Creative Ways to Collect More Survey Responses
One of the most popular questions we get asked from customers is “How do I send out my survey?” Email surveys were great at collecting feedback…until every company decided to send out their customer satisfaction surveys via email too. Here are some different ways to distribute or market your survey to a wider audience, and thus collect more feedback.
1.Be transparent with your feedback data. Show your feedback results on your website. Sometimes the best way to get people to give you more feedback is to show them you actually listen to their feedback. Dedicate a section of your website to publishing your customer feedback, both the good and the bad. When there’s bad feedback, respond as to how you’re correcting the issues or what you’re doing to improve. Your customers will appreciate the honesty.
EXAMPLE:
Peninsula Air Conditioning does a great job of publishing customer feedback directly on their website.
2. Place a touchscreen tablet kiosk in the busiest area of your business or event. Run a video or an ad that attracts the customer to the tablet. Activate the survey once the customer touches the tablet. This would help draw attention to your survey in a very busy environment.
3. Integrate the survey in stages of the customer journey you normally would not. Many surveys are sent out post-experience to gauge the satisfaction of the customer. What about sending a survey before they visit your business? For example, many hotels send customer satisfaction surveys after a guest leaves the hotel. However, if you sent a survey before the visit, you know exactly what kind of person this guest is before they arrive and can make sure you tailor their stay based on their feedback. The likelihood that this guest has a great stay at the hotel dramatically increases because of the attention to detail. They also now see the value of the survey and are more likely to take the survey again.
4. Use NFC technology. There’s a great startup called Bravo that allows customers to tip their baristas (or valets, waitresses, etc.) by tapping their phones on a small card at check-out. This card has an NFC chip in it so it triggers a screen to tip on the phone. You can use a similar process to trigger a survey if you have an existing app. Beacons could also be used to trigger surveys based on location and proximity of the customer. In this scenario, as a customer is leaving the store, it can trigger a satisfaction survey.
5. Lead with a thought-provoking or fun question. Create surveys that tell a narrative versus just directly asking questions you want answers to. For example, a restaurant owner may want to know how satisfied customers are currently with their food and service. Instead of just saying “hey, we want your feedback,” advertise the survey with a “What new food item should we add to the menu?” It’s a way to drive engagement to the survey. Once in the survey, your customers are more likely to answer your other questions about the business.
6. Ask your most loyal customers, fans, or followers to share the survey on their social media. These people already love you and can reach people that are not your current customers. Use this network for market research surveys that you need answered to help you with new product and service development.
7. Incorporate your survey into your website by using an iFrame. Your customers are often coming to your website for information anyways so this is a great way to reach them while they are already thinking of you. Train your front-line staff (i.e. cashiers) to include one sentence in their conversation with your guests at checkout about the survey on your website.
8. Offer an attractive incentive to your customers in exchange for their feedback. After all, you are asking them to spend their time on your survey. Drawings for cash these days are often met with skepticism. Instead, offer a gift card. Better yet, offer a percentage off one item the next time they come in. This not only makes your customers happy, it brings them back in the door and spending more.
9. Launch survey via wifi splash page. For those companies that offer free wifi to your customers, utilize the splash screen page to send out your survey. Customers can’t connect to your wifi until they answer a few questions. The key to this splash page feeling more customer-friendly (vs. a mandatory gateway to your wifi) is asking questions that would be beneficial for you to know about your customers, like “why did you visit our shop today?”
10. Integrate the survey within your mobile app. Create a button on your app that directly launches your survey. Capture the feedback in the moment by tying it to a certain event, such as a certain length of time they’ve been active in your store.
The key to getting more survey responses is meeting customers where they already are. Send the survey out to your customer where they are most connected to you, or most open to helping you get better (such as while they are in your place of business or before they engage with your business). For more best practices regarding survey responses, check out our website at www.wyzerr.com.
