Most small companies want to know what customers think after an order is delivered. Few do it regularly. The usual reasons are the same: the survey is too long, nobody owns it, and the answers are read once and forgotten.
A feedback routine does not need a tool or a research budget. It needs three questions, a fixed moment, a reader and a monthly habit.
Three questions are enough
Every extra question lowers the number of answers. Keep to three:
- How did the delivery go compared with what we agreed? A scale of one to five, or "better / as agreed / worse".
- What was the one thing that worked best or worst? A free-text answer, one or two sentences.
- Is there anything still open on your side? This turns feedback into a chance to fix a problem while the customer still cares.
The third question is the most useful one. It often reveals a missing invoice detail, an unanswered email or a small defect that nobody reported.
Avoid long satisfaction scales and questions about things you will not change. If you will not act on an answer, do not ask the question.
Send it at one fixed moment
Choose one trigger and keep it. Good options are:
- Two working days after the goods or the work were handed over.
- One week after a service went live, when the customer has tried it in real use.
- After the final invoice is paid, for longer projects.
Too early and the customer has not tried the result yet. Too late and the details are forgotten. Pick the moment that fits your type of work and do not change it every month, otherwise you cannot compare the answers.
Send the request from a real person's address, with a short personal sentence. A plain email with three questions usually works better than a link to a formatted form. If a form is easier for you, keep it to one page.
One person reads the answers
Name one reader. Not "the team", but a person who:
- Reads every answer within a week.
- Replies to the customer when something is open or negative, ideally the same day.
- Passes concrete problems to the owner of that area.
- Records the answer in one shared place.
A shared spreadsheet is enough. One row per answer: date, customer, score, the comment, whether something is open, and who handles it. Name a deputy for holidays.
For complaints that need tracking, use the approach from a customer complaint log with one page, an owner and a monthly pattern review. Feedback and complaints can share the same place.
Review once a month
Once a month, the reader spends thirty minutes with the table and answers four questions:
- How many requests did we send and how many came back?
- Which topic appeared more than once?
- What is the one thing that, if fixed, would help most customers?
- What did we already change, and did it help?
From this, pick at most three changes for the next month, each with an owner and a date. Three small changes that really happen are worth more than a list of twenty.
The result fits well into a one-page monthly operations review. Two numbers are enough: the number of answers and the share of "as agreed or better".
Tell customers what changed
Customers who never see a result stop answering. Once a month or once a quarter, send a short note or add a line to your newsletter or website: "You told us delivery notes were unclear. From this month they include the contact person and the date of the next step."
Repeated questions from customers can also become public answers. The article on turning customer questions into web answers shows a simple way to do it.
Common mistakes
- Asking everyone for everything. Long questionnaires get few answers and mostly from the unhappy or the very happy.
- No reader. Answers sit in an inbox and nobody replies.
- Changing the questions every month. You lose the ability to see a trend.
- Defending instead of listening. The first reply to a negative answer should be thanks and a question, not an explanation.
- Counting averages only. One comment can be more useful than a score of 4.3.
- Never closing the loop. Without a visible change, the next request is ignored.
How to start this month
- Write the three questions and agree on the sending moment.
- Name the reader and a deputy.
- Create the shared table with the columns above.
- Send the request for the next ten deliveries and nothing more.
- Book thirty minutes for the first monthly review.
- Choose up to three changes and write a short note to customers about them.
Summary
Feedback after delivery is a small routine: three questions, one fixed moment, one reader and a monthly review that ends in a few changes. The value comes from the follow-up, not from the survey itself.
Sources
- Our related articles linked above.
- The approach described here is common practice for small and mid-sized companies, used as a practical guide. No client results or market figures are claimed in this article.
