Getting feedback becomes more important the tighter the competition gets with in an industry. Your customers are the reason you are still in business are they not?
The savvy businesses will be finding out all the key information from their customers about where they are succeeding and where they are not, helping to foster a leaner product/service offering to maximise their return.
There are, however, some considerations on ways to do this, here we focus on online surveys which offer the greatest return and immediate actionable feedback for a business. Some basic ground rules have to be in place in order to get it right and make it count for you.
1. Target the right people – Surveying your customers to find out who they are is the key here, what demographic, annual spend, location, media usage, social media usage etc.. Stick to finding out the information that you NEED to use to build your marketing strategy going forward.
2. Say my name! – Personalisation always works, and also reduces barriers to people offering opinions. The email invite should incorporate their name and company name or any other personalisation that is relevant, e.g. naming the event they went to, on which day.
3. Offer an incentive to participate – Sometime you will need to do this to bump up the response rates. This can be in the form of a straight forward cash payment, discount code for a further event, or a simple prize draw for an iPhone/iPad. Sometimes the basic report into the survey finding is sufficient and doesn’t cost you anything.
4. Short and Sweet - Make the introduction page of the survey short and succinct but also ensure you cover privacy of the data. The first question should only be viewable once the respondent has decided to click to continue past the introduction statement. Its good practice and very good manners, and also acts as a double opt-in.
5. Chunk it down - Section your questionnaire and add page breaks to minimise scrolling as much as possible. Scrolling through a survey allows less survey logic to be implemented and also raises the possibility of the respondent missing questions only to be fed an error message, leaving them to scroll up and down to find out where they went wrong! You have to make the experience as easy as possible for the respondent.
6. Go easy on the respondents - Only make the most essential questions mandatory, obviously this is discretionary based upon the subject and focus of the survey itself.
7. Branding – Use your logo, and try and configure your survey to adhere to your marketing and branding standards, for after all, this survey IS A MARKETING COMMUNICATION from your company. Leverage their engagement with your brand to good effect. And with this comes the importance of selecting the right survey tool as you may not want your branded survey attached to something that has the word “Monkey” in the URL.... ;-)
8. Say thank you – Simple! Add a final page similar to the introduction reiterating your gratitude for their valuable time, complete with your contact details, an email address for any questions, and any instructions to do with the incentive offered. And have this page redirect to your company website upon completion.
Following these points should keep you well clear of respondent fatigue and the adverse effects on your brand of less well prepared research whilst giving you more insightful data. Are you asking the right questions the right way now?
Crunch
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