Running a Customer Survey: 10 Good Practices to Follow

To gauge the effectiveness of your business and service offerings, survey your clients for feedback! Soliciting their opinions in an honest, open-ended manner, you’ll be able to devise plans accordingly to produce optimal results.

However, if you want a high-quality customer survey that will provide reliable data with sensitivity and tactfulness, then it’s important to adhere to certain guidelines.

1. Make it easy to fill out

Customers are the lifeblood of your business, and they want to express their thoughts – so why not make it easy for them by providing them with simple answers? By offering customers an uncomplicated and straightforward rating scale such as ‘one’, ‘two’ and ‘three’ alongside a single rating option like ‘excellent’ or ‘incredible’ you’ll ensure that they have little trouble in expressing how they feel about your product. You can use AI website builder to build an intuitive site to host the survey.

If you require more flexibility, then consider selecting more than one response option. An example would be to offer three possible ratings: an excellent score, an outstanding score and a passing grade all within the same survey.

2. Ask about what matters most

Customers are accustomed to receiving product surveys; however, it is important to address the most vital points regarding your service’s experience.

Take stock of customer feedback on social media, as well as surveys such as Google Analytics and other existing platforms. You may be astounded by what they deem essential for their patronage. You can use an app like Hootsuite to share these quizes on social media.

Customer satisfaction surveys reveal an abundance of information pertinent to your business; however, these assessments fail to acknowledge the most crucial components.

3. Ask about what didn’t matter

In any endeavor, there is always room for improvement. Be it product development or customer service, keeping an eye on what didn’t matter during the survey process can often yield fruitful results when scrutinizing the data for improvements.

For example, one of our clients asked: “How did you evaluate the overall experience? And which parts stood out?” This question elicited a wealth of valuable insight into the client’s experience with their recent purchase and enabled them to identify areas of opportunity for future improvement within those systems.

4. Have your team read the survey before sending it out

One of the most common issues that arise during the customer survey process is a lack of team participation. This can leave you with an incomplete picture, which could result in failure to gather necessary information or inadvertently elicit responses from individuals who are not representative figures for your brand – causing them to provide falsehoods.

To prevent this from occurring, it’s essential that all members of your team participate in the survey-making process. Don’t forget, though! If you’re managing a complex project, have some offsite members review and assess the data before finalizing any decisions – even if they’re not actively involved in creating plans and policies related to said undertaking.

Having multiple teams providing feedback helps avoid any disparities between responses. Not only does it offer a more comprehensive evaluation of processes and procedures; but through discussions with groups of colleagues it becomes apparent exactly what kind of consumer experience is needed in order to yield satisfactory results.

5. Make it short and sweet

We all know that lengthy surveys can be bothersome and tiring – so it’s no surprise that they are often skipped altogether. The key here is to keep your questions concise while still providing valuable information for customer success teams.

If you are seeking feedback on a product or service, a short survey may be the answer. Ask customers just three or four open-ended questions at a time. This allows them to fully express their thoughts without being overloaded with information!

6. Mix up your questions

Customer surveys are an excellent means of gathering information from customers, but it is usually prudent to avoid asking any single question more than once. That being said – you should always be wary of this possibility when designing a survey.

By using a combination of open-ended and closed-ended questions, you can provide customers with as much or as little guidance as necessary for them to answer.

7. Don’t make them pay to complete

Customers are more likely to respond affirmatively if they don’t have to pay for a survey.

If any payment is required, make it quick and painless! Customers want the experience of completing surveys to be pleasant. If they’re obligated to hand over their hard-earned cash in exchange for completion of some tasks – many will choose not participate at all rather than lose any remuneration that may come along with it!

8. Do your research

When planning for an effective customer survey, it is imperative to conduct in-depth research on your target market.

In order to effectively craft questions, collect and analyze relevant data from within that demographic. Narrowing down a niche can be an arduous task; however the process allows for a more focused approach when crafting surveys – ultimately resulting in more personalized responses from customers!

Make sure you have a thorough understanding of your industry, competitors’ offerings and their customers. This will help ensure that your response rate is high and that any preexisting trends can be easily identified during analysis – all facilitating insight into how best to proceed with future initiatives

For instance, let’s consider a fantasy sports platform looking to gauge player engagement. To do this, they should begin by researching their user base. They might collect data on the age, location, and sports preferences of their users. Armed with this information, they can tailor their survey questions to align with the specific interests of their audience. Instead of generic questions about overall satisfaction, they can ask about favorite sports, preferred game formats, or specific features they’d like to see. This approach increases the chances of getting insightful and actionable feedback.

9. Survey people who never showed up

Customer surveys cannot be perfect. Thus, it is essential to acknowledge their limitations and design around them. In some cases, this may necessitate maximizing the number of respondents or making adjustments to your selection criteria – however don’t despair!

Customer surveys are a fantastic way to gain valuable insight into how well you’re performing; however, they can be a bit limiting. To overcome this limitation, recent research suggests one method that could prove useful: survey people who never responded in the past.

By obtaining data from customers for whom no responses have ever been made, you may glean valuable information about how potential customers respond to your messaging – or even what their ideal experience is like with your brand.

10. Include a code to follow in person

For those who prefer chatting with potential customers in person, providing them with a unique code opens up an additional avenue of communication. By utilizing this system, businesses can make sure that conversations remain private and confidential – without having to worry about any involvement from your tech team!

Using the custom code provided by one’s business can be advantageous for several reasons: not only do you grant anonymity but also prevent direct contact between parties. You can use this code as a means of identifying yourself or establishing rapport when making inquiries.

Conclusion

Every business must comprehend what is transpiring with their customers, and that knowledge can come from an effective customer survey. This survey can provide a wealth of information about the nuances of your products, services and marketing tactics – all factors that need to be considered if you want to improve customer service at your company.