This is a guest post from Tufan Erdogan.
Most people spend a few minutes writing a quick customer feedback survey, blast it out, and get just a handful of replies. This is the wrong way to go about collecting customer feedback.
Survey overload is real. If you want customers to take time out of their day to give you feedback, you need to make it easy and provide a compelling reason for them to do so.
In this post, we’re sharing eight tips for how you can collect more actionable customer feedback using surveys.
Identify the type of feedback you’re looking for at the start
This seems obvious, but it’s easy for companies to write a few questions without really thinking about what they want to know. You need to think about the end goal and what type of feedback you want to collect.
Is this a Net Promoter Score (i.e., NPS) survey? Or a customer satisfaction survey? Or are you looking for feedback on a new product? Something else?
All of these surveys require different types of questions. For example, if you ask a customer how likely they are to recommend you to their friends (i.e., an NPS question) when you want to know if the customer will use your new product feature, there’s an obvious mismatch.
Get rid of any questions that don’t fulfill your goal
Once you know what type of survey you’re creating, you need to be ruthless about cutting any questions that don’t tie back to this goal. The shorter and more cohesive the survey, the more likely customers will fill it out.
This is why great surveys are hard to write and can take days to perfect. You’re going to cut many questions and rewrite others over and over again. Basically, you need to learn more about form design and how it affects the reader.
Make sure your survey is mobile-friendly
In addition to limiting the number of questions you ask, your survey should work on any device — be it a laptop, tablet, smartphone, etc.
Most people read their emails on their smartphones. If they click on a link to your survey, and it goes to a page that doesn’t display nicely, they won’t fill it out.
In fact, back in 2015, 27 percent of people completed a Pew Research survey from a smartphone.
You can use a tool like JotForm Mobile Forms to build and collect customer feedback on the go.
Make sure all questions use the same rating system
Consistency is key. If you have questions on a 1 (terrible) to 10 (excellent) rating scale, you should stick with that format for all questions. If you switch it up midway through to a 1–5 rating system or ask people to rate things as “terrible, OK, and excellent,” you’re liable to confuse people. As a result, you’ll wind up with more inconsistencies in your data.
Write more open-ended questions
If you’re looking for detailed, honest feedback, it’s best to include lots of open-ended questions. Open-ended questions are great at helping you spot your weaknesses, identify where you can improve, and find future growth opportunities.
Here are some examples of great open-ended questions:
- What can our team do better next time?
- If you could change one thing about the product, what would it be?
- What’s one feature that you’d like to see added?
All of these questions require customers to write at least a couple of sentences and share their thoughts.
Closed-ended questions, on the other hand, encourage one-word answers such as yes or no.
Don’t assume anything
One of the biggest mistakes that we see companies make is assuming that their customers know specific industry jargon or intimate details about a particular product or feature. Even if you’ve explained a feature 300 times or have been using a specific industry term for decades, it’s best to explain it in a survey instead of assuming that your customers know what it means.
You should also stick with general, everyday language in your survey. Aim to write a survey at a sixth-grade reading level.
Use incentives strategically to generate more responses in less time
To have a statistically significant sample size, you need a lot of customers to respond. And to do this, you need to give people a reason to care. This can be as simple as letting them know that you value their feedback and actively use it when designing new products or making updates.
However, many companies opt for giving out an Amazon or Starbucks gift card or set up a raffle for a bigger prize to sweeten the deal. While this can work well to generate more responses, it can also backfire if the reward doesn’t make sense, skews who participates, or, worse, if you give away more than you can afford. In addition, we wouldn’t recommend using incentives for every survey because this results in a merely transactional relationship.
Plan to throw out at least 5 percent of responses
Not all responses are worth analyzing or acting on. Some surveys will be incomplete. Sometimes, people lie or tell half-truths, especially if you ask them about their behaviors, habits, or how they see themselves.
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In sum, surveys can help you better understand your customers and provide actionable feedback. The key is to spend time up front thinking through the goals and types of questions you want to ask. The quality of your questions will inform the answers you receive, not the other way around. Once you have those answers, you can start diving into all the data and putting together a plan to act upon it.
About the author: Tufan is a senior student at Middle East Technical University. He also works in the marketing department at JotForm. Even though he was born in Ankara, his spirit belongs to Brooklyn. You can reach him via his email [email protected]