In the hosting industry, providers obsess over uptime, ticket response times, and marketing campaigns – but surprisingly few put serious effort into customer satisfaction surveys.  I cannot remember the last time I got a satisfaction survey, or really any kind of survey from a provider.

That’s a missed opportunity. A well-designed survey can deliver priceless insights about your customers, operations, and even your competitors, at essentially zero cost.

Decades ago (literally), I used to do marketing research and did a ton of surveys.  Every single project I was on, the client learned some things they didn’t know before they started.

The Power of Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Surveys are one of the easiest ways to find out what your customers really think. When done right, they can reveal operational blind spots, marketing misalignment, and feature gaps.  Really, if you’re not talking with your customers, how can you know what they’re thinking?  If you were running a fruit stand, every day you’d see them eyeball-to-eyeball and get a pretty good gauge of their thoughts.  But in the hosting arena, they could be anywhere in the world.  You need a way to reach out and talk with them.

And the cool part is that you can slip in a little marketing at the same time – “thanks for participating, did you know we also offer cheap, high performance block storage?”  Or offer people a discount if they participate, which can lead to more sales.  You also get great marketing copy.  Nothing is more lame than visiting a provider I’m considering and seeing a bunch of testimonials from “Tom C.” and “Mary L.” that are obviously fake.  With satisfaction surveys, you get quotes you can use.

But the main benefit is getting real-time insights into your operations from the people who’ve chosen to spend money with you.  That’s gold.

You can ask routinely, once a quarter, after a ticket, if someone decides to cancel, etc.  All of these are opportunities to learn more about your customers.

Why Aren’t More Providers Doing Surveys?

I’m guessing here, but my suspicions are:

• Fear of Negative Feedback: Which of course is completely backwards thinking.  If you think you’re going to get negative feedback, you desperately need a customer satisfaction survey to find out what it’s about.

• Administrative Complexity: Some think surveys require complex tools, dedicated analysts, or expensive platforms. Not true!

• Assumption Customers Won’t Respond: Customers will respond if surveys are short, respectful of their time, and offer a small incentive.

• Not Knowing What to Ask: We’ll help you with that.

• Just Hadn’t Thought of It: Hence this article.

Keep It Simple: What to Ask

A good customer satisfaction survey is short and focused. Here’s a simple framework:

1. Net Promoter Score (NPS): That’s fancy marketing research talk for a question like “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?” (Scale 0–10).  This one question alone is a proven indicator of customer loyalty.

2. Satisfaction With Key Areas: “How satisfied are you with our support response time?”, “How satisfied are you with uptime?”, etc.

3. One Open-Ended Question: “What’s one thing we could do better?” or “What’s one feature you wished we had?”

You don’t need to make this War and Peace.  I’d keep it to five questions max.  Enough to get some valuable insights, but not so much that it’s a burden to your customers.  You don’t have to ask each customer the same questions.  If you have a big enough userbase, you can ask different randomized pools of customers about different areas.

Howto

You don’t need a pricey SaaS product to start surveying. Google Forms or Survey Monkey (even the free version) are enough.  WHCMS allows you to setup ticket ratings but that’s just a star rating.  You want to go a little deeper.

If you want to boost response, include an incentive.  There’s a couple methods you can try:

• You can offer a discount.  “Fill out our survey for a 20% code you can use,” etc.
• Or you can offer something of valuable, like an Amazon gift card.  To stretch your marketing dollar, make it a drawing for a $50 or $100 card.

To avoid spamming (especially if you include an incentive), include a question to ask the user’s registered email address which should match what you have on file in your WHMCS or other billing application.

Doing it Right

Not long ago, I purchased a guitar pedal. The manufacturer asked me to fill out a five-question survey to be entered in a monthly drawing for another pedal of theirs.   I was happy to do so because I’d love another pedal.

Then the owner pinged me on email and thanked me, and referenced a joke I’d made in one of my responses, which made it clear this wasn’t just some automated blast.

I came away thinking (a) they are interested in their customers, (b) I could win something free, and (c) the owner himself reads the surveys.  You can bet I’ll keep them in mind for my next pedal.

Customers are hard to acquire.  Once you have them, hold on to them for dear life.  Surveys are a great way to build a relationship.  Go and do likewise!

raindog308

Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.