10 Reasons Why Customer Surveys Are Still Relevant for Your Business

Customer surveys may not be exciting, but they're still crucial to business success

Customer surveys are a traditional marketing research method. The advancement of technology has attempted to push them to the side in favour of other means, such as email. However, there are many reasons not to renounce this particular practice and instead, see them as an addition to the typical advanced strategy. Customer surveys are not a novelty, but they are still relevant in today’s digital marketing environment. Here are 10 good reasons to convince you.

1.    Offer Better Services

The primary purpose of any customer survey is getting feedback from clients. However, this feedback is only the means to an end. Just collecting your client’s opinion is useless if you don’t do anything with it. The expected outcome of any marketing research is an improvement. If you have struggled to convince people to participate in a survey, you need to get to phase two once the research is completed. The data input you received from respondents will carefully be analyzed. The consolidated results you finally put together must help you draw several business improvement ideas.

Even a single customer survey with 5 to 10 yes or no questions can help you come up with great ideas on how to improve your services. You don’t need to be a marketing expert to understand and interpret the results. Ask simple questions and get simple answers. Crafting a survey is quite easy and quite reliable in terms of customer feedback.

Make sure you always have your client’s answers in mind. Look at their complaints, desires, or simply the scores they assigned to your products. This will give you enough insight to offer better customer experience and even boost conversion rates. The primary goal of customer surveys is to help you offer better services, and that hasn’t changed.

2.    Strengthen Your Relationship with Customers

The second huge advantage of surveys is their capacity to help you build customer trust. Most clients stumble upon a product and purchase out of curiosity or necessity. Unless they buy expensive items or niche products, people don’t usually make a documented choice. Most of the time, they just buy what comes at hand. This is not necessarily bad, put it raises some brand awareness doubts.

You need to make sure that your customers know who you are and that they are likely to come back to you. Surveys help you build loyalty and increase your popularity because they engage people. Clients will think about your product and how benefited them. Taking part in a survey makes them connect to your business and remember your brand. If you showed you value their input, they would be likelier to return.

3.    It’s Easier Than Ever to Conduct a Survey

One of the best things in the digital marketing era is that everything happens fast because it happens online. Thanks to social media channels, you can reach out to hundreds of people in a matter of seconds. This also enables you to send out your questionnaire faster and get immediate feedback. You could also send the feedback request via email or place it on a visible spot on your website.

No matter how you do it, make it fast, up to date and interactive. This will convince people to participate. Technology helps you come up with funny, engaging ideas to make your clients enjoy taking part in your survey. The era of customer surveys is not over. It only has a modernized face and speedier replies.

4.    You Will Get a Variety of Perspectives

When it comes to evaluating a product, each client has his or her own criteria. People with similar demographics and interests can respond differently to questionnaires. This is the interesting and exciting part of analyzing the results. You get to learn and understands many different things about various client categories. This will give you a broader view of people’s needs. It will enable you to customize your product accordingly. You might even feel inspired to create new products that go beyond your current expertise.

Innovation is key in the digital era, which is why receiving feedback and listening to a variety of opinions could help you improve the performance and reputation of your business.

5.    Everyone Tends to Be Honest While Filling in A Survey

People are often reluctant to express their opinion face to face. It is easier to gather your thoughts and write them down. It is also more comfortable than stating them out loud. People are more willing to post a comment or answer a questionnaire instead of responding to your questions directly. Clients tend to be more open and sincere especially if they are not required to leave their name.

In the end, it doesn’t matter who complained about your services, but why they did it and what you are going to do to change things for the better. The anonymity that customer surveys retain is critical to receiving honest feedback.

6.    You Can Analyze and Predict Customer Behavior

Consumer behavior is one of the most debated topics in today’s marketing research. This niche analyzes customer’s purchase habits to improve their experience. Questionnaires are a great way to gather valuable data and define your client’s behavior. This task is a little bit more challenging as it requires patience and analytic skills. More complex questionnaires centered on client’s demographics will help you create customer profiles or stereotypes.

These are the first things marketers should look at when they aim to boost sales. You need to know a person to be able to fulfill his or her needs. Client profiles help you reach out to hundreds or thousands of people who share similar exigencies. Dividing your customers into multiple categories also helps you distinguish their purchase peculiarities and make sales predictions.

7.    Show Customers You Care

Asking for feedback is a proof of loyalty. You want your clients to be faithful to your brand, but you must work on this relationship too. Just offering good services is not enough. They don’t like the feeling that they are mere consumers. You should not let them leave your store or office with the impression that you only wanted to cash in. Clients want to feel that their opinion matters.

A survey is not just a formal set of questions meant to evaluate your products, it is also a proof of care for your clients. They are the core of your business. Make them feel so by asking constant feedback. It’s valuable in today’s crowded market.

8.    Help Your Team Understand Your Business Through Surveys

You are not the only one who should understand you client’s needs better. This is also important for employees who have a direct impact on your product or provide customer support. Your entire sales process depends on them. Day to day experience helps them catch a glimpse of client’s real needs. However, it is highly recommendable to share your survey results with co-workers. They will understand what is expected of them and what reactions they trigger in clients. Finally, employees can do some brainstorming to improve work procedures and standard operations.

A useful suggestion is to include several to the point questions in your surveys that reflect your staff’s activity. For example, if you are interested in measuring your customer care department’s performance, ask people to rate their service. Be careful how you deliver the results. Your staff should not feel scared or embarrassed about it. The only goal is continuous improvement regarding business, customer experience, and individual skills.

9.    Retain Old Clients and Create Prospects for New Ones

Customer retention is essential for every business. It offers you a sense of safety and stability. You need to know there is at least a handful of clients you can count on. Your company technically relies on these loyal customers who generate constant revenue each month. Surveys are still relevant for your business because they can reveal customer retention facts.

Therefore, most of them include questions related to client’s awareness and fidelity. It is important to know how long clients are prone to stick with you. No matter what product your questionnaire focuses on, ask them for how long they have been using it. If you want to make your job easier for statistics, set multiple choice answers with time ranges (i.e.: A: 6 months – 1 year; B: over a year, etc.).

If you find out that most of your clients are new, you might need to think about an effective customer retention strategy. Afterwards, you can go back to your results and figure out what is missing and think about a solution. Clients might have several reasons to complain. It might be the product, poor customer service, late delivery, or numerous others. Try to spot the most disturbing problem and work on it first.

10. Measure Customer’s Satisfaction

This is one of the primary purposes of conducting a survey. You want to be better at what you do, improve your products or change your marketing strategy. All these factors that are crucial for your company’s future can be reflected by customer satisfaction analysis. These are questionnaires where people are asked to state their personal view about the products they used. If you want a reliable result, don’t limit your research to one survey.

You need to measure your improvements, so send out similar requests regularly. Repeat the questions to see if client’s answers vary. If they are similar, you need to struggle more. When you design your customer satisfaction survey, make it personal. You must get at the bottom of the issue and find out what exactly pleases or upsets your clients the most. It will help you identify your strengths and weaknesses.

Customer satisfaction is not only a matter of building trust or loyalty. In the end, it is a matter of business. You need to learn how to perform better if you want to increase profits. And that, in itself, is everlasting and cannot be matched by anything else.

Surveys are a traditional marketing research method that stood the test of time and are still relevant for your business. The fast-paced growth in marketing makes them more necessary than ever. The results are still one of the fastest ways to get client feedback, and it is essential to act fast in today’s competitive market.

Thanks to Harrisson for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Harrisson Dawson is a professional writer focused on business related topics. This article was was written on behalf of Customer Survey Assist. He is very passionate about traditional marketing techniques, such as customer surveys, and how to implement them in a digital world.

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