Surveys are a great tool to give valuable insights in to your customers thoughts

Being anonymous they allow responses that would not normally be passed on but the major stumbling block for most companies is how to convince customers to complete them.  How do you get them to not only complete the survey but complete it in an honest and constructive way?

Reputation management is key – keeping your survey in line with your brand and showing that you take notice of the survey results brings credibility.

The first step is to remember that the person filling out their responses is a person – they are likely to have a personal experience of your brand that may not be inline with the reputation that you have generally, finding out about their experience in a  few questions is not easy.  If you ask – Would you recommend us to a friend? and they answer no or maybe there must be a reason for their hesitation, if you just have a blank box saying “why not? ” it does not encourage constructive usable feedback, how about instead asking “what could we do better or differently that would make you say Yes?” – This promotes a sharing of ideas, if you adopt these ideas in the future you can point the changes to your customers to say “We listened to you and took your ideas seriously – thank you” which in turn encourages confidence in your brand and might produce a more positive flow of communication with clients. 

You could even put a box so they can leave their email address, this would enable you to reward them, offer them incentives and highlight them as the person/company that has made a difference to you – if doing this state it above the box so it is clear.

The second step is to create questions that feel personal –  a good and bad example of the same question below:

BAD – Did we do a good job for you?

GOOD – Do you feel we completely achieved what we said we would when working with you?

Asking for how people feel, their thoughts, appealing for their perception is exactly what a reputation is – you cannot buy a reputation as it is how people perceive your brand, their personal experience, you may have a reputation that is poor and wish to improve, changing this over time is hard work, every perception matters.  The question above then leads into another question that could delve further into what has happened for them to arrive at their current perception.

Surveys are much more about psychology and less about ticking boxes, think inside your mind, what would make you more willing to answer a survey?  an incentive? recognition of your ideas? some free PR?

If you would like more details on our survey services then please call Miranda on 0744 3902432, she loves to talk surveys…..