What are benchmarks?
Benchmarking survey results from an initial survey sets a baseline level to which you can compare key metrics against such as CSAT, NPS, CES and awareness by running similar surveys at different time intervals as well as against published industry standards.
The goals of the business can be measured like brand awareness and what impact brand activities have had on these key metrics, whether that’s a product launch, company event or an ad campaign.
This not only applies to internal benchmarking against key measures but also how your business compares to competitor brands in your market to help ascertain your brand’s strengths and weaknesses versus the competition as well as possible opportunities.
Otherwise, how else would you know your business is doing well in the overall market across various aspects of your business other than sales data. This helps to highlight areas to strengthen, resolve and maximise opportunity.
For example, you run an initial survey and find 65% are satisfied with the service you provide but is that a good figure? Does that figure improve over time? And how does that compare with your competitors? This is where benchmarking your survey results comes in.
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9 Reasons for benchmarking survey results
Just to emphasise the importance of using benchmarks, the following are the top 9 reasons for benchmarking survey results:
It allows a brand to self-assess its performance by comparing key metrics over different points in time.
Compare and measure against competitor brands in the marketplace and explore the reasons for the differences.
Helps to support the decision-making process of your business.
Allows you to effectively set targets for improvements to be made to your business.
Encourage a strategic outlook in exploring new ideas and opportunities.
It enables the brand’s identity, strategy formulation and implementation to be strengthened.
Sets standards for the business to meet and surpass.
Enhance performance and productivity with action plans to improve areas that are most vital to customers.
Benefit from the strategic advantage and concentrate on capabilities that are crucial to the success of the brand.
Examples of benchmarking survey results
There are many examples in which you can benchmark scores from surveys, the following are the most common examples of benchmarking:
Customer satisfaction (CSAT)
Through customer satisfaction, you can gage how happy customers are with the brand overall as well as the different aspects of the business including the product and service provided. Key brand attributes such as value for money, accessibility, relevancy, expertise can be measured from running such surveys. This will allow you to address any issues in these areas and see if they have improved in the minds of your customers.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Net Promoter score (NPS) will allow you to measure how likely your customers are advocates of the brand in recommending it to others whether that’s friends, family or colleagues. Brand advocacy is a powerful tool and crucial for your business in order for your brand to grow. Therefore, tracking this measure over time, you will not only see how effective marketing promotions have affected the brand but will enable you to take action to improve low NPS scores.
Views and opinions about your website
Website feedback is a great way to gather what visitors think of your site whether it is visually appealing, can they navigate their way round your site easily, speed and can they find the information they want with ease. Plus, you also find out how they came across your site, the reasons for visiting your site, likes and dislikes about your site along with recommended improvements. This helps to provide reasons and context of why certain things are occurring in your web analytics. By monitoring this feedback on a regular basis, you can see if opinions of your website improve against the initial benchmark results and also take action to enhance visitor’s experience.
Employee Satisfaction
By running an initial employee satisfaction survey, you can compare these results against subsequent surveys over time to see how your employees feel about their job, the workplace culture and the business to understand if they are sufficiently challenged and motivated to do the job to the best of their ability. Unmotivated staff can have a negative effect on the business and is likely to resonate in the service they provide to customers, so it is best to monitor this and ensure your employees are happy and in turn improving your staff retention.
5 steps of benchmarking results
Step 1: Design the survey with the metrics that are relevant to your objectives
Design the survey with the metrics that are relevant to your objectives and run this survey using a survey maker platform like JotForm that have templates you can customise covering metrics like the ones mentioned above – NPS or CSAT.
Step 2: Collate and analyse the results
Collate and analyse the results, these will be your benchmarks to compare against and decide what time intervals you want to run the same survey again, whether that’s monthly, quarterly or 6 monthly.
Step 3: Run the survey again once time intervals are decided
It is important once you have decided the time intervals, whether that's monthly, quarterly, half yearly or annually that you run the survey again.
Step 4: Gather these results and see if they have improved
Gather these results and see if they have improved especially if you have taken a course of action such as a marketing campaign or made improvements to your website after the initial set of results (benchmarks).
Step 5: Realign goals accordingly every time you run a customer survey
Realign your goals accordingly every time you run a customer survey, particularly if there is a drop in any of these important metrics in order to help you take the necessary action and customer issues can be resolved as well.
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