This is part five in an eight-part series on building customer loyalty. Read part four.

Part of building loyalty is to gain insight into what your customers really think of your business. Due to today’s competitive business environment and increased customer expectations, it is not enough just to put the programs in place that allow you to offer good service. You must also monitor your service and measure how you’re being perceived. If you’re doing these two things, you can implement changes in real time to improve services if you detect a shortfall.

While every business is different and may require different measurements to gain insight, there are some basic measurement activities that every business can employ.

You can hire a third party to call your customers. These customer surveyors ask a brief set of questions and rank the service received on a scale of 1 to 5. While this is a good strategy, it measures customers’ perception of the people who actually answer their phone. Today’s technology including caller ID and do-not-call lists can skew your responses because people are choosing not to take marketing calls.

If you’re collecting email addresses, another good option for gathering customer feedback is by using short email surveys. Survey Monkey is a good service to try and the basic version is free.

And if applicable to your small business, try using mystery shoppers. While mostly all other measuring tools are reactive – that is they measure service after the transaction – mystery shoppers measure the actual service provided. Provide your shoppers with a simple checklist of things to watch and listen for. This can give you great insight into what you are doing right and wrong at each customer touch point.

Next: Market by customer segment