If you don’t know already, post-chat surveys are questionnaires given to customers at the end of your conversation. There are many benefits to using them: you can see how your customer service strategy as a whole is performing, how well individual representatives are doing and get suggestions for areas to improve upon.

Getting post-chat surveys right will help you to streamline your customer retention strategy as if you listen to customers feedback you can find out what is working and what isn’t, then you can double down on the good stuff and get rid of the bad.

Here are some tips for ticking all the boxes:

5, It’s the Magic Number

Ask your customers to rate their experience on a scale of 1 – 5. Depending on the live support software you use you may be able to represent this with stars or other options. This part is arguably the most essential part of your survey. It can be answered in one click making it a great way to get general feedback quickly. You may even just want to ask for this and nothing else.

Cut to the Chase

Asking your customers if their issue was resolved in the chat can be very useful. It’s a very important question for looking at First Contact Resolution rate: the amount of issues that are resolved in the first instance, a key metric for measuring performance.

Keep it Short and Sweet

You want to keep post-chat surveys as short as possible. Some customers will decline filling out a form at all, so for those that do, you don’t want to waste their time asking to describe their experience in a 1000-word essay. It’s better to have two questions answered than none at all.

Allow Them to Be Open

Closed questions will only give you information about very specific areas of your service. An open question such as “How could we have improved our service today?” gives the customer a chance to say whatever they want and saves time compared to trying to cover all areas with closed ­— yes/no answer — questions.

Phone a Friend

Ask your customers how likely they are to refer your service to others. This method of measuring satisfaction is known as Net Promoter Score or NPS. This helps you to see if you really have the wow factor nailed down. A 5-star rating is great but a 5-star rating from a brand advocate is perfection.

Ask Them All

Make sure everyone gets the chance to fill out a questionnaire, it may be tempting to only ask those where their conversation seemed to go well, or whose issue is resolved first time, but obviously this will not give you an accurate overview of performance. Listen to customers’ feedback, learn from your mistakes and stop them from happening again.

One Size Does Not Fit All

There is no set number of questions and topics that will get the best results. It will depend on the niche you are in and the type of customers you have. But these are some ideas to get you started. A quality live support software such as Xeno has all you need to create effective post-chat surveys and organized analytics so that you can easily interpret what it all means to streamline your customer retention strategy. With Xeno, you can design surveys with star ratings, yes/no and open-ended questions, and the cherry on top: it’s completely free.