Keeping your customers happy is critical to your business’s long-term success. This can cause many marketers to pull their hair out as it’s challenging to keep customers coming back. That’s where customer feedback comes in.
One of the best ways to get the information you need and learn what your customers want is to ask them via a survey. Market research is vital to business development, but not nearly enough companies utilize surveys to help inform their marketing decisions.
Historically, conducting market research was expensive and time-consuming. Now, however, it’s much easier with tools like Survey Monkey. Anyone can gather insightful data to help them learn more about what their customers want.
Why Are Surveys Important?
A customer feedback survey is an excellent way to gauge how your customer base feels about your business. With surveys, you don’t have to think like a customer because you can directly communicate with them and have them answer the most critical questions in a relatively concise statement.
Surveys typically have prefilled multiple-response questions that users choose from or a prompt that demands a one or two-sentence answer. Regardless of the questions, you’ll be able to gather direct answers from your customers about what they like, dislike, and want to see improved, which will help you decide your next steps.
Types of Surveys
You can use many different types of surveys to conduct research, but some tend to work better than others. Here are a few surveys that are commonly used with beneficial results:
Customer Feedback Surveys
Customer feedback surveys are a great way to gauge how your customers feel about your business and how you’ve conducted yourself. They typically seek qualitative answers that tell a company how much the customer enjoyed buying from them. These surveys often provide good information on certain aspects of your business that could be changed, such as the buying process, web design, customer service, etc.
Market Research Surveys
Market research surveys can help you understand customers’ needs and preferred shopping methods. They can also give you a pulse on how you stack up against competitors. The primary takeaway from this type of survey is what consumers think about your products or services. This customer feedback is invaluable and can help inform future product development.
Brand Awareness Surveys
Brand awareness surveys can help you gauge the success or failure of your marketing efforts. This type of survey can identify areas for improvement and help you learn about the different brand associations of the audience you’re advertising to.
Distributing Your Survey
Historically, customer feedback surveys were challenging to conduct market research because it was difficult to distribute them and have them returned with helpful responses. Now, all businesses can send out an online survey that can get a plethora of responses in a short amount of time.
One of the best ways to distribute your survey is via email and with the opportunity to gain something. Customers typically aren’t eager to take time out of their day to respond to a survey, so offering coupons or a raffle opportunity could prove helpful in generating responses.
It would be best to choose which types of surveys to send based on which audience segments you want to get answers from. For instance, you would only send customer feedback surveys to those who purchased a product. Sending that survey type to a prospective customer won’t return any helpful information.
Additionally, choose a survey program that’s easy to navigate for you and your customers to ensure no one abandons their survey halfway through. Using programs such as Google Surveys or Survey Monkey can help you create insightful surveys that are easy to set up, distribute, and fill out.
The Takeaway
Customer feedback surveys are now a prevalent and valuable tool for gauging the success of your business according to the people who interact with it. They allow you to take a step back and see a different perspective from the consumer standpoint, which can help you understand what’s working for your company and what needs to be changed.
If you’re thinking about conducting a customer feedback survey, consider what you hope to learn from the questions and who you want to answer them. These are two essential components to remember when conducting your market research.