Create Better Customer Surveys with These Quick Tips

Customer surveys are a reliable and affordable way to collect data and information about your target customers or markets. Whether you're a small mom-and-pop business or a large corporation, market research surveys will help you learn more about your customers and how to effectively appeal to their needs and desires. If you want to launch commercially successful products and services, you can't simply depend on your gut instinct. Instead, you need to craft customer surveys that will provide you with the information that you need to make smart and informed decisions. Here are a few quick tips that will help you create better customer surveys.

1. Write Open-Ended Questions

To get the most out of your customer surveys, you should take the time to write relevant, open-ended questions. A common mistake that many marketers make is depending too heavily on multiple choice questions. While multiple choice questions are convenient for both the survey creator and the survey taker, you will receive your most insightful and detailed feedback from the open-ended questions. In general, it is more effective to create a survey consisting of a few open-ended questions than to create a survey consisting of many multiple choice questions.

If you're including a mix of multiple choice questions and open-ended questions, you should present the brief questions to your customers first. By asking the open-ended questions at the end, you are less likely to intimidate or discourage customers from completing the survey in its entirety.

2. Come Up With an Incentive

The most successful customer surveys are usually the ones that offer an incentive for completion. Most people lead busy lives, so you shouldn't expect to receive a lot of feedback from your customer survey unless you offer customers an incentive for completing it. The incentive doesn't have to be monetary in nature. For example, you could offer a downloadable eBook or white paper. Another popular option is a discount on products or services offered. 

If you choose to offer an incentive, you should decide how you will distribute this incentive to the individuals who take your survey. You should collect any information that you will need to distribute the incentive during the survey. For example, if you want to distribute eBooks as an incentive, you should have a prompt for the user to enter their email address at the end of the survey.

3. Find the Best Research Survey Company

The service provider that you choose will have a large impact on the success of your customer surveys. A survey research company serves the function of recording the answers that the customers provide, as well as analyzing the data and sending a written report with recommendations. Le Vote International is a popular survey research company with 20+ years of experience that will help you achieve success. 

Customer surveys are one of the best methods for learning more about the interests and needs of your customers. If you need help creating customer surveys, don't hesitate to contact us.