Keeping customers and building a loyal customer base are key to a growing and profitable business. But what drives retention and loyalty in your industry in general? What matters to customers of your company, products, and services in particular?
Selecting customer retention survey questions for market research into these dynamics will help you pinpoint why customers stay and why they increase engagement with your company.
Patiwat Panurach, NewtonX’s VP of Strategic Insights and Analytics, suggests: “Be extremely clear on your objectives, as they will drive the questions you ultimately select.” You can use the insights from your customer survey questions in improving your marketing messages and sales processes.
Here are the keys to gaining a deeper understanding of your customers’ perceptions, behaviors, and motivations toward your brands.
Customer retention vs customer loyalty
People often mention customer retention and loyalty in the same breath. While related, the ideas are subtly different.
Customer retention refers to a customer continuing to buy and use your products and services. It is binary. You either keep the customer, or you don’t. Your customer retention rate is the percentage of customers who return to buy again within a specified time frame.
Customer loyalty is about the relationship customers have with your company or brands. It is based on trust, understanding, and a positive relationship. It goes beyond customer retention. Loyal customers recommend your company and advocate for you. It is measured in degrees. A client can be slightly loyal, coming back to buy again, more loyal, expressing a degree of customer satisfaction or even delight, or passionately loyal, telling everyone how great you are.
What is a customer retention survey?
Retention and customer satisfaction surveys seek to predict the likelihood a customer will come back and buy again. In order to get insightful customer feedback, below are some key customer survey questions to ask for retention.
8 key customer retention survey questions to ask
- What prompted you to buy our product/service?
- How would you rate the quality of the product/service purchases?
- How satisfied are you with it?
- With what aspects are you most satisfied?
- With what aspects are you least satisfied?
- Do you plan on buying such a product/service again?
- How likely are you to buy from us?
- How likely are you to recommend us?
What is a customer loyalty survey?
Because measuring customer loyalty is a deeper, more complex process, customer loyalty survey questions are more extensive. Add these to the retention and customer satisfaction survey questions above for a complete picture.
9 key customer loyalty survey questions to ask
- How long have you been a customer, and how much do you buy? Ideally, your CRM has these answers, but if not, be sure to ask!
- How likely are you to switch to a competitor? Why is that?
- How likely are you to buy from us again? Why is that?
- Would you buy other products/services from us?
- Do you plan to buy more in the future? Why?
- What do we do well?
- What could we improve?
- How likely are you to recommend our product/service?
- When talking about us to others, what do you say?
Uncover the drivers of long profitable relationships with NewtonX
Measuring customer loyalty and retention and uncovering the secrets behind them can drive profitability. It is easier to sell to an existing customer base and the margins are often much better.
Worried about what kind of questions to ask in your study? Whether it’s for customer retention survey questions, persona survey questions, or even win loss survey questions, NewtonX B2B market research services can help you identify what to ask and understand customer loyalty in your industry. Contact us today if you want to learn more about your potential or existing customer base and how to nurture a lasting relationship with them.
