Filed under: Restaurants, Surveys | Tags: clean restrooms, cleanliness, customer feedback, customer service surveys, QSR Magazine
Want a one-word answer to ensure customer satisfaction?
Hygiene.
A recent survey by Cintas Corporation in QSR Magazine showed that customers do not simply expect clean restrooms, they require them: a survey polling 1,000 U.S. residents ages 18 and older found that 94 percent of U.S. adults would avoid patronizing a business at which they experienced a dirty restroom. A single unhappy customer doesn’t just take his business elsewhere: word of mouth (and Twitter) spreads quickly and can cost many future visits by existing and potential customers. As a result, an unclean restroom gone unnoticed could turn off multiple customers in one day. While some will inform a member of the staff, not all customers feel comfortable directly reporting uncleanliness in a restaurant, retail outlet, or business. Meanwhile, although clean restrooms are a priority for most businesses, it is difficult — if not impossible — to set aside staff for hyper-frequent bathroom checkups.
Think that just because you aren’t operating a restaurant, this doesn’t apply to your company? Not so. The same survey asked respondents what specific types of businesses they would avoid due to dirty restrooms. Leading the list and tied for first are restaurants and hotels: 79 percent of respondents would avoid these business because of the state of their facilities. Similarly, 77 percent of respondents would be turned off by unclean restrooms in healthcare facilities. Also on the list were supermarkets (50 percent of respondents), retail stores (45 percent of respondents), gas stations (45 percent of respondents), and even car dealerships (39 percent of respondents).
Of course, this doesn’t mean every business in America needs to hire an around-the-clock restroom attendant. Instead, make it more convenient and less awkward for customers to report cleanliness complaints or comments to management. Real-time satisfaction surveys can provide you with customer feedback about cleanliness and other service issues instantly. You might even consider a survey kiosk to get the most timely and accurate responses.
Faster than the old-fashioned pencil and comment card, internet-connected surveys can even send alerts to management to inform about particular cleanliness issues. Historically, you would have to wait til the end of a guest’s hotel stay or visit to your business site to be informed of their unhappiness. With immediate notification, you can be on the move to ameliorate the situation in an instant. If there is a larger issue, you can get respond promptly to customers to let them know you’re working to fix the situation.
Providing customers with an anonymous, instant opportunity to share their opinions, issues, and concerns about your restrooms and public areas sends the message that your business is concerned about their input. Furthermore, knowing their voices will be heard encourages the customers to provide that input.
While a survey won’t mop the floors, it can let you know when you may need to bring out the bucket. Responding promptly to customer complaints about cleanliness can be the difference between a one-time guest and a regular client.
Filed under: Case Study | Tags: customer service surveys, ipad surveys, iPhone surveys, mobile surveys, restaurant survey app
With the new technology, clients would be hard-pressed to miss the opportunity to participate. The visual nature of an iPod kiosk lets visitors know their opinion is heard and desired. Encouraging participation from all clients provides a fuller picture of the customer experience.
As in any healthcare environment with a high level of personal interaction, input and feedback is necessary to maintain the highest level of vet service. Real-time surveys make it quick and easy to obtain opinions and ideas without creating new administrative busy work. Kiosks are perfect for organizations like pet hospitals with limited staff to take advantage of the benefits provided by real-time surveys.
Healthcare facility management is at its most challenging in the current economic times. Balancing budget challenges with the constantly mounting need for services and support, non-profit animal hospitals like the MSPCA must still maintain spotless records, satisfy their clients, and provide data for veterinarians to improve pet healthcare services. Real-time surveys allow organizations like the MSPCA Angell Animal Hospital to do just that.
Filed under: Case Study | Tags: customer feedback, pet owner satisfaction, real-time survey reporting
Real-time surveys can help animal hospitals improve the efficiency of their operations, strengthen visitor interaction, and provide a cost effective way for veterinarians to identify opportunities in their services. It can also let them know how pet owners feel about the healthcare their pets are receiving. Building on the successful practice by the Naperville Animal Hospital, the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has brought the latest technology to the patrons of the Angell Memorial Hospital.
MSPCA-Angell is a private, non-profit veterinary hospital based in Boston, MA. Maintaining the lean operations of a successful healthcare environment takes innovative and creative thinking, and MSPCA-Angell’s new inclusion of real-time surveys facilitate cost-effective feedback useful for veterinarians and increased interaction with pet owners.
Like many hospitals, the key to good animal hospital management is great record-keeping and constant feedback of pet owner satisfaction. Keeping records in an easily stored and transmittable format improves the process of tracking feedback and service improvements. Veterinarians and administrative staff can mine data from these surveys to identify areas of particular interest to hospital clients. Employees and volunteers are relieved of the burden of excess and superfluous paperwork, freeing up time often wasted on administrative tasks. The real-time survey eliminates the added costs of post-visit followups to gauge pet owner satisfaction.
Filed under: Surveys | Tags: customer service surveys, iPhone surveys, mobile restaurant surveys, mobile surveys, restaurant surveys
QR Code for Survey On The Spot Survey
As smartphone ownership and use expands globally, QR codes are becoming an increasingly powerful tool for businesses to share their products with clients. The success of QR codes as a marketing tool for products can be carried over to implementing business and consumer surveys as well, creating opportunities to capitalize on emerging technology and appeal to clientele in trend-conscious market areas.
What are QR codes? Short for “Quick Response codes,” QR codes are are matrix barcodes readable by dedicated barcode readers and smartphones. Also known as “mobile tagging,” QR codes are two-dimensional squares connecting offline media to online content. QR codes eliminate the need for clients to remember and type in a complex URL; a simple smartphone photo will deliver clients directly to the necessary website. Quick and easy for your clients, QR codes are a growing trend and have gained popularity with smartphone users.
Sodexo Leisure, an integrated facilities management services company with locations internationally, found survey success using QR codes to share guest satisfaction surveys with their clients in 22 locations across the United States. Clients are able to scan the code with their smartphones, enabled by QR code reader apps, to access the survey website, and evaluate their experience in real-time.
How can your business replicate Sodexo Leisure’s success?
To encourage your clients to take your survey, it is crucial that you make the survey as accessible as possible: your QR code strategy can be a major element of this accessibility for mobile users. Placing QR codes on signage, merchandising materials, business cards, or other communication vehicles allows customers to scan the code and be linked straight to your business’ survey site. If your client base is not likely to be familiar with QR code technology, provide them with some basic instructions on how to use their smartphone to access the survey. For fans of creative design, QR codes function with up to 30% of the barcode deteriorated, so consider altering your QR code to reflect a basic company icon. QR codes may not replace basic website URLs, but they can be a fast, easy, customer-friendly instrument to get your survey to your clients.
Filed under: Case Study | Tags: customer service surveys, hospital surveys, iPhone surveys, mobile restaurant surveys, Survey On The Spot
Need to know how your organization is operating — straight from the operating room? At hospitals and medical centers, patients are always the top priority. Tift Regional Medical Center in Tifton, Georgia has improved care and satisfied patients in the Emergency Care facility by offering real-time patient experience surveys.
Surveying patients in real time improves hospital functions from top to bottom.
For patients, accessibility is key. iPods with the surveys are given to patients by hospital volunteers, providing convenience and mobility as patients are sent to other parts of the medical center. Easy-to-use technology allows patients to answer survey questions quickly and easily, communicating the most accurate recollection of their experience in the emergency facility. Tift Regional Medical Center can identify key points in the patient experience without weighing down patients with piles of paperwork. iPods make survey taking seem exciting for users new to the technology. It also creates a visible communication focus, highlighting to patients the hospital’s dedication to improving patient experience and responding to patient concerns.
Clear answers make healthier patients. Patients can input relevant information that is quickly documented. Physicians can call up survey feedback, past and present, easily and promptly. Better communication means enhanced physician understanding, necessary for moving toward better patient care.
The hospital benefits from this new technology extend beyond patient interaction. Being able to express their concerns instantly encourages accurate feedback from the patients, giving hospitals a clearer understanding of the patient experience. Digitized responses are easily stored and survey results require no data entry or administrative delays, improving documentation and speeding up analysis for hospitals to make necessary reform. Hospital accountability is enhanced and treatment is improved.
From the data-collection and communication enhancements to the accountability and patient experience benefits, real-time surveys are a means for hospitals and medical centers to improve patient care and safety.
Filed under: Surveys | Tags: customer service surveys, mobile restaurant surveys, mobile surveys, restaurant survey app, restaurant surveys
Often, businesses seek to better understand their clients without ensuring that the clients understand the business. When you survey your clients, do they know what you are asking? Evaluating your clients’ satisfaction via a survey only works when your clients understand what you are asking. Don’t let language be a barrier between your services and your clients’ needs.
One Massachusetts organization recognized the diversity of its clients and used that knowledge to its advantage. The city of New Bedford is home to a population estimated to be over 10% Hispanic or Latino. Over 35% of the city is of Portuguese descent. When seeking to evaluate client experience, the Greater New Bedford Community Health Center met a common obstacle: to reach the greatest number of users. The challenge – in what language should they offer the survey? The choice was simple: not one, but three languages! The Center provides an iPad kiosk offering the survey in three languages: English, Spanish, or Portuguese; allowing nearly all clientele to provide immediate, accurate responses about their experience.
Challenges
Crafting a survey for use in multiple languages is not without challenges. A direct language translation may be technically correct but fail to convey the same message as the original survey. The perspective of a fluent or native speaker can be vital to producing consistent survey questions across languages. Consistent questions will provide your business with the most accurate results.
Choosing the appropriate languages also requires a business to be tuned in to the demographic makeup of its clientele. The Greater New Bedford Community Health Center could expect Spanish and Portuguese to commonly-used languages among their clients, but your business may serve a very different audience. Working to create a survey in Spanish will be of little value if your survey-takers are all native speakers of French or English. Similarly, be aware of different language dialects.
The effort required to properly create multiple-language surveys should not be overlooked, but the reward is great. Being able to speak directly to your clients, in their own language, can help them understand your business and your survey.
