An overlooked benefit of customer satisfaction research is the opportunity to let customers know their input is critically important and impacts your product offerings, delivery channels, and other activities. “When you solicit information, tell customers their feedback will be heard,” says Michelle van Schouwen, president of van Schouwen Associates LLC, an integrated marketing communications firm in Longmeadow, Mass. “When you implement change, emphasize in all your strategic communications that customers inspired the improvements.” Here are six other ways to get the most value from your next round of research:

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1. Use plain English. When writing surveys and invitations to participate in research, use language that anyone can understand. For example, rather than coax customers into participating in a research study, ask them to answer a few simple questions, says Geri Stengel, president of Stengel Solutions, a strategic planning and marketing consultancy in New York. Also, avoid using industry jargon and tech-speak.

2. Don’t lead. Leading questions, designed to get the answer you want, provide little useful information and turn customers off.

3. Get personal, but be objective. Conduct in-depth, face-to-face interviews with individual customers rather than relying solely on focus groups. But a word of caution: Avoid asking someone inside your company to handle the interviews. “Your clients will share more honest feedback with a stranger than with you,” says Lisa Nirell, chief energy officer of EnergizeGrowth LLC, a leadership consulting firm in Sunriver, Ore.

4. Reach out to a cross-section of customers. “Select a mixed set of relatively new clients, long-standing clients, and somewhat dissatisfied or lost clients,” Nirell says. “They all have something of value to share.”

5. Give them a progress report. With a mail survey, a respondent can easily determine how much they’ve completed. Many online surveys, however, can seem like an endless stream of questions. Give respondents some indication of what remains, Stengel suggests. And because online surveys allow you to access real-time results, you can determine if respondents are having trouble answering certain questions.

6. Don’t let research sit on the shelf. Have frontline managers put together a plan in response to your customer research, with specific solutions to any problems uncovered, says Clive Mettrick, president of the Business Research Lab, a consulting firm in Chester, Vt. Be sure to ask for periodic updates until all issues are resolved.

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