Customer feedback is important for any business. We’ve discussed this in our previous blog about customer reviews, but in today’s blog we want to go into another fantastic tool to gain feedback - surveys.

Customer reviews are great for businesses as it allows potential customers to see how current customers view your business. They are usually public and are just a short paragraph detailing a customer’s experience. A survey on the other hand is great as you can make it more specific to different parts of your business, i.e. your website or product selection.

Unlike reviews, where a customer will write something more basic, a survey allows you to ask specific questions about specific things. You can ask them to rate how they found different aspects of your business and explain why. Don’t get us wrong. Reviews are great, but surveys are even better to help make specific improvements to help improve customer experience.

Before you start making surveys left, right and centre, it is important to know what type of surveys there are and the questions to ask.

First thing is first, when making the survey, what do you want the survey results for? Surveys should be short, so you can’t make one that encompasses questions about every aspect of your website, business and services. Be specific.

Survey Types

If you have just released a new product, you could released a survey after this and see how customers are using it. Did they find it hard to use? Would they recommend any improvements? How about an extension of the product or different variations? Would they recommend the product to their friends or family?

If you are happy with the production of your product, then you could send out a customer satisfaction survey and see if they are happy with your business. Was the information easy to find? If they spoke to customer services, were they helpful? You can be even more specific as well, such as how they found navigating the website, the ordering process or even the delivery of the items. Again, you can then ask if they would recommend your business to friends or family.

Asking if they would recommend you to friends or family is a type of survey in itself. The net promoter score survey. You will probably have seen these surveys before after using a service or calling customer service, in the version of a post- call survey or a text message. They usually involve a couple of questions and end with the recommend a friend or family question. These are great for businesses as they can benchmark customer loyalty and can serve as a base for marketing strategies.

Survey Questions and Format

Once you have decided the type of survey you want to send out, the next step would be deciding what questions to ask.

As the survey is specific to one aspect of your business, you need to make sure the questions are specific as well. Each question needs to relay to something you are looking for and can’t be generic with a yes or no answer.

While surveys should be short and take no longer than 5minutes to complete, the questions should still be specific. A good format to follow would be multi choice answering, such as “highly likely, likely, n/a, unlikely or highly unlikely”. This formatting is hugely popular and recognisable. It provides a better understanding in comparison to if it were to answer “yes” or “no”. It is also easy for customers to answer and gives them more options.

Using open ended questions are also a good as it allows customers to go into more detail. You can ask about improvements or why they didn’t like a product. Try and be specific again as questions like “do you have any other feedback” can be left unanswered.

How to get Surveys Completed

Getting customers to complete a survey may seem like a hard task but it doesn’t have to be and it is actually quite simple. We covered how to get customer reviews in our previous blog and getting surveys is similar.

First, you will need an application to place the survey. SurveyMonkey, TypeForm and Google Forms are tools you can use to create your survey. They are free to use as well - bonus!

Once this is created and ready to go, all you need to do now is send it out. Many of the survey applications have options to mail it out to a contact list, much like a newsletter send out. This is good as you can stylise the email to your branding. The only con is, there is usually a low response rate with emails. While open rate is usually high, the actual click through or completion rate is lower. It can also take a longer time to receive completed responses.

Other ways you can get your survey out there are through social media or through your website via a pop-up (though this can be a nuisance) or through a blog post.

Adding an incentive to the survey is also a great way to ramp up responses. You could offer 10% off for every completed survey or have a competition where users can win a cash prize. Incentives are great and though it can cost the business a bit of money, the feedback you receive is worth a lot more.

Social Media Surveys

Another fun way to get surveys filled out is through social media. Many of the platforms have poll options, such as Twitter polls or Facebook polls. They are a quick and easy way to get fast feedback and can help build engagement with your customers.

Survey Results

After all the surveys have been completed, it is then time to take action. Go through the results and see if there are any points that come up more than once and make sure to implement the changes.

If a customer fills out a survey and finds nothing has been done, what are the chances they will leave feedback. Show you care and that you have listened to them by making the changes. Remember if you are a business that provides a service or sells products, your customers are important, so their feedback is really important. If they are having a hard time going through your website or find your products good but need changes, then listen.