There are many compelling and rather obvious reasons why you should survey your customers. For example, they help you to:

• Increase Satisfaction
• Enhance Loyalty
• Open Up Communication
• Recognize Successes and Opportunities
• Pinpoint Trends
• Identify Areas of Additional Leverage for Growth
• ...and many more!

But, today consumers are bombarded with surveys, and often times we can't hang up a call fast enough when the oh-so-pleasant automated recording says, "please stay on the line for our 2-minute survey..."  So how do we pull off creating an engaging survey that can result in those benefits listed above?  Zendesk has some great tips, which are here in an excerpt from one of their infographics (click on it to see the whole graphic and article):

When you shift focus from one task to another, that transition is neither fast nor smooth. Instead, there is a lag time during which your brain must yank itself from the initial task and then glom onto the new task. This shift, though it feels instantaneous, takes time. In fact, up to 40 percent more time than single tasking - especially for complex tasks.

-Jim Taylor, Ph.D, for psychologytoday.com

Qualifying is the blueprint of the sale and the foundation of the sales process. A seasoned sales person knows it is the most critical part of a sales conversation. Qualifying not only gives the sales person the chance to determine the basic details of the sale, it helps define which services and amenities are most important to sell. Most importantly, qualifying uncovers customer expectations, which, when met or exceeded, will lead to customer loyalty. The myth for inexperienced sales people is the feeling that qualifying takes a lot more time to ask all the questions when the customer just wants costs. When in actuality, qualifying keeps the conversation efficient, streamlined, and focused on what is most important to the customer. It will actually save you time! 

Sensory inputs (something “real”) lead the brain to new connections—but so do thoughts (something “unreal”)!  Mentally practicing a task produces the same physical changes in the brain as physically practicing it.

- Schlomo Breznitz and Collins Hemingway, Maximum Brainpower 

First impressions are paramount since they are highly accurate; how you are instantly evaluated can make or break your success. And you have heard before that a first impression is made within 5 seconds, but I believe it’s faster. Why? Personal experience– I get a feeling about something or a situation within 2 seconds (don’t you?). The science- 20 million billion bits of information move around our brains every second, and it calculates sounds, sights, smells, taste, touch, and thoughts in every moment at the same time (from The Phenomenal Experience). This means we need to up our game and make sure that we control the impressions that we are making.

We learned pretty fast that hugging a customer doesn’t always result in great customer satisfaction. It really comes down to aligning your service with the specific expectations and aspirations of the people you serve.

-Rob Hibbard, VP with Enterprise Holdings [Enterprise Rent-a-Car]