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How to Successfully Implement Customer Feedback Surveys

Few people get excited about taking a survey. Unless your customers instantly see why it’s important or you offer a reward, they’re likely to dismiss it. However, your company needs those responses. They help you help your customers. If you understand what motivates potential respondents, you’ll be more than equipped to get the survey results you need.

Make the Survey Experience Amazing for Every Customer

Reciprocity, rewards, and interest can each motivate your customers to complete your survey. The more specific you can make each customer’s survey experience, the more interesting they’ll find it—and the more likely they’ll be to respond.

 

Reciprocity: Create an Exchange

In 1974, sociologist Phillip Kunz at Brigham Young University sent out handwritten Christmas cards to 600 strangers. His theory: if someone does something for you, you’ll return the favor. Kunz’s study worked. He received more than 200 replies from people, many of whom also sent their Christmas card with handwritten notes. That’s why it didn’t matter that Kunz’s subjects didn’t know him: their empathy kicked in once they received something, and they felt compelled to give something back.

The same logic—of reciprocating when you’re given something—can be applied to timing your surveys.

Here are some examples of great times to survey your customers:

  • After they’ve been onboarded. Once you’ve given them a tutorial on how to use a core part of your product, survey them on whether it was helpful.
  • When they’ve just made a purchase. Your customer has just worked their way through your site to make a purchase, so ask them what they’d like to see while it’s fresh in their minds.
  • A few weeks after their purchase. By now customers have used the product and will have honest feedback. Offer them a discount on future purchases in return for feedback.

 

Rewards: Entice Them with a Promise

Via the incentive theory of motivation, positive incentives like “money, rewards, or recognition” motivate people to take action. But most people tend to prefer rewards sooner than later. Even if your customers understand that responding to a survey will help them down the line, they’d prefer to have a small reward for sacrificing their time here and now.

Your customers’ positive incentive needs to arrive ASAP—otherwise they won’t feel the urge to complete your survey. That’s why it’s imperative that you promise rewards to customers who take your survey.

Say you’ve just programmed this survey to pop up (above). This proves to your customer that they’ll be rewarded right now for doing you the favor of completing a survey—playing into their present bias and motivation via positive incentives.

Some reward options:

  • Discount on their next purchase – If you have the financial means, this can help grow your survey response rates.
  • Exclusive savings – Provide extra bonus content for your survey participants that isn’t already available.

It’s also crucial to give customers multiple ways to access and complete a survey. With more options, customers will be able to complete a survey on their own terms. Customers will be more likely to complete a survey if there is a way to do it that is convenient for them, whether it is by phone, email, or SMS.

 

Pique Your Users’ Interest

A study published in Oxford’s Public Opinion Quarterly tested the Leverage-Salience Theory of Survey Participation. The theory measured what factors made people more likely to take a survey—whether they found the topic interesting, if they trusted the organization surveying them, or if they would gain specific positive outcomes.

Their findings revealed something intuitive—that people are more likely to respond to surveys when they find the topics interesting. So to get people interested in your survey, you need to make it specific to each customer’s experience. To make your survey prompts and questions as specific and as immediately relevant as they can be, analyze each customer’s experience in real time.

 

Phrase your survey prompts around each customer’s experience. In an analysis of one million surveys, Price Intelligently found that using customer-centric language spiked their response rates. So instead of saying “help us make our product better,” make subtle changes to prompt your users by saying “improve your product experience.”

By using these tips and tricks, you should see an increase in your survey participation. And this feedback is crucial to a successful future for your business.

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The Importance of Consistency in Customer Service

Pleasing Customers Increases Customer Satisfaction by 20% and Revenue by 15%

 

 

When it comes to customer service, consistency is key. One of the most important considerations for customers in choosing a particular brand is consistency in service delivery. A survey conducted by McKinsey & Company across 14 different industries concluded that pleasing customers with the expected level of quality increases customer satisfaction by 20% and it also helps the company increase revenues by more than 15%.

It is critical to understand that winning customers and building loyalty takes time, and that in order to build good customer relationships, you need to deliver consistent service if you are to retain your customer’s hard-won loyalty. This is put nicely into perspective by the fact that customers, on average, will tell less than 10 other people about good service they have received, whereas the number is closer to 20 when it comes to letting people know about a bad experience.

Why is consistency valued so highly among customers?

Maintain Quality & Reliability

Consumers expect the same kind of quality each time they make a purchase or acquire a particular service. Customers base their expectations on their previous positive experiences, so it is the company’s responsibility to deliver the same level of services or beyond to ensure customer satisfaction. Consumers must be guaranteed that the products and services being sold to them will live up to their expectation and the product description.

 

Relationship Building & Emotional Consistency

The only way to build long-term relationships with customers is to offer dependable products and service. Being treated as a valuable customer both before and after a sale is of vital importance. In fact, to ensure repeat sales and customer loyalty, it is important that interactions with customers are consistent and quality based. The greater the emotional connection between your customer and your business, the higher the customer loyalty. After all, nothing is more trustworthy than consistency.

Obviously, no enterprise is perfect, and customers understand that. However, they are more likely to forgive an occasional misstep, provided the problem is handled quickly and with care. What customers will not tolerate is any kind of rudeness, neglect or failure to deliver on promises. This is put nicely into perspective by the fact that customers, on average, will tell less than 10 other people about good service they have received, whereas the number is closer to 20 when it comes to letting people know about a bad experience.

 

Communication

No matter how many loyalty programs a company offers, it won’t be able to win loyal customers until and unless the company offers consistency in communication. Communication with the business customers’ needs to be effective, to the point, and periodic. The only way customers can be expected to invest their money, time and effort into a product or service is through free and open interactions. To be able to successfully communicate at each customer touch point, strategies need to be developed for different areas of communication. These touch points can be appropriately used to strengthen the relationship with the clients and communicate all the relevant information in a timely fashion.

Furthermore, you can conduct online surveys and invite customers to provide feedback on their experiences with your organization, in order to learn what is most important to them. Once you are aware of what the key issues are, you can fix them immediately. In addition, monitor customers on all their social streams to catch praise or dissatisfaction, both of which you can learn from.

In addition, always provide clients with a time frame for expecting your response and consider setting up automated responses to incoming client emails, to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

 

 

Customer Journey

Businesses should also keep in mind that it is not just the product or service that needs consistency, but the overall customer journey, which includes pre-sale engagement, actual sale and after sales services. The combined total of all these interactions with the company make up the customer journey. Customers who have all the control in the competitive industry are very perceptive and they pay attention to every little detail, which means that the company can’t afford to compromise on any component of customer journey. Customers expect the same level of service quality during each stage of the customer journey. If a company consistently pays attention to detail and offers high quality services, it would result in long term relationships with customers.

We found that a company’s performance on journeys is 35% more predictive of customer satisfaction than performance on individual touchpoints. Since a customer journey often touches different parts of the organization, companies need to rewire themselves to create teams that are responsible for the end-to-end customer journey across functions.

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