Your customer’s feedback matters. If you’re aware of what your customers think about your company, you can find out ways to improve your business. One of the most effective tools to learn what your customers think is to survey them.
Learn the basics to planning, running, and analysing a customer survey.
There are many great reasons. You will improve customer retention. Conducting surveys make sure you retain the current customers. It’s actually more cost-effective to keep your customers happy than to spend a lot of money into marketing and advertising to acquire new ones.
Don’t assume if you aren’t hearing from customers that they’re satisfied. Surveys address any areas that could be improved. Imagine losing a customer who you thought was happy, but in reality they weren’t. Surveys help you retain those customers to make sure they are satisfied.
The goal of a survey is to gain solid feedback. To guarantee this, it’s crucial to plan an effective survey.
Define your objectives. Before writing any survey questions, you must be clear about what you want to know. Do you want to know what customers think about a new product or service? Are you curious to learn more about your target audience? Whatever it may be set the goals first.
Specify whom you are surveying. Who do you want to ask? Are you looking to target a certain demographic? Who you ask must be related to why you’re asking. Asking about a recent purchase wouldn’t draw much participation from people who haven’t bought anything in a over year.
Generate clear and concise questions. You have your objective and target audience, now come up with the questions. They must be simple and relevant so they will be easy to understand. Keep the customers in mind, and avoid industry jargon or acronyms.
Be brief and engaging. Keep in mind that people have short-attention spans, especially on the Internet. Set expectations of how long it should take in the beginning. To be engaging, ask the interesting questions first, and the demographic questions last.
You are now ready to post your survey for users to take.
Test the survey first. To know that you will get the most out of it, ask someone who would be in the same target group to take your survey. This tells you an idea if all the questions are easy to understand.
Keep it open long enough. One mistake some business owners do is closing a survey too soon. Give it at least two weeks for users to respond, and send a reminder to any customers who have yet to respond.
Give incentives. Encourage your customers with a reward. It can go a long way, even a $5 gift card to a local café. And always thank every customer for his or her feedback, positive or negative.
With a survey’s results you will be able to make changes and improve for next time. You’ll learn what you are doing great, where to improve, and use the helpful information to sell, market, and develop your products and services even better.
Don’t take feedback personally. Instead, look at it in a way you can improve to make changes.
Compare and contrast the questions and answers. Look for any common answers. Is there one area that could especially be improved? What about any blank or “unsure” answers? This likely means you should rephrase this question for future surveys.
Put to action. It’s time to take that feedback and put those changes into action.
With a customer survey for your business, use the feedback to move forward. You’re on your way to improve your business as a whole, all the while maintaining life-long and happy customers.
