Co-written by: Outdoor Network Cameras. Digital video is a video recording technique that uses a digital video signal rather than an analog video signal. Somewhere in nineteen eighty-six, this was initially put on market. The digital video system is more admired than the analog video system owing to its unmatchable features that let it be copied several times with no loss of picture quality. Because of that trait, digital video capturing is extensively done the world over. Digital video capture essentially signifies the capture of moving imagery in digital systems from the analog systems.  

It refers to hardware devices that recognize the video signal given to it’s and then converts it to digital video data. 

In order to start your digital video capture experience, get yourself a good video camera.  After reading the user guide on recording videos, shoot a short-length test video of yourself or a family member. This video should then be fed into the PC or Laptop. 

The PC may recognize this unprocessed DV data through a DV transfer software or the use might make use of a software capturing solution to transform this to some other system. Digital video capture devices can just hardware-capture in DV format. Say the user chooses to software-capture the transferred data, it would have already been compressed to digital video by the hardware.  Once compression has taken place, it cannot be undone.

In order to capture the recorded video onto your computer or laptop, simply set up the digital video capture hardware by plugging in the USB 2.0 cable to the video camera and connecting the other end of the USB to the port on your PC/Laptop. Switch on the video camera and your PC.

The PC should read digital video capture device.
Digital video capture devices are widely advertised and available on the internet.  If you are hunting for a digital video capture device, the World Wide Web is the ideal spot to search.  Some of the advertised devices come with consumer reviews that enable you to compare, analyze and learn between different types of digital video capture devices to choose the best from the rest.  Moreover, the Net further allows you access to ‘how to’ guides that help users make themselves familiar with the various workings and technical features associated with these devices. Some sites also give detailed descriptions on the technical aspects of digital video capturing that may be of interest to someone looking for digital video capturing devices.

Co-authored by: Outdoor Cameras.

Why bother?

Good customer service is the life blood of any business. Although new customers are very important good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and repeat business. With each satisfied customer your business is likely to win many more customers through recommendations and remember, if you are not taking care of your customers, your competition will.

Online customer satisfaction surveys will help by not only identifying problem areas but show that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.

 

Where to start?

Objective - Before you start compiling your survey consider what the objectives of the survey are, in that way you will remain focused and find it easier to decide what questions to ask.

Analysis - Having completed the survey consider how you will analyze the answers.

Bare in mind that 'closed' questions (where the respondents are asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are easier to analyse than questions that are ‘open’ (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).

A lot will depend on the predicted volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analysing the results.

Opportunity – As well as obtaining valuable market research data keep in mind that customer surveys are also a good way to advertise areas of your service that your customers may not be aware of.

After you have drafted your survey read through the survey from a market research view point and check that you are asking the right questions in the right way and that with the feedback information you will be able to properly analyze the data allowing you to make informed decisions.

Next, read through the survey from a marketing view point, check that you have phrased each question so that every opportunity has been taken to promote your business?

The ideal question will perform the following three functions:-

• Market research - provide valuable feedback to help you improve your customer satisfaction levels and in turn your business
• Marketing - promote aspects of your business
• Information/Education - advertise a service that you provide that your customers may not have been unaware of

For example:- Do you find the in-store baby changing facilities useful?

By asking this question not only will the store receive good feedback on the facility they provide but they will also advertise their baby changing facilities and promote themselves as a family friendly store beyond those customers who have a specific need for the facility provided.

Warts and all – to benefit most from a customer survey you need to be prepared to dig deep and accept the worst.

A customer satisfaction survey should be designed to highlight problems so that they can be addressed; regular customer satisfaction will prevent complacency and will also give early warning on where your competitors initiatives may be losing you business.

 

What to ask?

Although each business is likely to have specific and unique factors that are important in providing good customer services there are common areas that are relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online internet store or a service industry. The following are some key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication - Are you confident that you make it easy for your customers to contact you?

When a customer telephones is their call answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services handled properly? Good businesses will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, politely, quickly and fairly.

If there are reported problems that cannot be resolvable immediately do you promise to respond in a given time period and do you deliver on your promise?

Use a customer satisfaction survey to ensure that all your staff are considered by your customers to be courteous, helpful and knowledgeable.

Location – Are you doing everything you can to ensure that your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical store, does it have good access and is it conveniently located?

Making it pleasant, making it easy - For a virtual business it is important to ensure that your website is aesthetically pleasing and easy to use.

Regardless of the store being a bricks and mortar or purely online web based store, is the store properly laid out and can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient detailed information and help on hand to explain how a particular product works?

The right quality products – You should not only measure the quality of the service that you provide but you should also monitor that the products and services that you market are what the customer wants and closely match their expectations.

Value for money – Cheap or expensive is hardly ever a good measure, value for money is.

Do your customers associate your business with value for money, if not, why not?

Speed and attention – Regardless of the business most customers will want to be dealt with quickly but attentively.

Are you doing everything to prevent any delays?

A good business will try to treat each customer as an individual, does yours? Attention is one thing but this has to be hand- in-hand with a quick and satisfactory resolution of the query.

Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example their gender, age group and where they live?

By understanding your customers more, the better your chances of correctly targeting your business.

As part of the survey allow your customers the opportunity to highlight any problems that they may have and provide you with contact details so that their problems might be later addressed and their concerns followed up.

 

What next?

Analyze the results once the survey has been completed.

Trends – Look for specific and common areas where the customer service is found wanting.

Ask yourself honestly if any criticism that you receive is valid and if there anything that can be done to resolve or minimise the problem?

Training – Are all employees properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?

Where staff training programmes have been implemented have they had a positive impact on the business?

Follow-up – If a customer has raised a specific issue through completing a survey ensure that they are contacted and that their complaint is properly addressed.

Do not lose the opportunity to resolve a problem and keep a customer.

Continuously Monitor - Based on the survey results make changes and then re-measure by issuing further surveys.

If you are interested in tracking customer satisfaction and would like to see a sample survey for a store that demonstrates some of the above advice please view the following example that can be used as a customer satisfaction survey template.