Feedback is Your Friend: How to Make Customer Surveys

Most of your hotel guests are eager to share their feedback – and most successful hotels listen.

Improving on your faults and bettering the guest experience as often as possible is essential. But it can be hard to know what to improve upon without a little help. Customer feedback helps any business thrive.

The Microsoft 2020 Global State of Customer Service report says the large majority of consumers (89 percent) want companies to reach out to them for input. Another half believe that it’s “very important” to provide feedback to businesses. Sixty-four percent said they appreciate when businesses ask for input.

Consumers want to communicate with you, and it’s important you tune in. Most businesses that see year-over-year growth (80 percent) use customer surveys to gauge guest experience. Just don’t go too far, as 41 percent of consumers said they’re less likely to participate in a survey if they’ve already given feedback to the business.

When done correctly feedback surveys provide valuable insights into what you’re doing well and where you can improve. By actively seeking and listening to guest feedback, you can identify and address issues that may have a negative impact on guest satisfaction. Happy guests are more likely to return and recommend the hotel to others.

There are a few different platforms you could use:

• SurveyMonkey
• Google Forms or Google Surveys
• Alchemer
• Jotform
• QuestionPro

And so many more.

But how do you write a survey and what kind of questions should you include to get a good picture of your current guest experience?

1. Set your goals

Creating a successful customer survey starts with a clear vision of what kind of information you’d like to gather. You could start by consulting your employees who have valuable insights into your customer base, their needs, and any early signs of problems. For instance, declining sales in a specific area can be investigated using a survey to uncover underlying issues like changing customer preferences.

It’s not a bad idea to maintain a core set of consistent survey questions and supplement them with occasional variations for specific instances. But don’t overload your survey with too many questions because that can lead to lower response rates. Instead, pinpoint your focus and select the appropriate survey type. Define a specific survey goal, whether it’s customer satisfaction, loyalty, or churn analysis.

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Survey: Measure how guests perceive your service.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) Survey: Assess customer loyalty and their likelihood to recommend your services.

Churn Survey: Understand why customers don’t return to your hotel.

2. Keep your questions clear

Use simple language that even a middle schooler could understand – you may be much more well-read compared to others than you realize. People’s attention spans are short, and getting shorter. Keep them engaged by ensuring questions are easy to comprehend and answer accurately so you don’t lose them in the process. Your survey should not extend beyond seven minutes. Beyond that, participant drop-offs are more likely, making your survey frustrating and counterproductive.

Avoid common mistakes like vague, leading, or confusing questions, as they worsen the respondent experience and will deter any possible future participation. And ambiguity can get you hastily given, therefore unreliable, responses.

Consider these key questions while writing your survey:

• On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your overall experience at our hotel?
• How would you rate the speed and efficiency of our check-in process?
• Did you find your room comfortable?
• How would you rate the cleanliness of your room?
• Were our staff members friendly and helpful during your stay?

Limit the number of open-ended questions.

3. Where do they go?

There are many different avenues to send out feedback surveys, each with its own pros and cons. The method you choose should align with your goals, target audience, and the type of feedback you want.

Email can be cost-effective and efficient. Depending on the platform you host the survey on, it should be pretty easy to track open rates and analyze important data. However, emails are at risk of ending up in spam folders and can limit the number of guests you’re able to reach.

Surveys sent via text message could give you high open rates since they appear directly on your guest’s home screen. These are better for short and direct surveys. The downside here is that you have to get customer permission to contact them and some customers may not give you consent.

Digital apps are accessible since most people have a smartphone on them at any given moment. They also provide feedback that’s immediately available for you to view. Some guests won’t want to download an app, though, especially older guests who may not be as tech-savvy.