Online customer surveys are a great way to gain valuable insights into your small business as well as give you a competitive edge over your competitors and their products. Here are 5 tips on how to create an effective online customer survey:
1. Do your research
First off, what do you hope to find out with your online customer survey? If you want, for example, to know why customers buy a certain product, then have a look at your sales performance reports. Through analytics you can identify which products to focus your survey on. Or, if you notice certain sales reps are outperforming others, you might want to rate the overall customer experience through a targeted online customer survey.
2. Targeted to-the-point questions
Next, create targeted questions to find answers that would be of value to you. Onsight’s go-to market research expert, Sabine Frielinghaus of MQ Market Intelligence, suggests you narrow down your questions to around five and definitely no more than 10 questions. The reason being that if your online customer survey is too long, customers will not complete the survey, leaving you with incomplete data.
3. Make it easy and short
Unless you’re launching an in-depth market research study, avoid page upon page of questions. Customers respond well to customer surveys that offer quick and easy multiple choice answers that they can simply tap and complete instantly. However, our expert further advises that you should also allow free-form text responses as it is often here were valuable key insights into your business are made.
4. Setting up an online customer survey
Online customer survey software is plentiful and a sure-fire way to effectively and easily setup and distribute your survey. There are many dedicated online survey tools such as SurveyMonkey or KwikSurveys that will allow you to set up your own online customer survey with ease, saving you time. These surveys are purposefully designed with the customer in mind but ultimately aimed at acquiring key customer insights for your business.
5. Get your survey out there
It is important to get as many respondents as possible to complete your online customer survey. Your social media platforms can help you in getting the word out there. The more people you get to complete your online customer survey, the more valuable data you will uncover which can be used to further grow your business. Incentives are a proven way to increase customer participation and response rates. Anything from a discount offer code to free delivery can act as motivation for more customers to complete your online customer survey.
Do you know how customer surveys can benefit your business? Discover more here.
