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Customer surveys are an essential part of any business. They can help you gather feedback about your products or services. They also help you understand what your customers want and improve your overall customer service. Creating a customer survey can be daunting, but it does not have to be. In this article, we will walk you through the steps of creating a customer survey. We will also highlight the importance of customer surveys and guide you towards creating an effective survey for your enterprise. With these tips, you will have all the tools you need to complete a survey to help your business grow.
Related Article: Best practices for effective customer feedback management
What are customer surveys?
Customer surveys are one of the most essential tools your enterprise can use to gather customer feedback. They provide companies with valuable insights into customer satisfaction, what customers like and dislike about your product or service, and how likely it s that they will recommend you to others. They will help you learn about customers’ engagement with your company and its products, discover what questions potential customers have, and gauge your customers’ expectations.
Creating an effective customer survey is essential to getting the information you need to make informed business decisions. But with so many different types of customer surveys out there, it is not easy to know where to start.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating customer surveys:
- Define your goals. What do we want to know from our customers? Here, it is vital to be specific to create questions that get at the heart of what you want to know.
- Keep it short and sweet. No one wants to spend much time filling out a survey, so make sure yours is brief and to the point.
- Make it easy to answer. Use simple language and multiple-choice questions whenever possible.
- Don’t forget follow-up questions. After each question, ask respondents if they would like to elaborate on their answers. It can provide valuable insights that you may have otherwise missed.
- Offer an incentive for completing the survey. Customers will feel like filling out your survey if they know they’ll be incentivized in one form or another – either with a prize or a discount.
Why customer satisfaction surveys are important
Customer satisfaction surveys are essential for a number of reasons. They help businesses to identify areas where customers are low and make changes accordingly. Also, happy customers are more likely to return and continue doing business with a company, while unhappy customers may take their business elsewhere. Additionally, customer satisfaction surveys can help businesses to improve their products or services and make them more appealing to potential customers.
In today’s market, brands know they only have a few methods to stand out. The one thing they can control, however, is customer satisfaction. This tactic of focusing on customer satisfaction is successful. Today, the company with the best customer experience usually gains an edge over its competitors.
High customer retention rates are associated with customer satisfaction. People are more likely to be loyal, buy more products, and share positive experiences. On the other hand, poor customer satisfaction can actively harm your brand. According to studies, the average American will tell sixteen people about their negative experience with a company. To make up for one unresolved lousy experience, it would take up to twelve positive experiences to rectify a mistake.
The stakes can be pretty high when it comes to providing a quality customer experience, and surveys are the best way to find out how your customers really feel about your company. With access to customer satisfaction data, you can actually take action to fix the problems your customers experience. Negative customer experiences can be turned around, and overall customer satisfaction can be significantly improved. It leads to happier customers and less churn for your company.
Steps to Create an Effective Customer Survey
An effective customer survey is vital for any business that wants to understand its customers and improve its products or services. The below steps will help you create an effective survey for your organization:
Define the purpose of your survey.
What information do you wish to elicit from your survey? With a clear plan, it will be easy to create an effective survey. It’s common to create long, complicated surveys bursting with questions. However, this will lead to low response rates. No one wants to answer a long survey that is hard to complete. The first step is to pinpoint precisely what you want to assess and select the appropriate survey type to get the most out of your efforts.
The first step is to identify the goal of your survey. What customer metric or touchpoint are you looking to improve? Setting goals will enable you to create better surveys with more targeted questions. For example, you might be trying to understand customer satisfaction or their experiences with your product. You can get more information here on how to set realistic and achievable goals for your business. To make the feedback process more manageable, we suggest focusing on a single topic at a time. Once you’ve identified your survey goal, you’ll be ready to pick the proper customer survey for your particular needs.
Keep it brief.
Customers are more likely to complete a short survey than a long one. Try to keep your survey to no more than ten questions. Your goal is to receive responses as clearly and concisely as possible from whomever you are surveying. It means not only being sure that your sentence is short but also making sure you’re getting rid of any words or phrases that don’t contribute to conveying the message in your question.
Ask appropriate questions.
Be sure to ask questions that will help you achieve your goal. Avoid leading or biased questions, and make sure all questions are straightforward and easy to understand. Although multiple-choice queries and scales are tempting, some of your most insightful feedback will come from open-ended questions that allow customers to write their thoughts in full.
Think from the perspective of the reader – whether or not a No answer would be better than a Yes. If there’s no strong case for why the question should stay, you might as well cut it out entirely.
Straightforward questions will lead to better survey results. Bombarding people with too many questions at once will just push them to finish answering sooner rather than later. Make things easier by sticking to one central question at a time.
Offer an incentive.
Offering an incentive for completing your survey can increase the number of responses you receive. These incentives could be a discount, a giveaway, or an account credit.
Finding the right balance between customers and incentives takes time and effort. Customers want to be incentivized but don’t want to be bombarded with marketing. That’s why we recommend using either credits or free trials. Unrelated gifts and huge discounts, on the other hand, may actually work against you. A good incentive scheme will allow you to obtain good survey results without breaking the bank.
Send your survey at the right time.
Timing is essential when sending out surveys. Too early, and customers may forget about it; too late, and they may have made up their minds about your product or service already. Find the sweet spot by sending your surveys a few weeks after purchase or use.
Once your survey is ready, check your email for it. Read it as thoroughly as possible, proofreading all links, and correcting any errors you find. Select an appropriate delivery date and time, so your intended recipients will get the message at the right time. Consider following up with individuals who still need to complete the customer survey within a few days of sending your first email. Analyse your results and take necessary action.
Related article: What is a Customer Success Manager: Responsibilities, skills, and qualifications?
Final Note
Customer surveys are essential tools in today’s business. They provide valuable feedback that can help you make changes to improve your products or services. Surveys can also help you understand your customers better and identify areas where you need to make changes.
Creating a survey need not be a complex process, especially with some of these steps:
- Decide what information you want to collect from your customers.
- Create a list of questions that will help you gather this information.
- Distribute the survey to your customers and encourage them to provide honest feedback.
Customer surveys will help you gain valuable insights that will help improve your products or services. They will also help you better understand your customers’ needs. Following the tips mentioned in this article, you can create effective customer surveys that will delight your customers.
