How to run effective consumer surveys

If you want more customers, it is worth listening to the feedback provided by the ones you already have. Discovering and understanding what they think about your product/business/brand is critically important to successfully scale your business.

One way that you can find out how your customers are feeling is through surveys. With consumer surveys, you will be able to gather valuable information about their experience and can adjust accordingly. This will be effective in the long run, as listening to customer feedback will inevitably lead to improving people’s experience and creating a loyal customer base.

Surveys can give you the information to help you improve the experience of existing customers but can also help you decide the best way to reach new customers in the future. By finding out how you are viewed by your customers, you can adjust and adapt to create a better experience for everyone. Here are a few tips for writing the most effective customer feedback survey:

Construct a short, yet compelling invitation

The invitation is often the make-or-break factor in deciding whether the recipient clicks through to and completes the survey. Keep this invitation as brief as possible—but without leaving out key details. Make sure that the recipient knows it is coming from your company and briefly explain what the survey will be about. This will be effective because it will refresh the customers’ minds and increase the chance of getting better results.

Keep it short

No one wants to waste their valuable free time answering hundreds and thousands of questions about your company. So, keep your survey concise without sacrificing your goal. Do this by losing unnecessary questions and by making the questions you use specific and useful.

Optimize for mobile

Over 50 percent of most demographic groups have a smartphone, and this number is only increasing. Since the average person checks their phone up to 150x a day, chances are you are going to connect with your audience a lot sooner than on other platforms. By optimizing for mobile usage, your mobile survey will reach more people, and by extending the reach of your survey, you will also get survey responses faster. There is no better way to connect with consumers in the 21st century than reaching them where they are most accessible: on their mobile devices. In this way, you can reach existing or potential customers and learn what they think within hours of creating your survey.

Offer incentives

Depending on your audience, offer incentives or prizes for completing the survey. Incentives undoubtedly lead to more and faster survey responses, but they also occasionally lead to rushed answers and incomplete submissions. Make sure the incentive correlates with the survey and the targeted audience. If you have crafted a compelling invitation, your survey response rate should increase on its own. However, everyone appreciates added incentives.

At Pollfish, you can create custom consumer surveys to find out exactly what your customers think. For example, you can attach videos if you want consumer feedback on a new advertisement. You can also add targeting if you want to find out what a certain demographic of your customers thinks about certain issues.