How to Conduct a Customer Survey

Hey, want to know the secret to making your business rock? It's simple: understand your customers. Think of them as your best friends, and you want to know everything about them, right? That’s where customer surveys come in.

Step 1: Know What You Want

Before you even start asking questions, decide what you want to find out. What are your goals? Do you want to know if people are happy with your stuff, get feedback on something new, or figure out what you can do better? It’s like planning a trip – you need to know where you're going first!

• Know your audience: Who are you talking to? Think about the people you want to reach.
• Set clear goals: What exactly are you hoping to learn? Maybe you want to measure how happy people are, find out what’s annoying them, or understand what they like.
• Keep it focused: Don’t try to cover everything in one go. Pick a few things you really want to know.

Step 2: Ask The Right Questions

Your survey questions are like the words you use when you talk to your friends. You want them to be clear and easy to understand.

• Keep it simple: Don't use fancy words or complicated sentences. Imagine you're talking to your grandma.
• Be fair: Don't try to push people to answer in a certain way. Ask questions that let them tell you what they really think.
• Mix it up: Ask questions that let people answer with their own words, choose from a list, rate something, or give you some basic info about themselves.
• One question at a time: Don't try to ask two things in one question. It's like trying to eat two hamburgers at once – it just gets messy.

Different Ways to Ask Questions

1. Open-ended questions: Let people tell you anything they want. For example: "What do you think about our website?"
2. Multiple-choice questions: Give them a few options to choose from. For example: "How satisfied are you with our customer support?" (Very satisfied, Somewhat satisfied, Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, Somewhat dissatisfied, Very dissatisfied)
3. Rating scale questions: Use a scale to see how much they like something. For example: "On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being very low and 5 being very high, how likely are you to recommend our product to a friend?"
4. Demographic questions: Get some basic information about them, like their age, gender, or where they live. It’s like figuring out who’s who in a group of friends.

Step 3: Pick a Platform

There are lots of tools out there to help you make, send, and look at the results of your survey. It’s like picking the right phone to call your friends!

• SurveyMonkey: It’s like the iPhone of surveys – easy to use and has lots of options.
• Typeform: This one is like a fancy phone with lots of cool features – its surveys are beautiful and fun.
• Google Forms: This is like a free phone – simple and good enough for basic surveys.
• Qualtrics: This is like the super-powered phone for pros – it has lots of advanced features.
• SurveyGizmo: This one is like the reliable old phone – powerful and good for managing big surveys.

Pick one that works for you and your budget.

Step 4: Spread The Word

Now you've got a survey ready to go. How do you get people to take it? It's like inviting your friends over to a party!

• Email: Send a personal invitation to your customers.
• Website: Put your survey on your website, maybe on pages that are related to what you're asking about.
• Social Media: Share your survey link on your social media pages.
• Mobile Apps: Use push notifications or put a survey in your app to reach people on their phones.
• Pop-ups: Use pop-ups on your website to get people's attention.

Step 5: Give Them a Little Something

It’s like offering your friends a drink at your party – a little incentive can go a long way! Encourage people to take your survey with a little something special.

• Discounts or deals: Offer exclusive savings to survey takers.
• Gift cards: Give away gift cards to some lucky people.
• Contests and giveaways: Hold a contest or giveaway where taking the survey is a requirement to enter.
• Donate to charity: Give money to a good cause for each completed survey.

Step 6: Look at The Results

Now you’ve got all the answers. Time to figure out what they mean! Most survey tools have ways to see the results. You can also put the data into a spreadsheet to look at it in more detail.

Important Things to Look For

• Customer happiness: How happy are your customers with your products or services?
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): How likely are your customers to recommend you to others?
• Customer effort score (CES): How much effort do your customers need to do when they interact with your business?
• Customer lifetime value (CLTV): How much are your customers worth to your business over time?

Step 7: Take Action!

The whole point of a survey is to make your business better. Look at your results, find the key things, and make changes to improve your business. It's like taking feedback from your friends to make your party even better!

Here are some ideas of what you can do with your survey results:

• Product development: Use the feedback to make your products even better.
• Customer service: Find ways to improve how you help your customers.
• Marketing and sales: Learn what your customers like so you can reach them better.
• Website optimization: Make your website easier to use and more attractive.

Tips for a Great Survey

• Keep it short: Don't make it too long. Aim for 5-10 minutes, tops.
• Make it flexible: Let people take the survey whenever and wherever they want.
• Test it out: Try the survey out with a few people first to make sure it's all good.
• Say thanks: Send a thank you email to everyone who takes your survey.
• Keep doing surveys: Don’t just do a survey once. Keep asking your customers for feedback so you can stay on top of their needs.

Conclusion

Surveys are a powerful tool for businesses. By using them to learn about your customers, you can make your products better, your service more awesome, and your customers happier. Follow these steps and tips to create great surveys that help you grow and keep your customers coming back for more!