey invitation email with tailored copy and eye-catching imagery. As you can see, the Market Reputation Score template already has copy populated, but feel free to edit it as you see fit. The most important item to leave as is would be the [Survey_Invitation_Url] merge field. This is the merge field that Core iQ uses to populate the unique link to your survey, so if it is sent out without this field, no one will be able to reach your survey.

Please note that this merge field cannot be used at this time inside of an HTML button within an email. It must be a simple URL link as it is normally placed in all of our survey templates.

Survey Question Types

Once you have all of the invitation copy input and approved, we can move on to the survey builder area, found in the Questions tab. This is where you will be able to edit your survey, add and remove questions, and decide on whether you want to track a question over multiple surveys. There are currently 5 different types of questions that can be used on a survey:

TEXTBOX

The textbox question type is used to accept any sort of freeform text response from your customers. You can even have the text field validate for an email address or date, so that you can be sure that your survey takers are putting in a correctly formatted response.

RADIO GROUP

The radio group question type is used to create a multiple choice question where you only want to accept a single response. This is great for asking about someone’s favorite feature on your online banking platform, or the item they are most likely to purchase from your financial institution in the next year. Radio groups are superior to drop-down lists in situations where you want to make all the choices known at once, in order to abstract the decision.

DROP-DOWN LIST

The drop-down list question type is also used to create a multiple choice question where you only want to accept a single response. It is superior to a radio group in situations where choices follow some sort of order, or where the user doesn’t need to see the rest of the responses to pick their answer. For example, if you wanted your customers to pick their country of origin or choose their gender, then a drop-down list is best. These sorts of choices don’t require the survey taker to know all the options on the list, mostly because they are fairly straightforward. Dropdown lists also condense long lists of items, like country of origin.

CHECKBOX LIST

The checkbox list question type is used to create a multiple choice question where survey takers are allowed to choose more than one response. For example, you might want to create a list of features relating to your online banking platform. Then, you could ask survey takers to choose the features that they use more than once a month. Any time you have a multiple choice question where users might choose two or more options, opt for a checkbox question type.

RATING

The rating question type gives your users a rating scale from 0-10, which they can use to express their opinion about a product or likelihood to do something. The rating system is commonly used to gather an opinion on things like new features or a customer’s experience with your overall brand.

For every question type other than the Textbox question, you can set a group of one or more choices that will trigger an additional response area to appear on the survey taker’s screen. Use the ‘If Selecting:’ area to choose the responses that you want to key off of, and then fill in the ‘Ask This:’ area with an open-ended question that you want to ask as a follow-up. A common example of this is asking for more detailed information if a customer gives you a low approval score on a Rating question. This allows you to ask a follow-up question ONLY IF a user gives you a score of, say, 5 or lower on a Rating question.

Connecting your template with a Schedule

Once you have saved the survey, you can review the email and survey using the Desktop Preview button. Then, you will most likely need to send it off to be checked by others in your financial institution. To send the survey off for review, you can use the Proofs & Review button to Email a Proof to one or more of your coworkers. They will receive a copy of the invitation by email and can take the survey without it being tracked by Core iQ. After you get feedback from everyone, you can make edits and mark the survey template as ‘Approved & Active’ in the Settings area.

Now you are ready to connect your Market Reputation Score survey to a Core iQ schedule or point-in-time campaign. Once this is done, Core iQ will handle sending all of your surveys and compiling the data for you to analyze. Take a look at our How-To article regarding the Survey Response Report to learn more about how to view your responses and what actionable steps you can take based off of that data.

How Approved Survey Templates are Handled

Please be aware that because of the nature of surveys, and the fact that they are LIVE documents, we highly recommend triple checking your surveys before marking them as Approved. Once an Approved survey is sent within Core iQ, it becomes difficult to make changes and take your survey back through the compliance process. Within Core iQ, once a survey is sent to customers, anytime you make a change to that survey and click on the Save & Preview button, THOSE CHANGES WILL GO LIVE. This means that even if the survey template is changed to Inactive after it is sent, it will still show your saved (and only your saved) changes to customers. If you need to make changes to a LIVE survey, we recommend not clicking the Save & Preview button until those changes are Compliance approved. This means that your compliance officer will need to view the survey changes within the survey builder after they are made. Once you have saved those changes, remark the template as Active.