The Business Survey Question Guide

The Business Survey Question Guide

Well-designed business survey questions can reveal deep insights about your company, product, or service. Business surveys can help you focus your research so you can make smart growth decisions.

A good business survey can support unparalleled growth. Any business owner who wants to improve or grow their business can benefit from conducting regular business surveys. 

In order to gain actionable insights, however, you need to ask the right questions. This guide explains how to create the right business survey questions for your target market, the kinds that will elicit valuable responses. 

What is a Business Survey? 

When conducting any type of business survey, your goal is to gather information and insights that will help you understand and improve specific aspects of your business. The questions that you include will depend upon your motivations for conducting the survey. 

Business surveys are used in a variety of ways. They are frequently used to understand how well your company is meeting the needs of your target market.  You may use them to better understand your existing market or explore new ones. A business survey is also used to understand company operations and/or employee satisfaction in order to improve processes. 

By asking the right questions, you can gather specific insights that can help you grow your company. We’ll dive into the different types of surveys and provide you with sample business survey questions to help you create your own business survey. 

Customer Satisfaction Survey

One of the most common types of business surveys, customer satisfaction surveys seek to measure how satisfied your customers are with your product, services, or company as a whole. We will cover the four primary types of customer satisfaction surveys here.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

The Customer Satisfaction Score survey assesses customer satisfaction with your company, product, or service. The survey contains a small number of questions that directly relate to the customer's experience. The responses on a CSAT survey are done on a scale, typically, 1 - 5 or 1 -10.

Examples of CSAT questions include:

1. How satisfied are you with your purchase of
   ?
2. How satisfied were you with our checkout process?
3. How satisfied were you with your recent experience with our support team?

Net Promoter Score Survey (NPS)

The purpose of a net promoter score survey is to determine how likely it is that existing customers will recommend your company, product, or service to a friend. Much like the CSAT, this type of survey is also scale based, but there is only one scale (1-10). A positive NPS score is a good indication of how satisfied your customers are with your company. 

Sample questions include:

1. On a scale of 1-10, how likely would you be to recommend
   to a friend?
2. On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend [company name] to a friend or colleague? 

Customer Effort Score Survey (CES)

Using the Customer Effort Score (CES), this metric-based survey measures how much effort is required for a customer to use your product or interact with your company (e.g. with a help desk or sales rep). These questions use a 5-point scale to determine the effort score.

Examples of CES questions are:

1. Overall, how easy was it to solve your problem with [company name] today? 
2. How easy was it to [state action here]? 

Visual Rating Surveys

This type of survey uses emojis (e.g. hearts, starts, emojis) to quickly gauge customer feedback during or after an experience with your company.

Some examples include:

1. How would you rate your experience with our customer service team today? (Happy face / neutral face / sad face)
2. How happy are you with your recent purchase of
   ? (User is able to select any number of the 5 stars displayed)

Market Research Survey

Often included in market research, market research surveys are conducted in order to better understand the market for your product or service. You may conduct a market research survey in order to plan an effective marketing campaign, determine viability for a new product or feature, or identify new customer segments. 

The purpose of your survey will influence the type of questions you want to include. It is important to include demographic questions in your survey to help you better understand the market.

Example of market research questions include:

1. Where do you live? 
2. How old are you? 
3. How long have you been using
   ?
4. Would you recommend
   to a friend?
5. How much money do you usually spend on
   ?
6. What is your least favorite thing about
   ?

Employee Satisfaction Survey

An employee satisfaction survey is an excellent source of information for improving both employee retention and business operations. If you deploy this survey to the entire company, it is important to include demographic information to help draw more accurate conclusions. 

Example questions include:

1. On a scale of 1 - 10, how happy are you with your work-life balance?
2. Do you feel that your role and responsibilities are well-defined?
3. Have you thought about looking for a new job in the past 6 months? 
4. What reasons would you have for looking for a new job?
5. Do you feel that your workload is reasonable?
6. On a scale of 1 - 10, how supportive is your manager when you have a problem?
7. Do you feel comfortable discussing a problem or issue with your manager?
8. What is the most challenging part of your job?
9. Do you feel appreciated for the work you do?
10. If you could change one thing about your job, what would it be?

Brand Awareness Survey

You can conduct a brand awareness survey to measure the recognition and awareness of your brand amongst your target audience or consumers in general. Brand awareness surveys can help you plan effective marketing campaigns and identify new sectors for growth.

Questions to include in this type of survey are:

1. Which of the following brands have you used?
2. Which of the following brands have you heard about?
3. Do you currently use
   ?
4. When is the last time you used
   ?
5. Have you heard of [company/product name] before?
6. How likely are you to switch to [competitor brand] should they offer cheaper prices?
7. Which brands would you use for [a need, an industry practice or service]?
8. How was your experience with our [company/product]?
9. Of the following brands, please select the one that you feel is the best.
10. How likely are you to recommend [company name] to a friend?

Product Satisfaction Survey

The product satisfaction survey focuses on how satisfied your customers are with your product. The questions should be designed to help you gauge overall satisfaction, see how your product measures up to its competition, and understand how you can improve your product.

Examples of product satisfaction survey question include:

1. How long have you used
   ?
2. How long have you been using our product?
3. How frequently do you use
   ?
4. On a scale of 1-10, how well does
   meet your needs?
5. What is your favorite thing about our product?
6. What do you dislike about our product?
7. How likely are you to recommend
   to a friend?
8. Which of the following features do you use?
9. What would you improve about our product?

Best Practices for Creating Business Survey Questions

We hope that these business survey questions will inspire you to create your own business survey to gain new insights about your target market, for various businesses needs. In order to leverage these questions to uncover valuable insights, we will leave you with some best practices for creating survey questions:

• Before creating your questions, determine and write down the purpose of your survey. Each question should support the survey’s purpose. 
• A short, focused survey will achieve a higher response rate. You may get better results by deploying several short surveys, rather than trying to get all the answers from one, long survey.
• Ensure that each survey question is clear and well-written so respondents do not spend unnecessary time trying to understand the question.
• Make sure your question responses are appropriate for the question type. 

Make an Impact with the Right Business Survey Questions

Business surveys are a cost-effective tool that businesses can utilize to improve the customer experience (CX), streamline internal processes, and increase profitability. The advent of professional online survey platforms has encouraged many businesses to conduct surveys on a routine basis to establish benchmarks and monitor improvement. 

While these tools make it easy to deploy surveys, they will not provide the answers you need unless you take the time to create thoughtful business survey questions. Each question must relate back to your survey’s purpose in order to focus your findings.

When you start by creating a business survey with the right kind of questions, you can expect your survey to reveal deep insights that will have a positive impact on your business. 

by lorraine