A lot of companies spend a lot of money on surveying their customers. These companies are doing the right thing (surveying your customers is great), but chances are, there is a group that they’re forgetting to survey: their service providers.
Employees, especially frontline service providers, know a lot about your customers. They are on the phones every day and as a result, have a tremendous amount of experience working with your customers and understanding their experiences. The employees know what customers are calling about, what they think causes the issues, and what customers complain about. If you’re surveying your customers, you probably know a lot of this already, but employees always have a unique, and interesting, perspective.
Surveying your service providers also has the additional effect of making employees feel like their opinions are valued (which is hopefully true). You (as a management team or as a company) taking the time to ask about their opinions, experiences, and insights makes them feel like they have a voice and that their suggestions and comments will hopefully be implemented, or at least considered.
So what do you ask your employees? I always recommend asking them a mix of specific and broad questions. The specific questions are ones where your want their opinion about how to deal with a particular problem or challenge you’re facing. The broad questions are so they can provide you with their feedback and ideas about other possible issues you might not be aware of (or might not realize how important they are). You have to word the questions so they don’t threaten anyone or make it seem like you’re trying to catch someone in any type of trap.
Sometimes it’s helpful to have the surveys conducted anonymously (if you choose to do a written / online survey) or by a third party (anonymous or not, if you choose to do them as interviews). It all depends on what type of information you’re looking for and how your company is setup. It can be a bit awkward for employees to give honest feedback to managers or supervisors (or to a third party if they know the feedback won’t be anonymous).
Some companies do this more regularly. They run the program as more of a job satisfaction and quality evaluation. If you systemize the process and do it consistently across departments and teams, it won’t be as intimating. All too often, “reviews” or “evaluations” have this negative connotation that imply something is wrong. You should work hard to avoid or eliminate that association. The goal of surveys, evaluations, interviews, etc. (of customers or of employees) is to get feedback - feedback that you can use to improve.