1. What stood out about the service you received? (Free text response)
2. Would you recommend our services to others? (Yes / No)
3. Primary point of contact or service provided. (Free text response)
4. Was the service delivered as promised? (1-5 scale)
5. Did they offer good value? (1-5 scale)
6. Were they considerate and helpful? (1-5 scale)
7. Please rate the quality of communication. (1-5 scale)
8. If anything, what could we do better? (Free text response)

The question format / sequence is in place for the following reasons:

What stood out about the service you received?

This engages a certain degree of psychology. By asking for the positives first the interviewee is immediately thinking of the positive aspects of the relationship. Making them both think about and then verbalise their positive experiences engages and re-enforces their positive emotions towards the interaction and the relationship.

When the interview is conducted over the phone, (as opposed to the interviewee filling in a form), the interviewer is also able to dig a little deeper to probe the positive aspects of the relationship and the service delivery to clarify and thus further re-enforce the positive recollection of the interaction.

Background information: To understand the psychology behind this approach.

Robert B Caldini’s book ‘Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion’ gives a superb insight which explains with numerous examples from some very surprising sources how and why asking the ‘Positive’ question first make so much sense.

In summary, it triggers the ‘Law of Consistency’, people tend to behave in a consistent manner. If someone says or does something is good they generally continue to maintain and re-enforce the behaviour and related feelings. This is then strengthened through repetition, especially when repeated to a stranger, read back to confirm and subsequently and approved and confirmed in writing.

Would you recommend our services to others?

This question is asked as a simple ‘Yes’ / ‘No’ with a very high probability that the response will be ‘Yes’ especially after the first question.

This is superb for marketing purposes as it is a very reassuring statistic to state that of all clients interviewed: ‘XX% Would Recommend Our Business’.

A note regarding Net Promoter Score (NPS):

The NPS question is typically posed as: “On a scale of 0 to 10 how likely are you to recommend?”
Posing the question as a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ choice results in the clear majority of respondents saying ‘Yes’. It is very rare for an interviewee to say ‘No’ and if they do there is inevitably a wealth of additional information that comes to light as the interview continues allowing the issues to be both understood and addressed.

Primary point of contact or service provided.

Depending on the structure of the business this allows the various contact points / different services offerings to be captured.

Levels of Satisfaction.

The questions asked are high level and provide a good basis for benchmarking.

Where the questions are very powerful is that they are both all encompassing, covering every aspect of the business AND ‘teeing’ up the next question where the real ‘Business Improvement’ questions and value arise…

If anything, what could we do better?

Often the answers given here will lead to immediate revenue opportunities.

This is where we can dig down to identify opportunities and highlight the root cause of the dissatisfaction and more important, what the business needs to do to address the issue to the client’s total satisfaction. The responses are frequently surprising, normally quick and easy to implement and tremendously powerful for any business serious about Client Satisfaction, or perhaps more appropriate, eliminating the causes of dissatisfaction.

Additional Questions

These can be added to gauge interest in a new service offering or target a specific client satisfaction concern.