Getting honest customer feedback just might be one of the most difficult tasks a contact center manager has on her plate. From informal feedback, like comments a customer makes during a service call, to formal feedback, like complaints, there are countless opportunities each day to listen to and glean valuable insight from what your customers are saying.

But while listening well is a vital part of the job, it’s just as important to be proactive in seeking your customers’ opinions. One of the easiest and best-known ways of doing that is through surveys—with just a few questions, you can get a good idea of what your customers are thinking about your company and your products.

In order to do that, you have to craft effective surveys that your customers will actually complete (and, maybe more importantly, complete honestly). Creating good surveys is a skill, so we’ve compiled our five top tips for creating effective contact center customer surveys.

1. Shorter is always better. Anyone who’s ever filled out a survey—that’s pretty much everyone—knows that this is the truth. You know how some surveys show you a “percentage complete” icon to tell you how many more questions you have to go? There’s nothing that will prompt survey abandonment like answering five questions and seeing “20 percent complete” up at the top of your screen.

For maximum success, Entrepreneur magazine says you should keep your survey length to no more than five to 10 questions, with five being more desirable than 10. And “shorter is better” doesn’t apply only to survey length—you should also make sure you’re writing your questions in the briefest, most concise manner you can. This will increase both the chance that your customers will answer the question, and that they’ll answer honestly. If a question is too long or convoluted, you run the risk of a customer simply clicking on an answer so they can move on to the next one.

2. Cut unnecessary questions. When you’re drafting that survey, make sure you give it to a colleague to edit—and encourage them to use that red pen liberally. Especially if you’re shooting for the five-to-10 question length, every single question that’s asked must be there for a reason. For example, if you’re trying to find out how your customers feel about your tech support department, don’t slip in a question about their payment experience—unless it’s inextricably linked to the tech support department’s functions.

But what if you can’t get all the info you need from just a few questions? That’s a very real possibility, and one way around it is to use rotating sets of questions. That way, you receive answers to a larger number of questions, just with a slightly smaller sample size.

3. Pay attention to timing. Typically, over-the-phone customer surveys are requested at the end of a call, once the customer has (hopefully) had his or her issue resolved.

But many experts say that asking a customer to complete a survey at the very beginning of a call is more effective—not only does it increase the chance that a customer will agree to do the survey, it also means that their decision to do so won’t be affected by the outcome of the call. This increases the chance of getting a diverse sample of customers—in other words, you’re less likely to have only very angry customers, or only very satisfied customers, agreeing to take your survey.

4. Include open-ended questions. While multiple-choice answers and number scales are certainly quicker and easier for the customer to answer—and therefore great for encouraging him to continue through to the end—if it’s possible to include at least one open-ended question, you should really consider doing so.

This will give your customers the chance to express their real thoughts, and you might be surprised at how many helpful insights come out of these questions. Just make sure to place these questions toward the end of the survey, to give your respondents a chance to warm up. You don’t want to scare them off with what looks like an essay question right off the bat.

5. Reward your customers for taking the survey. A small discount, a free product, a gift card—these kinds of little rewards can have a big impact on the number of people who agree to take your survey. Although there are some who believe that offering an incentive can bias your results, market studies have not turned up evidence that this is the case.

On the other hand, according to a SurveyMonkey blog post on the topic, offering incentives can increase the number of respondents by 5 to 20 percent.

Do you think your company could use some help bringing in customer feedback? You may want to try KOVA’s Verint Media Recorder Customer Feedback software—contact us today!