Surveys are a great way to get client feedback. They can help you determine if your customers are satisfied with your current products or services, or they can help you decide a new direction to take. That’s assuming, of course, that your clients are actually completing the surveys you’re asking them to do!
So, how do you create surveys your customers will actually do?
The best way to get clients to actually complete your surveys is to:
- Keep your surveys as short as possible
- Be honest about why you’re asking them to do the survey
- Keep the questions clear and easy to answer
- Make sure the survey questions flow in a logical way
- Don’t call it a survey!
- Consider providing an incentive
- If it makes sense, share the results
1. Keep them short as short as possible
Be honest – have you ever been asked to complete a survey, and you’ve actually considered completing it – then the intro says it’ll take 45-60 minutes to answer. Did you actually start the survey? Or, did you then decide to just forget it… who has that much time to spend on a survey??
Finding the right length for a survey is a careful balance of asking all the questions that are going to give you useful information, and keeping your clients interested in actually doing (and finishing!) the survey.
Therefore, the best thing you can do is be ruthless with every question you add to your survey. Ask yourself: do I really need to know the answer to this question? How is it going to help my overall purpose of why I’m doing the survey in the first place? If the answer is yes, I really need to know this answer, then keep it. If the answer is “well, it would be interesting to know, but not critical”, then cut the question. Focus on what you NEED to know, not what’s NICE to know.
2. Be honest about why you’re asking them to do the survey
Are you measuring your client’s satisfaction with products or services you’ve already provided? Or are you doing market research for a potential new product? Be honest and up-front about WHY you’re doing a survey. People want to know how you’re going to use their information.
What difference will sharing this information make to your client? If it will help improve your current products or services, they will likely benefit from providing you with their opinion. Same goes for a potential new product/service.
Being honest about why you’re collecting their opinion also helps you build trust with your clients. You’re asking them for something of value – their data. So be clear about how you’re going to use that, then follow through on using it in that way.
3. Keep the questions clear and easy to answer
In addition to keeping the overall survey short and sweet, also keep the questions themselves as short and clear as possible. This makes it easy for your survey respondents to answer the questions quickly, and without a lot of deep thought. You’re not asking them to complete a college thesis! You just want their honest opinion, and usually, that’s going to be the first thought that pops into their mind when they read the question. But, if they have to re-read the question a few times to actually understand what you’re asking, you’re going to lose that “first thought” window.
Also, don’t ask more than one thing in a question. For example, “Was the service representative you spoke with helpful and courteous?”. If they answer Yes, are they saying that the service rep was helpful OR that they were courteous? What if they were super friendly, but not helpful at all? Or vice versa, your customer got what they needed, but the service rep was unfriendly?
Decide if you need to know the answer to both of these, and if yes, then ask them as two separate questions. If you’re looking for areas of improvement, you’ll want to know if you should focus on training your sales reps more on the products and services you offer (so they can help the customers find what they need) or if it should focus on customer relations.
4. Make sure the survey questions flow in a logical way
Again, the trick is that you actually don’t want your survey respondents to think too hard as they’re completing your survey. Keep it easy for them to answer each question, and also group similar questions together, so that they’re not bouncing back and forth and having to think about different topics.
For example, you could group together all the questions about their customer service experience, or about a specific product or service that is offered.
Demographic questions, such as age, gender, income, etc, should always be in their own section, as these are relatively straight-forward for survey respondents to answer, without much thought at all.
5. Don’t call it a survey!
For most people, the thought of being asked to complete a survey makes them roll their eyes or even groan out loud. I know this for a fact, I’ve often seen this in-person!
The word survey is often associated with other words like, “long”, “boring”, or even “a waste of my time”. Survey respondents often don’t see the connection to how they will benefit from completing the survey.
So, don’t call it a survey! Call it something that makes it more meaningful to your survey respondent, like a “Feedback Form” or a “Customer Opinion Opportunity”. This implies that you’re asking for their feedback or opinion, without using that dreaded word, survey.
6. Consider providing an incentive
Survey incentives can be tricky. On one hand, you want to thank your survey respondents for their time and opinions. However, you also don’t want to seem like you’re bribing them for their opinions.
There’s also the logistics of actually getting them the incentive. If your survey is supposed to be anonymous, you want to make sure you’re not compromising anonymity by asking for any personal details that could be linked back to their answers. Depending on if you’re doing your survey in-person or online, you could ask for contact information on a separate page or web-form.
An incentive doesn’t have to be a cash. It could also be a free digital product download, or a free one-time service or product. There’s lots of ways to be creative in enticing your potential survey respondents to complete a survey.
7. If it makes sense, share the results
This goes back to being honest and up-front about why you’re doing the survey in the first place. Now, I’m not suggesting that you need to share all the data you collected, or even the full analysis that your completed! Market research is valuable! But there are ways that you can share some of the information you collected, and actually build it into your marketing or communications plan.
For example, if you created a new program based on feedback from your client survey, make sure to indicate that! Be clear that new program content is based directly on client feedback. You could even share some of the information directly from the survey, such as, “Based on feedback from 50 of our clients”, or “More than half of our clients were interested in this new [insert product/service] – so we listened!”.
This shows a couple of things. One, that you’re actually really tuned in to your clients’ needs, and that you’re interested in meeting their needs. It also shows that you actually used the information they provided, and how you used it. This helps builds trust with your clients as well. It also shows that you think your client’s opinions are important, and it shows how you’re listening to them.
Conclusion
Surveys are a great way to collect relevant information about your products and services, and your client’s overall experience. The more feedback you get, the more you can refine your offerings, to ensure that you’re meeting the needs of your clients. Keep your surveys short, to the point, and be transparent about why you’re collecting their valuable information. If done well, surveys can help you build trust and rapport with your clients!