The way a customer perceives your company is one of the most important factors in increasing retention and new business.
The last thing you want is a negative image painted inside one of your customers' minds.
Using a customer perception survey can identify what current and potential buyers think when they hear about your brand, products, or services.
Understanding how the public perceives your organization will guide your sales and marketing efforts into a more aligned strategy.
In this blog post, our customer satisfaction survey company discusses consumer perception and the step-by-step process for measuring it.
Conduct consumer perception surveys with our full-service market research company. Contact us today by completing an online form or emailing [email protected].
What is Customer Perception?
Customer perception is the term used to describe a customer’s opinion of various aspects of a company, its products, services, or brand.
Customer perception is influenced by a range of factors, including:
- Product or service quality
- Customer service
- Brand reputation
- Pricing
- Marketing and communications
- Word-of-mouth and recommendations
- Personal expectations and priorities
As we'll discuss below, measuring customer perception is crucial for businesses as it directly impacts customer satisfaction, loyalty, and purchasing decisions.
What is a Consumer Perception Survey?
A consumer perception survey is a questionnaire used by businesses to measure and understand customers' opinions, experiences, and perceptions regarding their products, services, or overall brand.
The survey aims to gather feedback directly from customers to assess their level of satisfaction, identify areas for improvement, and gain insights into customer preferences and expectations.
Customer perception surveys typically consist of a series of questions that cover various aspects of the customer experience, such as:
- Product quality
- Customer service
- Pricing
- Convenience
- Brand perception
These surveys can be conducted through various channels, including online surveys, email surveys, telephone interviews, or even in-person interviews.
Recommended Reading: Conducting Customer Satisfaction Surveys [Ultimate Guide]
Why Improving Customer Perception Matters
There are many reasons why customer perception is so important. In fact, studies show 1 in 3 customers will leave a brand they love after just one bad experience.
Many companies worldwide view this statistic as the main turning point in customer behavior. Either they stay with the business, or they have one bad experience and try somewhere else.
I’m sure many of you reading this blog have had one experience before that caused you to not go to that business after that. The same can be said of your customers.
While we all have bad days and not every business interaction is perfect, too many of these situations can lead to poor customer retention.
Even worse, those customers can turn into brand detractors who advise their friends and families not to use your products or services.
Herein lies the importance of conducting customer perception surveys. They provide a baseline of knowledge that helps your company perfect its image to target buyers.
How to Measure Customer Perception
Conducting surveys is a popular method for measuring customer perception. They are fast, cost-effective, and offer high-quality, measurable results.
Measuring customer perception with surveys includes the following steps:
- Determining your objectives
- Kickoff meeting with stakeholders
- Writing survey questions
- Programming survey questions
- Collecting survey responses
- Analyzing the feedback
- Debriefing on the results
Let's discuss each step in a bit more detail below.
1. Determining Objectives
Clearly define the objectives and goals of the survey.
Identify the specific aspects of customer perception that you want to measure or gain insights into, such as product satisfaction, customer service experience, brand perception, or overall customer satisfaction.
2. Kickoff Meeting
Whether you are working with a customer perception survey company or conducting the study in-house, it is important to host a kickoff meeting with project stakeholders.
In our case, the kickoff meeting takes 30-60 minutes, which is all it takes for Drive Research to create a connection with its client.
The main objective of this meeting is to set standards and understand which topics to focus the most on in the survey.
3. Writing the Customer Perception Survey
There are 3 things to keep in mind while writing your customer perception survey draft:
- Keep the questions short and sweet. Readers are going to get annoyed with long wordy questions they may have to read twice to understand, so keep it concise.
- Focus on close-ended questions. Yes/No or Maybe answers are always better to keep track of in these survey answer pools.
- Keep the length of everything short. Just like in number 1, no one likes a long wordy run-on question, so keep it short so people enjoy the survey.
4. Programming the customer perception survey
After the survey has gone live, you then need to program it into an online form so users can reach it online.
Double-checking that all the questions are there and the formatting is as it should be, then you are all set to go ahead and post the survey online.
5. Collecting Survey Responses
At this point, all of the surveys are sent out to remaining customers, as you wait for the responses to come in.
A live data link can be used to show users and your company's employees how the survey is going.
Right as the surveys are sent in, the link is updated with the new data.
6. Analyzing the Feedback
Before beginning the analysis or reporting stages, it is important to clean your survey data.
Checking to see if there were any erroneous responses is something you should definitely do before reporting your data.
You don’t want any unfortunate responses finding their way into the final report.
Once the data is cleaned, a market research report is created to detail key findings from the customer perception survey.
7. Debrief on the Results
Drive Research sets up a debrief meeting with our clients to walk through the report page by page, supplying key stakeholders with our interpretations, action items, and takeaways.
Example Customer Perception Questionnaire
Questions about customer perception vary widely on purpose. The best data will be gathered from questions covering multiple different angles of the customer experience.
Example customer perception questions include:
- How satisfied are you with our company/product/service overall?
- On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend us to others?
- How would you rate the quality of our product?
- How well does our product meet your needs and expectations?
- How satisfied are you with the features and functionality of our product?
- What words or phrases come to mind when you think of our brand?
- How would you describe your overall perception of our brand?
- How well does our brand align with your values and preferences?
- How would you rate the value for money of our products/services?
- Do you believe our pricing is competitive compared to other options in the market?
- How satisfied are you with the affordability of our products/services?
- How clear and effective is our communication with you (e.g., emails, newsletters)?
- Do you feel well-informed about our products, updates, or promotions?
- How would you rate our responsiveness to your inquiries or feedback?
Final Thoughts
Customer perception surveys measure how a target audience perceives a brand, whether it be positive or negative. It’s key for brands to be aware of these opinions, so they can understand how to better alter their image.
With many consumers not tolerating even one negative experience with a business, measuring consumer perception is important because it allows you to gain important insights from the shopper’s perspective.
Doing so will help you avoid future negative experiences that impact customer retention.
If you're interested in measuring consumer perception, consider partnering with a third-party research team that takes the extensive workload off of you, while still allowing you to be involved in the process.
Each step listed in this blog post serves an important function in creating a customer perception survey questionnaire.
Conduct a Customer Perception Survey with Drive Research
Drive Research is a full-service market research company specializing in Voice of Customer methodologies. Our team of certified professionals partners with organizations across the country to deliver insights on customer perception, brand awareness, customer satisfaction, and more.
Interested in learning more about our services? Contact our market research firm today.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
