In a word, yes. Surveys should be an essential part of every company's interaction with their client base. If designed correctly, they can offer valuable insight into the level of loyalty they feel toward your business. While reviewing your monthly P/L's, balance sheets, and other financial data can reveal how your company has done in the past, measuring loyalty suggests how effective your company is in meeting your clients' current needs.

Below, you'll discover one of the most potent - and disarmingly simple - questions to ask when measuring whether your customers' needs are being met. We'll also explore how to approach their answers objectively. Finally, I'll explain the benefits of this type of survey and provide a couple of tips for conducting one.

The Most Important Question

If you have ever designed a customer satisfaction survey, you already know they can be tedious to fill out. Some are several pages long with lists of questions that require a lot of time to answer. By contrast, you can measure customer loyalty by asking 1 simple question: "Would you recommend this product to a friend?" Then, you would provide the respondents with a 0-5 or 0-10 scale on which they rate their willingness to do so.

Notice the clarity of the question. There's very little ambiguity. As a result, response typically soars and the data is unbiased.

Reviewing The Data

After you've surveyed your client base and have collected their responses, you'll need to analyze the data. Assuming that you have designed the rating scale with clear descriptions of each number, the analysis will be simple. For example, on a 0-10 scale, a 10 might indicate that a person is willing to recommend your product to everyone he meets. A 7 might suggest that he likes your company's product and will recommend it if someone asks, but would not be proactive about doing so.

When you're reviewing the data, this clarity makes categorizing sects of your customer base easier. You may find that 65% of them are happy enough with your product to proactively recommend it to their friends. On the other hand, you'll also be able to identify the percentage who are dissatisfied.

By periodically asking your clients whether they're willing to recommend your product, you can compare the growth or attrition of the categories. That is, you can determine whether the percentage of satisfied or dissatisfied people is growing or declining. This information can be valuable because it tells you whether your business is or isn't meeting your customers' needs.

Advantages Of A Loyalty Survey

As I mentioned above, surveys that measure satisfaction are hampered by their length. But, there are other problems. First, because they're long, they tend to suffer low response rates. Second, the people who aren't satisfied with your product or company are less willing to spend a lot of their time on a survey. Without their participation, the resulting data is biased.

A customer loyalty survey overcomes these challenges by limited the length and time required to participate. That invariably increases response rates and yields data that is less biased. Another advantage is that they can be designed, organized, and executed quickly. The more quickly you can roll it out, the better.

The Rollout

If you're operating from a retail storefront, consider building a website where your customers can fill out the survey. You can print the website's address on receipts, along with small incentives to encourage them to visit. When it's integrated into a POS (point of sale) system, the entire process becomes fluid. Your business will be able to enjoy a continuous stream of data that helps you measure your customers' loyalty. Over time, that data will help guide your decisions about new or existing products and the level of service your company provides.