Survey Says: the Value of Customer Feedback Is Undeniable
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Surveys send a message to your clients and prospects that you take their satisfaction seriously. |
BY JEB FOSTER
Surveys serve a incredibly valuble purpose: when done correctly, they tell us what we're doing right and what we're doing wrong. They help us to retain existing clients and generate news ones through positive word of mouth.
Here's how to use surveys to your advantage:
- Keep them short. People are remarkably generous when it comes to giving feedback, but you shouldn't take advantage of that generosity by assaulting them with a 20-page interrogation.
- Keep them relevant. The most important—indeed the ultimate—question to ask is, "Would you recommend our service/product to friends and family?" Simply asking "Would you recommend our service/product?" will not result in accurate data. Giving a recommendation—particularly to people you know—is an exercise in sticking your neck out. By including the "to friends and family," people are forced to fully contemplate the question and answer it honestly. (And honesty is what you're after.)
- What not to ask: personal questions about height, weight, education, etc. People will drop off—depriving you of valuable data—if you ask such ultimately irrelevant questions. Such information is beside the point. Building a business that grows by word of mouth—that's what you're after.
- If you're looking to do some serious market research—as opposed to simply getting a read on customer satisfaction—you'd do better to give people an incentive to complete your questionnaire. Otherwise you're asking too much.
- Also, when crafting multiple choice questions, make sure to cover every option. Survey completion rates plummet when the respondent doesn't see an applicable answer.
- When forming your questions, ask yourself, "What action am I prepared to take based on the answers I receive?" If the answer is nothing, well, it's time to reconsider your question and/or your commitment to customer satisfaction. Moreover, if you do nothing when your customers tell you your widget has flaw … well, they may not be customers for long.
- Establish a routine for reviewing surveys. Here at InsureMe, we start a fresh survey each quarter, allowing us to keep an eye on feedback trends over time.
- Include both multiple-choice questions and open-ended ones. The beauty of preselected answers is that they are quantifiable; the downside is that they may not address the key issues. Open-ended questions, while hard to quantify and compare, often come rich with information and insight, even (especially?) if they're written with a poison pen. What's more, we at InsureMe mine our open-ended questions for testimonials, and we often get some great ones. In short, it pays to mix up your surveys with open and closed questions.
- Survey Monkey is one of many free survey platforms. They're easy to create and send via email.
