If you are an entrepreneur, then you must be accustomed to taking regular customer surveys whether online or offline.
So, by now you are fully aware of the impact a small survey has in building or ruining a brand.
You vouch for the best customer feedback software to customize customer satisfaction surveys and collect data that goes a long way in improving the brand’s face value and service.
But often the restriction faced with customer feedbacks is the limited information collected that hampers the validity of data.
This is where a Semantic Differential Scale brings you the best of responses through a multi-point rating option.
For most, it is a novel entry to the vast landscape of customer surveys. So, let us first get into understanding what is a Semantic Differential Scale:
A Psychologist’s Driven Theory of Semantic Differential Scale
In the 1950s, an American psychologist Charles Egerton Osgood invented a feedback scale with an inclination towards emotional attitude called the Semantic Differential Scale. A Semantic Differential Scale measures the connotative meaning of concepts which may be ideas, events, or objects. This scale has 3 dimensions of effective meaning-
- Evaluation: Evaluation determines whether the customer has a positive or negative opinion about a product, topic, organization, market, etc. It has pairs like safe to dangerous, good to bad.
- Potency: Potency determines how powerful is the customer’s attitude towards something. It has pairs like strong to weak, high to low.
- Activity: Activity determines whether the feedback received is active or passive. It has pairs like active to passive, fast to slow, cold to hot.
The reliability and accuracy of this scale since then have been pertinent to the versatility of the survey questionnaire and the ease of understanding. It is the universal applicability of a semantic differential scale to measure emotions, attitudes, motivations on a multi-dimension level that makes it effective and popular.
In the customer feedback using a semantic differential scale, the respondent is asked to rate products/services/organizations with adjectives like:
- Happy – Sad
- Likely – Unlikely
- Pleasant – Unpleasant
- Very Satisfied – Unsatisfied
- Boring – Interesting
These polar adjectives are spread at the extreme ends of the scale with negative polar on the left-hand side and positive polar on the right-hand side.
How to make an effective Semantic Differential Scale:
1.Customize: Design the differential scale as per the requirement of your business and the details you would like to gather from the customer. Add numerics, emojis, or pictures in the scale to make it look more lively and interesting.
2.Right polar adjectives: The most important aspect of a survey using a semantic differential scale is to opt for the correct polar adjective and its antonym. This is how you will receive accurate and precise feedback from customers.
3.Implement the 3 dimensions Evaluation, Potency, and Activity: Charles E, Osgood’s 3 dimensions offer a diverse set of data.
4.Use the best customer feedback software: The best feedback tool delivers the most accurate results by offering a myriad of features from read-made templates available for customization.
Here’s How You Can measure Customer Feedback with Semantic Differential Scale:
A Semantic Differential Scale allows the customer to give their opinion about the entity’s product or service through feedback. This helps the businesses to pinpoint the area that needs improvement from the customer’s point of view.
To make sure the semantic differential scale provides the most reliable feedback, it is vital to use the right polar adjectives. Once you collect the customer survey using the semantic differential scale, while analyzing the feedback, make sure you consider-
- The response a customer has submitted
- The psychological meaning behind the response
This consideration allows you to focus on whether your product or service meets the customer’s expectations.
Let us consider some examples-
1.Measuring the product/service satisfaction level
Based on your experience, please rank our product/service on the satisfaction index.
Very Bad Bad Good Very Good
Neutral
This is an example of the Evaluation dimension of the Semantic Differential Scale. It offers accurate feedback by which the brand can identify how strongly the customer is affected by the product or service.
1.Analysing the attitude of customers towards a brand
Given your most recent encounter with our staff, how do you identify our staff’s knowledge of the product/services?
Very Weak Weak Strong Very Strong
Neutral
This is an example of the Potency dimension of the Semantic Differential Scale. It offers accurate feedback by which the brand can identify the positive or negative impact of the customer’s experience.
1.How smooth do you think our payment process is.
Fast to slow
Very Slow Slow Fast Very Fast
Neutral
This is an example of the Activity dimension of the Semantic Differential Scale. It shows how speed influences the customer’s opinion of the brand.
Pros of Semantic Differential Scale:
1.A Semantic differential scale gives ease of use with its objective pattern. A differential scale defines what the customer thinks and perceives and thus makes it easy to understand.
2.Used in an array of psychological evaluations like academic research, market research, etc.
3.Considering the respondents understand the choices they presented in the survey that uses semantic differential scale, the information collected is much more reliable.
4.This scale asks the respondents to rate their attitude and feeling targeting their psychology, they are likely to give accurate answers making the semantic differential scale more authentic.
5.A semantic differential scale is easy to make. The only requirement it has is choosing the best customer feedback software and deciding on the right polar adjective for measuring feedback.
Wrapping Up!
Reliable customer feedback is your key to get into the customer’s mindset and understand what they truly want from your brand. Adopting the best customer feedback software identifies, analyses, and designs a survey that defines your requirement by treating every customer as a valuable asset.
This is achieved by adopting the best customer feedback software that is user-friendly with an easy-to-use interface. The surveys designed from the feedback software should be user-defined, which makes them acceptable for a semantic differential scale. Choosing the right software for this purpose will make much difference in the accuracy and reliability of customer responses.
Feedbacktaken delivers cutting-edge customer feedback software that easily creates surveys and collects feedback while seamlessly integrating with the organization’s IT infrastructure. These surveys are fully customizable, cost-effective with an extensive knowledge base, and provide real-time management dashboarding.