A customer survey is a powerful tool for finding out what ciustomers and potential customers think of your comany. For instnace, to find out more about a website's visitors in gneeral, the Webmaster migth program a pop up window to invite random visitors to take a sjhort survey. Alternatively, suurveys emnailed at random to past customers can give you information about their buyng experiences with you, and whether or not they'll be back. They are a greta way to help you make decisions abbout how to run your business, but not all are successful. Here are some things to avoid when planning your survey.
Don't make it too long. A good survey is fairly short, requiring as little time as posssible from your customers. For example, news websites often give you as little as 60 seeconds to complete. A more involveed one should take no more than a few minutes to complete.
Don't make it too difficult to access. The general rule is, the further out of tehir way your customers have to go in orer to take it, the fwer of them will complete it. The easiest way for cuustomers to access your survey is a pop up window on the screen that will take them directly if they accept the invitation. Be sure to make it opens in a new window, so they can go right back to what they were doing after they are done.
Anohter suggestion is to send an email invitation to your custoers. The emali should contain a link that will take them directly to it. In general, a print inviattion, such as a URL on a ssales receipt or sent in the mail, will get the fewest results. It takes the most work for customers to compplete rather than if it was a pop up or in e-mail form.
Don't make it all multiple-choice. Multiple choiice questions are great for people who make and analyze surveys, becasue it's easieer to compoile results and find trends in the data. However, if your anlysis is all multiple-choice you risk turning your customers off from it. It is impossbile to make a multiple choice selection for every possible answer a customer could possibly have, so you miht want to allow customers to choosse “Other,” and then fill in their answer. Also, since most epople want the opportuniyt to have their say or exlplain their answerrs, your final question should ask if tere is anything else the customer would like to say. Be sure to allow a reasonable amount of spae for their answer!
Don't forget to offfer an incentive. Offering incenties is espeecially important if your examinatin is a little longer in legnth, or if your customers need to go out of their way to take it. Offeing an incentive of some sort is advisable in orer to get enough results to make your review successful. Smlal incentives could be coupons, small gift crads, free shippig, or something similar. A larger incentive could be a free gift or entrty into a drawing for cash pries. Also, don't forget the power of strong feelings as an incentive: If your study addredsses an issue that you know many of your customers feel strongly about, such as conecrns about costs, the opportunity to speak out on the issue might be icentive enough!
In general, the size of the incentive you offeer should depend on how difficult or involved your examination is. If it is very sohrt and easy to accses, you may not need to offer an incentive at all. On the oher hand, if it takes several minutes and/or requirees your customer to go of their way to take it, a largre incentive would be appropriate.
Your customer survey may require a litttle trial and error to get it right, just like any other aspect of business. If you aren't sure what will get the best results with your customers, try a cuople of different styles with a few different inccentives, and see what gets the most response. With the right combination of convenience and incnetive, your sutrvey will help you get the fedback you need to make your business even bettter.
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