One of the best ways to find out how effective your customers think your service desk or forum is, is to take a survey asking the people who actually use the service desk or forum what they think about it. Asking for suggestions to improve your service desk or forum is a good idea. There are many approaches to surveying, but some are more effective than others.

Often times membership websites will send a customer satisfaction survey of their service desk or forum to their entire list. There are several problems with this approach. First not everyone surveyed will have used your service desk's services. This will either make your percentage of responses low or add irrelevant responses to your data. Since you only request this information once in a while, you will be tempted to cram too much information into the survey. Often these surveys lack focus and do not give you a clear picture of performance.