Tips For Creating Valuable Customer Surveys

Do you sometimes wonder what your customers think of your brand, product(s), or service(s)? Surveying your customers from time to time is a vital part of running a successful business. Customer surveys are an opportunity to communicate and build personal relationships with customers.

Knowing what your customers think or need can help you improve customer satisfaction and provide them with the best customer experience.

Customer surveys can be used to collect data for various reasons such as measuring customer loyalty, customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction, collecting current product feedback, and even help determine new potential new products

There are survey apps that can help with facilitating a customer survey, plus they will assist with analysis and more. And with Commercient’s IoT Pulse, you can connect your survey software to your ERP and over 815 apps. Supported customer survey software includes SurveyMonkey, SmartSurvey, Survey Anyplace, and more.

In addition, you can connect your accounting system (ERP) to other powerful apps, like eCommerce solutions, marketing systems, and much more. Visit our IoT Pulse integrations page here, select your ERP, and check out all the compatible apps.

5 Tips for Creating Valuable Customer Surveys

Make use of images

Associating images with answer choices makes a question more compelling and increases engagement. You don’t want a survey that looks and reads like a restaurant menu. An engaging survey leads to a more willing participant, who will most likely provide reliable and valid answers. When deciding on images to use, opt for something visually appealing, and depending on the survey, possibly humorous.

Get to the point quickly

Your customers are busy people. Don’t waste their time by asking them to spend 45 minutes answering a questionnaire. Your customers will most likely abandon a survey that is too long. Keep your questions clear and simple, and your survey short and sweet.

Avoid asking loaded questions

Don’t ask loaded questions that could leave customers feeling overwhelmed, confused and annoyed. Don’t be vague and make respondents guess what you mean. It is advisable to refrain from using industry jargon and references. This could leave your respondents feeling frustrated and cause them to abandon the survey.

Ask one question at a time

Flooding a participant with multiple questions at once will cause them to lose focus, and will lead to half-hearted answers. If you want quality responses, ask one question at a time. Do not ask unnecessary questions. Stick to questions that are dependent on the purpose of the survey.

Use yes / no questions

Yes / no styled questions are your best option when ambiguity is present. These close-ended questions nudge a participant to arrive at a conclusion quickly and efficiently. Having a yes/no option as an answer is also useful for questions that require a one-word answer.

Customer surveys allow us to gather a substantial amount of data about our customers’ opinions in a short amount of time. This data can provide valuable insight about a company’s shortfalls, where improvements are needed, and can help a company make better business decisions, such as product or service offerings.

Being able to take the feedback obtained and effectively apply it to your business could mean the difference between a good year and a bad year.

If you’d like to learn more about connecting your customer survey software and other apps to Commercient’s IoT Pulse, please contact us today.

About the Author

Anna Kinnear is a Sage Financials Consultant at Edgeware, and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting Science from the University of South Africa. She has always had a passion for reading and writing.