Reaching Out

Being able to deliver what the customer wants is what makes a company successful. But determining exactly what it is that the customer wants is not always as easy as it sounds. Although a company goes into business in the first place with the intention of providing a certain product or service that it feels is needed, it is in refining this offering that the company wins customers over the competition. The product must stand out as the best value, whether that value comes in quality, price, delivery or service.

What better way for a supplier to find out what more it can do to make the customer happy than to come right out and ask? This information is commonly gathered informally through conversations with individual customers, but there are more efficient ways to quickly attain this data.

A number of Web-based survey tools are available for requesting feedback from customers. One such application can be found at www.zoomerang.com. This tool offers the capability to build and deploy surveys, using either pre-designed templates or original designs, and analyze results via an interface that tallies the answers in spreadsheet format. A wide selection of question types, from demographic to multiple-choice to open-ended, allows a nice foundation to your research.

The best part about the Zoomerang tool, as described above, is that it’s free. The company also offers far more in-depth survey design and analysis features for a fee. Other similar tools can be found at www.freeonlinesurveys.com and www.freesurveysonline.com.

Production Machining also strives to provide the latest and most informative industry information to our readers, through both print and online media. To get a better idea of what would make research at our Web site more productive to you, we have created our own online survey. Earn a chance to win a $50 Amazon.com gift certificate by completing the survey at www.produtionmachining.com/survey.