THE NALP EXPERIENCE


Employing Effective Customer Surveys


By Jill Odom


IT’S COMMONLY SAID THAT IF you don’t ask, you’ll never know. This is one reason why customer surveys are helpful as they give you a snapshot of what you’re doing right and where you can improve.


“It’s a very valuable tool because you might think you’re doing great, but then you talk to some clients and you find out maybe you’re not hitting the mark in this one area,” says Garth Sager, director of sales and client relations for Chalet, based in Wilmette, Illinois. “Or quite the opposite, maybe you think you’re struggling in an area and actually you’re


doing a lot better than you thought you did. There’s a lot of good information that can come out of it.”


TYPES OF SURVEYS


Sager’s advice for others considering employing customer surveys is to look internally and ask what do you want to find out from your clients. He says they developed their survey questions as a team as different people had particular questions they wanted to be answered. At Chalet, they have three types of surveys they send out currently. One is a benchmarking survey that is sent out annually to all of their customers. The other two are sent to design/build customers – one is after a project has been completed and the other is sent to potential clients who went through the design process but they never heard back from them.


Sager says the ‘ghost’ surveys are sent out periodically when the project has been proposed and they haven’t heard back from the client after a certain period of time.


Grosh’s Lawn Service, based in Clear Spring, Maryland, says as soon as the landscape project is completed they send the customer survey. “This way if there is an issue, we can correct it the next day if possible,” says Tom Grosh, founder and owner of Gro- sh’s Lawn Service.


One thing you have to decide if you’re going to survey customers is


f is


the type of responses they can use. Chalet uses a mixture of open-ended responses and rating things on a scale of one to five.


“We require all fields to be filled in


order for the survey to be submitted, but then again we also get some like xyz’s and blah blah blah or other gibberish in order to get through it, but that’s rare ac- tually,” Sagar says. “Most people do take the time to fill them, even if it’s a short answer in the required fields.”


Sager says they’ll thank customers who leave four and five-level ratings. “We tend to get a lot of praise, it’s an opportunity for clients to give us praise,” Sager says. “Some clients that are upset will use it as an open forum to rant, which is great. That’s the kind of stuff we want to hear if we’re not hitting the mark. Occasionally clients will send messages like ‘Hey can you make sure the crew brings this or that next week?’ Open-ended means open-ended and you get all kinds of stuff. But in general, I’d say the most common is praise and some complaints.”


sh’s Lawn Service. One thing you have to decide if you’re going to survey customersy


Grosh says they offer four choices on some questions on the customer survey and others are just yes or no selections. Majority of the responses are positive saying the company completed the job on time and in budget, they would recommend Grosh’s to family and friends and they would give themsix stars if that was allowed.


and they would give them six stars if that was allowed. “When they


f survey, they respond very welly


survey, they respond very well with the four-choice option and the yes and no selection,” Grosh says. “All


four-choice option and the yes and no selection,” Grosh says. “


hen they respond to the customer with the


y respond to the customer


20 The Landscape Professional //March/April 2021


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