“Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” — Ken Blanchard
Gathering and understanding customer feedback is arguably one of the most profound ways to grow your business. Through feedback surveys, your customers are providing you with insights to improve your products and services. In addition to giving you the opportunity to constantly improve, positive feedback gives momentum to your flywheel. According to a study by Zendesk, 88% of customers read a review before making a purchasing decision. Customer feedback enables your delighted customers to become your best marketers through attracting new business. In short, collecting and acting upon feedback isn’t just helping your company grow; it’s helping your company grow better.
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So now that you’re bought in to the concept of customer feedback, a question might cross your mind: How do I actually get customers to fill out my surveys? This blog post will outline six ways you can increase your survey response rate so your business can grow better.
1. When sending out your surveys via email, make sure the “from” name is well-known by your customers.
How often do you simply delete emails from people you don’t know? If you’re like me, you do it often. The first step to get your customers to respond to you is to have them actually open the email. You have a better shot of achieving that if the email is from a person — someone customers are familiar with — rather than a generic “help” or “no-reply” email address. If you're not sure whether your customers would know a person from your company by name, consider using a person's name followed by your company name like this: Adriti Gulati (HubSpot).
2. Keep your surveys short.
Micro surveys are short, targeted, and timely sets of questions that generally receive a higher response rate than typical surveys. Micro surveys respect your customers' time and make sure they can focus and provide detailed insight into only one question. With micro surveys, we’re looking at quality, not quantity.
3. Make sure your surveys are mobile-friendly.
According to a survey by CustomerThermometer, smartphones are now the preferred method for accessing the internet, and over a third of all surveys are completed on a mobile device. Don’t give customers any more excuses than they already have to ignore your survey requests. Ensure your survey is user-friendly no matter what device customers are using.
4. Reply to survey respondents.
No one likes to feel as though their feedback has fallen on deaf ears. The folks who responded to your feedback request took time out of their schedule to help your company grow better, so take the time to respond to them. Not only will this encourage them to fill out your surveys in the future, but you might also be able to get more of your questions answered and even turn respondents into promoters.
5. Ensure the questions are easy to understand.
If you have customers from around the globe, make sure you're writing your surveys in a way that's easily understandable to all, whether that means sending out your survey in multiple languages or simply avoiding slang terms that aren't accessible to everyone. If someone doesn't understand the question, he or she is not going to be able to answer the question accurately.
6. Add an incentive — but be careful.
If you’ve tried the above tips but are still not seeing the response rate you’d like, consider adding an incentive. Offering a raffle for the chance to visit the office or free merchandise might be a good way to get more folks to fill out your surveys. But be careful what you offer and how you word your offering — you never want to make it sound like you’re giving away money in exchange for positive reviews.
Use these tips to improve your response rate and learn more about your customers’ experiences. By understanding and acting upon your customers’ needs, you’ll help your business grow better.
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