Use Our Survey System to Learn What Your Customers Think of You

As business owners, it’s important that we know what our customers think about our products and services. Customer feedback helps us understand where are our weak points, so we can try to improve them. Sometimes a conversation with a customer can point us in the direction of a problem – or better yet, give us an idea that we didn’t think of beforehand.

Our online survey software gives you the opportunity to improve your achievements in a variety of aspects, giving you an advantage over your competitors. The statistical report that you’ll receive will allow your marketing directors, sales people and decision-makers to learn about your customers and subsequently provide them a better service.

Survey System for Businesses

Fit the Survey to the Target Audience

The success of the survey depends on high response rates from your customers, and there are a number of steps that you can take in order to raise these rates:

Opening Paragraph

If you’ve already baited the customer to the survey page, whether by sending the survey via email or by a Facebook advertisement, then you’ve already done 50% of your job. Now what you need to do, is convince him or her to burn a few minutes and fill the survey out. The way to this is with the help of a short opening paragraph. There are a few approaches for convincing the customers to fill out the survey.

Appeal to Your Customers’ Hearts

You must remember that you’re asking your customers to set aside precious time and energy in order to fill out the survey, especially if you made it long and extensive. If you decide not to give a gift in exchange for filling out the survey (for example, a coupon or a prize to be raffled off to the participants), take into consideration that you’re relying on your customers to act out of the goodness of their hearts.

So, you should definitely begin the survey by explaining why it’s important both to you and to them, and how filling out the survey will help them receive better service in the future.

Indicate the Time it Takes to Fill Out the Survey

In order to avoid a situation in which a customer begins to fill out the survey, only to find that it goes on and on without an end in sight, you should indicate how long it is from the get-go – otherwise many customers might abandon it in the middle.

You can also indicate how much time the survey is expected to take, and in the case that it’s a relatively long one, you can segment it into a number of pages, including a progress bar at the top.

In addition, with long surveys, it doesn’t hurt to include sentences like ‘Congrats! You completed half,’ ‘Thanks for your participation,’ ‘We would be delighted if you continue to the end’ or ‘Only 5 questions left!’

Offer An Interesting Gift

The longer your survey is or the less your customers are used to a direct interaction with your brand, the greater the possibility of winning a prize at the end of the survey will raise participation and motivate your customers to answer every last question.

Write An Interesting Survey In The Participants’ Language

When writing a survey, there is always a question of formality – should you speak to the participants in first person, or should you use a more formal approach?

Even though surveys aren’t made for entertainment purposes, but rather serve a certain purpose for you, it’s still important to avoid dry, formal language.  You want to avoid a boring survey that might lead to low participation rates and high abandonment rates.

It’s important to write clearly, without the use of any ambiguous terms, thus avoiding any confusion, and to use motivating expressions that encourage the participants to fill out the required details. Similarly, it would be helpful to include a help button for those more complicated, difficult questions that might not be straightforward to all participants.

Still, remember to think about your brand and to consider what it represents and what audience you are targeting.

Get Survey Ideas

Surveys help us learn about different trends, receive important feedback, and talk to a great mass of customers easily and in a short time.

ActiveTrail’s online survey system offers other helpful applications:

RSVPs – With ActiveTrail’s online survey system you can easily create RSVPs for any occasion, including detailed sections, which helps you gather all of the information you need leading up to your event in the most efficient way possible.

Feedback – Organized an event? Hosted a webinar? At the end of the event you can send a satisfaction survey to those who participated in order to find out how you can improve for the next time.

Focused Advertisement – Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half” (John Wanamaker).

Want to find out how your customers found out about you? Want to narrow the focus of your advertising budget? Add the question “How did you hear about us?” with a few options, including a blank box that they can fill in, in order to find out exactly where your customers are coming from.

Raffle – Prepare sign up forms for a raffle. Besides the functional and systematic advantages of using ActiveTrail platform as a sign up system, you can also add those who sign up directly to your mailing list.

Learn about your audience – With the help of the online survey system you can learn a little more about your audience – what’s the average age, where do most of them live, how often do they interact with your business, and what are their preferences in the various fields that relate to your business?

Choosing Answers

There are a number of different ways to display the survey answers.

The single-choice question: If there are limited options and the survey-taker needs to choose just one, then you can display the answers as radio buttons (that you click on) or in a drop-down menu.

The multiple-choice question: You can allow the participants to choose more than one answer among a variety of options.

The personal details question: In order to match the survey to the customer and then follow up with them (if need be), you can add questions pertaining to their personal details.

Decide if your survey is anonymous, if the customer’s personal details are required for further communication, or if you want the customer to decide whether or not to leave his details. If you want to continue to communicate with the survey participants referring to their answers, it is recommended that you mark the personal details questions as “mandatory questions.”

The matrix question: You can prepare matrix answers for those questions that involve ratings, or that may have multiple answers.

The open question: The open-ended answer box allows the participants to write freely without any limitations. You can choose between a one-lined answer box and a longer one.

As mentioned earlier, you can decide during any step within the process whether or not a question will be optional or mandatory. If you indicate that a question is mandatory, the participant won’t be able to complete the survey without answering it.

Ending The Survey With A Self-Expression Option

In the last section of the survey, it is recommended to give the participants the option of expressing any other thoughts or opinions they might have with the help of a “free text” box.

Feedback of this kind can tell you a lot about the customer and help you gain information on his opinions on your company,its products and services, while also giving you important ideas on how to optimize your company’s activity.

There are a number of ways to end a survey. On the thank you page you can add a sentence such as:

“Thanks so much! Your participation is important to us and we promise to take each and every comment into consideration.

Thanks to you, we can continue to improve our services in the future.”

Continue to Communicate

The completion of the survey does not have to be the end of the story. After receiving the survey results and customer feedback, and using them to make conclusions about your business, think about how you can use the survey answers to continue communicating with your customers.

By adding a ‘personal details’ question to your survey, the participants’ details will be associated with their answers. This will allow you to easily send them benefits that relate to their survey answers.

Let’s say that you send out a survey to a parent audience and you include a question regarding the age of their children. Once you get the results of the survey, you can send a focused email, for example one advertising baby products to those that indicated having an infant at home.

Another way to take advantage of a personal detail question is for future communication: in addition to the participants being added to your email recipient list, you can include a box allowing your customers to leave their phone number, letting you communicate with them via telephone.

Don’t Stop Improving

The online survey system for businesses is an efficient and important marketing tool. Surveys strengthen the connection between the customers and the company, making the customers feel that their opinions are important. You’ll be able to learn lessons, to analyze information regarding a certain service or product, to optimize your company activity, to make relevant changes, to make important decisions, and to connect to the customer. All of these help you gain an advantage over your competitors.

 

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