So few business owners actively seek information from their customers about how their company is performing.
Customer feedback surveys are an underused resource that can give you so much insight into how your product or service performs.
Utilizing your customers’ feedback in a constructive way can help improve your customer relations as well as increase your business’s success. Here are some things to keep in mind when considering customer feedback surveys for your business.
Time-tested Ideas for Your Customer Feedback Surveys
- Keep your survey short to eliminate survey fatigue, but robust enough to get real feedback. Don’t ask too many questions, but choose them wisely to delve deep into the customer experience. What you ask will depend on your business, but be specific in order to get the most useful and honest answers.
- Don’t take negative feedback personally. It’s going to happen, no matter what business you’re in. Instead, respond graciously and use that feedback to make productive changes to your product or service.
- Some people are hardwired to complain about everything. Keep it in perspective and look at the data as a whole. Learn to filter out the shallow complaints (about price, for instance, unless your sales are struggling and this needs evaluation) and focus on the feedback that showcases repetitious real concerns.
- Consider creating incentives for your team for improving client satisfaction. Reward the employees who best discover how to turn feedback into product & service improvements and revenue.
- Be timely. Send out surveys to customers immediately after they have received their product or service. Otherwise, they’re likely to forget the experience before they get the chance to give feedback.
Overtly Encourage Customer Feedback
Customers tend to only leave feedback if they are extremely satisfied or extremely unhappy with the product or service. It’s important to incentivize your survey so you get real feedback from the average customer, as well.
First of all, convenience is key. If a customer doesn’t feel strongly about your product and has other things to do, they’re not going to fill out your survey. Investing in self-addressed, stamped envelopes is one way to encourage customers to return surveys by mail, or make a simple e-form they can fill out and email it to them.
As mentioned, customers are unlikely to fill out long, in-depth surveys. Choose about 10 questions that are a mix of multiple choice and short answer for the best chance of getting replies. Also, make each question optional: if a customer feels obligated to fill out every question in order to submit the survey, they’re more likely to abandon it. Figure out a way to score the feedback and track the trends.
Finally, if you’re not getting the volume of answers you’d like, don’t be afraid to ask your customers for feedback on a personal level. At the time of service, mention that you’d appreciate it if they left their feedback on the form you’ll provide. Tell them whether to expect it by email, snail mail, or other forms of delivery, and when to watch out for it.
Mention how customer feedback surveys are used to improve your business model and thank them in advance. If you connect with the customer, they’ll be much more likely to want to help you out.
So few businesses actively seek out customer feedback in a disciplined and consistent way. You can separate your company from the herd of pretenders if you gather and analyze the information from your customer feedback surveys. Click on my contact form and let’s visit on a video call about how to drive your customer delight to new heights.
Coach Dave
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