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How to Use Surveys to Gather Customer Feedback in 2022

By
Tony Ademi avatar
on December 14#best-practices
Surveys

Today, we live in the digital world, and it is easier than ever to gather customer feedback. No more going around and trying to gather feedback from individuals one by one. 

With the correct feedback, you can also know if your customers are happy or not. 96% of customers believe that exemplary customer service is vital for long-term loyalty. However, without setting up any surveys, we can't know how our customers feel. 

Moreover, this article will show you how you can take control and use surveys to gather quality customer feedback.

Why is customer feedback important? 

Customer feedback is one of the only things that can assist you in differentiating from other brands. Whether you are about to launch a product, or already have one, without customer feedback, you can't know how your customer experience is, and that is the key to making your brand win. 

Additionally, when you don't collect customer feedback, it can also harm others who aren't your customers just yet. For example, you may have unhappy customers and not know it, while they may tell others about how they are unsatisfied. On average, a dissatisfied customer will tell more than 15 people about how unsatisfied they are. 

In short, you need to collect customer feedback using feedback collection tools to find out what you need to improve to help increase customer loyalty and retention. If you are thinking about creating your own survey, then You can generate your survey here

Best practices for customer feedback surveys 

Keep your survey short 

Surveys are best when they are short. Not only to include fewer questions but also to find ways how you can make your questions short. This can be done by cutting out unnecessary words that don't need to be in a question. 

People value their time, and something they don't like is sitting down and answering a survey that takes up more than 15 minutes of their time. For instance, take yourself as an example, have you ever sat and answered a survey that lasts half an hour? Probably not. 

Ask valuable questions 

Please don't include any questions that don't relate to gathering customer feedback or have any value in them. 

Every question you ask in a survey should have a purpose and take you closer to the goal you want to reach after the survey. 

For example, some unnecessary questions can be considered:

Asking how a customer found out about you 

Asking what the customer's name is 

Their hobbies, and much more. 

Customer feedback revolves around how your customer feels about your product or service. The primary end goal is to figure out what you can improve in your services or product and how they feel about your company. 

Never forget that customers don't have all the time in the world, so including questions with no value will make them not take the survey. 

Don't fool your customers with multiple questions in one 

Have you ever taken a survey and seen multiple questions in one? For example: How did you find out about us? What led you here? What makes our site attractive to you? 

Well, it is best to avoid these kinds of questions at all costs. Your customers know what you are doing, so when you try to squeeze questions into one, they will get demotivated from taking the survey. 

Additionally, not only demotivated, but even if you get answers, they may not be honest with their opinions. Instead, try to stick to one question so that you will get the best answers as well. 

Include yes/no questions 

Yes and no questions have a simple outcome. Since it doesn't require much effort from the customers' side and doesn't waste much time. 

You can try including a variety of questions, for example, one can be yes, and no, the other may be followed by an open-end question similar to the previous yes/no question you asked. 

Here is an example:

"Do our services make you feel good being our customer?" Yes/No 

"What can we improve in our services that will make you more satisfied being our customer?"

Try using rating scales 

Scales in surveys can be an excellent way of gathering customer feedback. Usually, scales are from 1 to 5. 1 stands for "Strongly Disagree," and 5 is "Strongly Agree."

Overall, they are easy to use and even simple for customers to give feedback. Scales can help you distinguish the overall grade your customers give you for your product or service. They aren't time-consuming and can paint a better picture for you of what you can improve. 

Even when it comes to customers answering a question, they would prefer answering questions from 1 to 5 rather than writing an answer on their own. Additionally, to make it even more fun, you can try including emojis close to every rating scale (1-5) so it can make things more interesting to rate. 

Include multiple-choice questions 

Like rating scale questions and yes/no ones, multiple-choice questions offer respondents a few options for answering the question. With multiple-choice questions, you have a better chance of getting a reply from a user since they require much less effort than open-ended questions. 

Usually, multiple-choice questions will involve four choices, but all surveys vary for each company that sets them up. Other forms of multiple-choice questions include: 

Nominal questions 

Semantic differential questions 

Nominal questions include different categories from which you can answer. Unlike rating scales, you can't provide a numerical value to nominal questions. Here is what a nominal question would look like: 

"Which of the following answers describes you? I am ___."

Thinking about becoming a customer

Not thinking of becoming a customer

Already a customer

Also, you have semantic differential questions, which are just like scale rates, except having different answers. For example, here is what a semantic differential question would look like: 

"How helpful do you find our product?"

1- Not helpful at all

2- Barely helpful

3- Neither helpful nor unhelpful

4- somewhat helpful

5- very helpful 

Typical questions you can use in your survey

For every business that seeks customer feedback, survey questions may vary; however, you can use some helpful questions, not to bore respondents and get the best customer feedback. 

Question 1: On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate our support for you? 

Question 2: How satisfied are you with our product? (1-5) 

Question 3: Would you recommend our product to your friends or family members? (yes/no) 

Question 4: Did our product solve any problem you were facing? (yes/no) 

Question 5: What do you think we can improve in our product? (open-end) 

Question 6: What would change if you didn't have our product? (open-end) 

Question 7: Is there anything that demotivated you when using our product? (open-end) 

Question 8: Is there anything else you want to add (open-end) 

Well, these were some examples of the questions you can use when setting up a survey. Although, there are many other questions you can use that you think are interesting. As we mentioned before, avoid including complex questions and even making every single question an open-end question. 

Pick the right time

According to a study done by QuestionPro, the best time to send out a survey is on Tuesday at 10-11 A.M local time. Tuesday is shown to be the day that provides the quickest responses from any other day. Additionally, the last week of the month was also the best week to send out a survey. 

Choosing the right time to send out a survey is vital if you want your customers to give you the proper feedback. Don't expect every customer to answer your survey; not everyone will get used to that. Although, what is essential is getting the ones willing to answer them and choose the best time. 

Let’s not forget that you may also have a busy schedule, so it is important you organize your workday and free up some time for Tuesday to send out those surveys. 

Wrapping it up 

Well, these were our best practices of how you can use surveys to gather customer feedback. Hopefully, you have a clear understanding of how to set up a survey with valuable questions and engage your customers in responding to your survey. 

This article goes into an in-depth analysis of how respondents react to questions and what to avoid asking them. Remember, not everyone has all the time in the world, so it is essential to find the right time and the right questions to keep them engaged.

For a final word, it is important you pay attention to each example we mentioned and even use your creativity to think of new methods you can use to make gathering customer feedback fun. Whatever seems fun to do will always keep people engaged and continuously interested in giving you the feedback you are looking for. 

This article is a guest blog written by Tony Ademi. To contribute a guest post to Workast.com, please complete the expression of interest form here.

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