A Complete Guide to Customer Needs Assessments (with Industry Examples)
Want to know what separates thriving businesses from struggling ones?
It’s not luck, or being a well-known brand name, or even having a better product or bigger marketing budget (although these are obviously helpful).
It’s a deep understanding of customer needs.
Because without accurate insights, companies risk making assumptions that don’t match what their audience actually want.
That’s why you should be putting together top-quality customer needs assessments if you want to be a success in your industry or niche.
They’re a structured way to gather insights that allow you to tailor your products, services, and marketing strategies for maximum impact.
And we’ve got the full breakdown of everything you need to know for your brand or business to create, promote, and use the data from these sorts of assessments.
We’ll take you through:
- What customer needs assessments are and how they work
- Why they matter for business success
- Different types of assessments you can make
- How to conduct an effective assessment
- Industry examples of how businesses can use assessments to drive real results
- What questions to ask and what not to ask (and why!)
- How to get your assessments in front of the right people
- How to use ScoreApp to make the whole process incredibly simple and effective.
So, if you’re looking for deep, accurate, and useful insights into what your current and future customers want from your company, this is the guide for you.
Let’s see what it’s all about…
What is a customer needs assessment?
What actually is a customer needs assessment, then?
Essentially, it’s the questions you ask to identify and understand what customers value most, what problems they face, and what solutions they’re actively seeking.
By conducting these assessments, you will be able to:
- Improve your customer experience by addressing pain points
- Refine your marketing messages to attract high-quality leads
- Optimize your product or service offerings based on actual demand.
Now, if this sounds a bit dull and unexciting, ditch those thoughts!
Because customer needs assessments can be fun, interactive, and irresistible for your audience. We’ll show you how to make yours exciting and intriguing shortly.
Key components of a customer needs assessment
To make your assessment a success, there are certain things you should include.
You need to ask questions that address issues that lead to valuable information you can use in your marketing campaigns, such as:
- Customer demographics – Who they are, where they’re from, their interests
- Pain points and challenges – What issues they struggle with, what’s stopping them from solving their problems
- Desired solutions – What they’re looking for in a product or service
- Preferences and behaviors – How they engage with brands and make decisions.
Why customer needs assessments are crucial for business growth
If you aren’t going directly to the source to find out what your customers want, then you’re pretty much scrabbling around in the dark—which is not a great way to grow as a business.
But by taking the time to understand your customers, you’ll gain a competitive edge and see progress across the board, as you start to:
- Improve customer retention and satisfaction
- Increase conversion rates with highly targeted messaging
- Reduce wasted marketing spend by focusing on what truly matters to customers.
Example: Why assumptions can be costly
We’ve mentioned how assuming things about your customers can be a dangerous game, which is why it’s so crucial that you do the research to confirm or disprove your suspicions.
For example, plenty of retail brands out there may well be assuming that their customers want luxury packaging, so they continue to spend heavily on high-end materials.
However, times are changing. A customer needs assessment could reveal how most buyers are now prioritizing eco-friendly packaging for their items.
By taking this information onboard and adjusting their approach, those companies would be able to not only reduce their costs, but also improve customer loyalty and satisfaction.
Key takeaway: Data-driven decisions outperform assumptions every time.
Types of customer needs assessments
A lot of companies don’t make the most of customer needs assessments, only sending the token ‘Let us know what you thought’ email after a purchase.
But there is so much more to customer needs assessments than this.
Businesses can actually use multiple types of assessments based on their goals.
Let’s take a look at some of your options.
1. Customer feedback surveys
When you ask questions beyond just “How did we do?”, feedback surveys can be used to measure loyalty and brand perception, as well as customer satisfaction.
- Survey example: A software as a service (SaaS) company could conduct a survey asking “What feature do you wish we offered?” to prioritize future software updates.
- How to use ScoreApp: Automate the feedback collection process through email follow-ups after a lead purchases from you or signs up with you.
2. Pre-sales qualification assessments
When it comes to leads, you should be aiming for quality, not quantity.
Use your surveys to identify and pre-qualify high-value leads and segment your audiences for improved communications with them.
- Survey example: A fitness coach who uses a ‘What’s Your Fitness Personality?’ quiz will be better able to understand each new client’s needs before offering a personalized plan.
- How to use ScoreApp: Capture audience responses in a structured way to create personalized follow-ups.
3. Post-purchase customer needs assessments
The best companies are always improving—themselves, their offerings, and their relationships with their customers.
Post-purchase surveys are the way to go about improving your product or service experience after a sale too.
- Survey example: A subscription box business could send out a ‘Rate Your Subscription Box Experience’ survey to see what works for their customers and what doesn’t, and refine their offerings.
- How to use ScoreApp: Automate post-purchase feedback questionnaires and use those insights to improve customer retention.
4. Industry-specific needs assessments
Another key tactic for creating insightful assessments is tailoring your questions and content to your industry to enhance your overall business strategy.
- Survey example: A financial advisor could get specific by making a ‘How Financially Prepared Are You?’ assessment to help them segment clients based on their financial goals.
- How to use ScoreApp: Deliver personalized reports or other pieces of relevant content that help people learn something about themselves based on quiz responses.
Step-by-step guide to conducting a customer needs assessment
To help you make the most of the process, here’s our five-step guide for getting your own surveys up and running—from creating your questions to analyzing the data and acting on the insights.
Step 1: Define the goal of your assessment
Ask yourself what you’re actually trying to achieve—do you want to improve a product, generate leads, or increase retention? Something else?
Use your answer to guide your next moves.
Example: A B2B business may want to assess buyer readiness before offering a sales demo.
Step 2: Choose the right method
There are different approaches you could take to customer needs assessments, such as surveys, quizzes, in-depth interviews, or focus groups, so it’s important to choose the right one for your situation and goals.
Example: A coaching business might use a pre-session survey to identify client goals before booking in consultations.
Step 3: Craft meaningful questions
Avoid bland or generic questions that don’t lead to actual insights (like yes/no questions). Instead, focus on open-ended questions that drill down to the heart of the matter to produce specific, actionable answers.
Example: Instead of “Do you like our service?”, ask “What’s one thing we could improve about your experience?”
Bonus tip: Use the pre-built question templates in ScoreApp for targeted assessments that have been proven to get results.
Step 4: Analyze the results
Look for common answers, patterns, and trends. These will be your key takeaways to act on and improve upon.
Example: A travel agency might discover that 80% of customers prefer adventure holidays over beach trips, leading to a bigger push on popular destinations and packages.
Step 5: Take action based on insights
Use the data you receive to improve your product offerings, refine your marketing strategies, and personalize your customer interactions (like follow-up emails).
Example: An online education company might decide to write new courses based on popular topics they identified through their customer needs assessments.
Industry examples of customer needs assessments in action
Customer needs assessments are valuable tools regardless of the industry or niche your business operates in.
They’re a way to glean solid and useful information about current customers, as well as prospective leads, so they should be a regular part of your arsenal.
Let’s take a look at how brands and companies might use customer needs assessments of their own to make the most of what they have to offer.
Retail and e-commerce
A retail clothing brand could use a ‘Find Your Personal Style’ quiz to tailor product recommendations and make suggestions based on leads’ personal preferences.
Health and wellness
A physiotherapist could offer a ‘Do You Need a Physio?’ assessment to help potential clients determine if treatment is right for them—and if so, push them in the direction of the service best suited for their situation.
Finance and insurance
A mortgage advisor could develop a ‘How Ready Are You to Buy a Home?’ quiz to pre-qualify their incoming leads and get people into the appropriate content marketing funnels they’ve set up.
Education and coaching
An online course provider could run a ‘What’s Your Learning Style?’ quiz to recommend personalized learning paths. With proper segmentation of their audiences, they’d then be able to provide the best resources and content for the learning style they’re assessed to be.
What not to ask in customer needs assessments (and what to ask instead)
What sorts of questions should you include in your assessments for best results?
Well, to answer that, we’ll first show you what you shouldn’t be asking.
Here are five common questions we see in brand surveys that need to be ditched immediately—and what to ask your customers instead for clearer, more in-depth answers that will actually be useful to you.
1. Don’t ask: “Do you like our product?”
- Why it’s bad: This is far too vague, so it’s unlikely to provide any actionable insights. A lot of people will probably just answer yes or no unless they’re pressed to give reasons why.
- Better alternative: “What do you like or dislike about our product, and why?”
- Why it’s better: It encourages specific feedback for identifying strengths and weaknesses in your product or service.
2. Don’t ask: “Would you recommend us?”
- Why it’s bad: As above, a yes/no response isn’t sufficient. It just doesn’t measure enthusiasm or satisfaction level in any real depth.
- Better alternative: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague? And why?”
- Why it’s better: It uses the Net Promoter Score (NPS) format, which provides a quantifiable measure of customer loyalty and reasons behind their rating. If you keep seeing people giving a score of seven, then you know you have room for improvement, which you might not have realized if those same scorers merely answered yes to liking your product.
3. Don’t ask: “Is our pricing fair?”
- Why it’s bad: The term ‘fair’ is way too subjective and doesn’t specify what aspect of pricing is in question. (Are you sensing a theme of asking your audience to get specific in their answers?)
- Better alternative: “How does our pricing compare to the value you receive from our product/service?”
- Why it’s better: You’re encouraging your customers to weigh price against perceived value rather than just reacting to cost. People are often willing to pay a premium fee if it actually matches the service.
4. Don’t ask: “Do you use our product often?”
- Why it’s bad: Once again, you’re using too subjective a word in ‘often’ to provide any meaningful data.
- Better alternative: “How frequently do you use our product/service (daily, weekly, monthly, rarely, never)?”
- Why it’s better: You’ll receive quantifiable data that can be used for customer segmentation and behavior analysis. Also, if you find most people only use your product weekly, you can start to ask yourself what you can do to get people to use it daily.
5. Don’t ask: “Is there anything else you’d like to share?”
- Why it’s bad: Another question that’s way too broad. At best, it’ll result in irrelevant or vague responses, but realistically you’ll get a lot of people simply saying no, N/A, or just leaving the section blank.
- Better alternative: “What’s one thing we could do to improve your experience with our product/service?”
- Why it’s better: This encourages focused, constructive feedback for driving specific improvements. You’re requesting a clear example, not just asking if they want to share anything else with you.
By refining your survey questions to be more specific and actionable, you can then start to gather more meaningful insights, which will ultimately lead to better decision-making at your end and increased customer satisfaction for your leads.
How to reach the right audience with your customer surveys
It’s all well and good writing great questions and making interactive surveys, but it’ll all be for nothing if you don’t get them in front of your leads.
Let’s look at how to ensure your surveys are reaching the right people so that any insights are an accurate reflection of your target customers.
Identify your audience
The first thing to do here is to determine who you’re surveying.
Is it existing customers? Potential leads? A specific customer segment?
Once you know who you want to survey, you can tailor your survey questions and distribution method to match their preferences and behaviors, as well as reach them where they’re most likely to be found.
Best channels for sharing your surveys
Where should you share your surveys to make sure they’re seen by your target audience, then? Here are some places to consider…
- Email campaigns – Send personalized survey invitations to your current customers and leads via email. You can also offer extra incentives like discounts or giveaways to increase completion rates.
- Social media pages – Share survey links on your social accounts, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, or wherever else you have an active and engaged audience.
- Website and landing pages – You could also embed surveys on high-traffic pages of your website, or use exit-intent pop-ups to capture visitor feedback.
- In-app or software prompts – Asking for feedback within your app or platform can increase the number of real-time responses you get from active users while you’re still fresh in their minds.
- SMS and messaging apps – Sending out short surveys via text or WhatsApp can also lead to quick, high-response interactions.
- QR codes on products or receipts – This is an easy way to direct customers to your online surveys with a simple scan (and is becoming more and more popular as a strategy).
Maximizing responses
No matter where you’re sharing links to your assessments, there are a few key things to bear in mind if you want people to give up their time to respond:
- Keep your surveys short and focused
- Clearly communicate the purpose of the survey
- Offer small incentives if you can (such as discounts, gift cards, or entries into a giveaway)
Combining quality questions with a well-executed distribution strategy is the way to ensure that your surveys reach the right people, that those people answer you, and that you gain accurate and actionable insights for your business.
How ScoreApp simplifies customer needs assessments
Creating, promoting, and analyzing customer needs assessments seems a huge task that requires a ton of time and effort, right?
But it really doesn’t have to be like that!
From conception to application, ScoreApp streamlines the entire assessment process by offering:
- Customizable quiz and survey templates – It’s easy to get started with assessments and super quick to make them when you use the in-built templates.
- Automated lead segmentation – Target customers more effectively than ever by sending your leads to relevant funnels based on their quiz or survey results. You can then tailor your content and follow-up communications to your audience.
- Real-time analytics – All that tricky analytical stuff doesn’t have to be done manually or cause frustration. You can automatically spot and track trends before optimizing your strategies based on clear and obvious data.
- CRM and email marketing integrations – The tools in ScoreApp can be seamlessly integrated alongside your current email and marketing platforms. This makes follow-up campaigns easy to set up and navigate without having to start anew or ditch any campaign work you may have done.
Turn customer insights into business growth
There we have it, then—everything you need to make successful surveys and awesome assessments for transforming the way your business operates, markets, and serves your audience.
For every step of the journey, ScoreApp can help you automate the process, gain deeper insights, and implement those data-driven strategies that will boost both results and your ROI on future marketing campaigns.
