The value of the data that customer satisfaction surveys bring you is indisputable because they literally tell you whether your customers are happy. However, only about 2% of people bother completing those questionnaires. Therefore, the real value this tool brings you isn’t very high. But you can increase it by creating a satisfaction survey that your customers will actually enjoy completing and marketing it to them effectively.
4 Tips on How to Make Your Customer Satisfaction Survey Rock
1. Be clear, specific, and to the point
Nothing makes a consumer lose interest in answering questions as much as murky questions they have to spend long minutes trying to even understand. If you want people to complete your survey, you have to make sure that they can complete it in under 2 minutes.
All questions must be clear and easy to understand. Make them short and to the point describing real-life situations. Most importantly, provide options for answers as your response rate will plummet if your customers actually have to type in their responses by hand.
2. Learn from the best
Learning from examples is always most effective, and you have plenty of options to choose from when it comes to customer satisfaction surveys. Note that you shouldn’t limit yourself to big brands in your niche only. In fact, it will be best to get inspiration from companies renowned for customer service. A KFC satisfaction survey offers a guideline on how to get a comprehensive evaluation of the entire customer experience. Airbnb survey gives customers a push to spread the word about the service. And Netflix uses customer surveys to offer recommendations, thus making the viewers more interested in actually completing them.
You can combine all three approaches to create a survey that will help your business shoot forward. And all you need to do that is to add a social media share button, a referral program, and use an analytics tool that will enable you to send out customized emails with customer recommendations.
3. Create a system that allows customers to share their experiences right away
Customer satisfaction surveys are most effective when completed soon after the experience. Therefore, you need to offer the survey in such a way that your customers will feel comfortable completing it. Yet it has to be soon enough that they don’t lose interest.
The exact timing will depend on your unique business situation. To find out what it is, you should offer multiple survey options and analyze which has the best response rate after about six months. Options you should try are immediate in-house survey, an email coming within 1-3 days after the purchase, and a quick mobile survey sent through some popular messenger app, like Viber or Telegram. Bear in mind that while it might be tempting to use all three of these methods at once, you shouldn’t do this because your messages will be seen as annoying.
4. Optimize for mobile first
Statistically, more customers complete satisfaction surveys using their mobile devices. Therefore, any surveys you design, must be optimized for them first. Invest in responsive design that will ensure 100% compatibility with all popular gadgets.