Retailers and other businesses need to know how their customers feel about frequenting their place of business. To help them better determine the wants and needs of their customers many businesses use a customer satisfaction survey. A customer satisfaction survey is usually sent in the mail, online or sometimes done at the places of business.

A customer satisfaction survey contains a broad range of topics, everything from how the customer feels about product selection to how they were treated by the employees. A customer satisfaction survey can range from the type where the customer fills in a block or bubble by the answer that most describes their feelings about what they are being asked in the question to one where the customer gets to write out their answers.

A Customer satisfaction survey is important for a number of reasons. One is that they give the customer a way to objectively give their opinion about the experience they had with doing business with a particular company.

If there is something wrong the customer satisfactions survey allows the disgruntled customer to vent a little. They may still feel that answering the questions on the customer satisfaction survey will not do any good but it will still ease their mind a little.

Second, a customer satisfactions survey allows a place of business to understand what the customer likes about how they are conducting business and where they fall short of the customer's want and needs. A customer satisfaction survey is one of the way that a company can show the customers that they and their opinions matter.

One downside to customer satisfaction survey is that they are impersonal and may leave some customer's feeling like the place they do business with is trying to avoid one on one contact. Some customers feel that if a place of business wants to know how they feel ask them while they are there. A customer satisfaction survey like any other survey must be used correctly to be effective.