6 + 1 tips how to maximize your survey response rates

Every successful company knows that customer feedback is crucial to your company's success. Customer feedback helps businesses determine the preferences of their customers, you show your customers that their opinion matters, it gives you an outside opinion of your company and you can develop your product or service. No denying that but we are not going to discuss that today more in-depth. Today we are going to discuss how to get as much as feedback in the first place! This is important of course because the more feedback and data you have, the better you can understand your customer, take immediate action and drive sales and marketing activities from that data!

Unfortunately, for many companies, their response rates are crappy! Response rates for most companies are miserable 0,1-0,5% using old fashioned methods.

So, in my opinion, it would be about time to put some emphasis on bringing those response rates up while keeping the quality of the data high. With more data, you will gain better insights from your customers to help make better business decisions. You are able to use feedback to build new products and services to meet your customer's needs and solve their problems as well as track feedback across a period of time. This way you can build customer feedback profiles around your customers and sell them even more targeted services. So there are some good reasons to keep reading! Now let’s get into it, here you have six things that you can do to pump up your survey response rates!

1. Let your customer know what is coming!

It is evident that people nowadays hate surveys where you have a million + one questions and it takes more than an hour to answer. Many times these surveys have their place but the key to success lies in the fact that you need to let your customer know what is coming! If you have three questions and it takes less than one minute to answer, let your customer know. If it has twenty questions, let them know in that case too! This will also increase your customer's loyalty while they do not feel tricked!

2. Design your survey so that the respondent does not have to write too much

This sounds pretty simple but it is commonly not that well understood. Removing questions that require a written answer, in other words, a text box – can dramatically increase your response rates. The important part here is to keep a clear vision of what you want to measure so you can stick with e.g. radio boxes, checkboxes or single choices for answers. Respect the time of the survey respondent as you would respect your own - oh heck, respect it more!

3. Make our survey short and sweet

This obviously applies to the point above! When you keep it short and sweet, you will save time for the respondent. The shorter the survey, the better the response rate. Of course, it depends on how you collect the data itself but usually e.g. with feedback kiosk we recommend 3 to 5 questions and e.g. with mobile you can reach up to 8! But keep in mind that these questions are preferably single choice questions. Another point on the shortness. It is also important to let your customers know beforehand that the surveys are short. If you just send a link, you are going to be in trouble!

4. Close the loop

Creating confidence and trust with your customer requires communication and conversation above all. The starting point with trust is always mutual respect. Show your customer that you respect them and answer to them every time you can and at very least when they ask for it. In the long run, this is the most powerful way of keeping your response rates high!

Next time you send out your customer surveys, make sure you track the responses on an individual level and follow up after a week with those who have not responded. Just resend them the link if they haven't answered yet. When they have answered, let them know exactly what you are going to do with the data!

So remember to follow up for those who have not answered yet and always if you can, close the loop by telling your customer what you do with the data and show them your respect. You will be happily surprised!

5. Reward your customer for helping you!

Okay, people will always want something back. It doesn't have to be anything big and expensive. Just a simple small stuff to yet again show them that you value their opinion and that you are worth of their time. P.s. free tip: .e.g with a simple discount card or a small perk you can easily drive more sales to your own store and increase the chance of them returning to do business with you!

6. Craft your call-to-actions carefully

A good invitation or a carefully thought out call-to-action can really boom your survey response rates. Whether you are conducting surveys via kiosk, email, mobile, social media or text message, make sure your initial outcome is diamond. If using email, concentrate on the subject line and make sure it grabs the respondent’s attention. On the other side of the scale, when using a feedback kiosk be clear and tell them what you want them to do and what’s in it for them. If you are using incentives, as you should, find something valuable to your clients, tell them straight what they can get!

+1. Get help!

The final and the easiest way to increase your survey response rate is to get some professional help! We at Feedbackly are more than happy to do that any time as a service or through our software. Just because you have read this far, I'm going to reveal a small secret for you! We are launching a whole new customer journey measurement tool next month and I bet it would be useful also to you. If you want to know more and get the latest customer experience tips, follow me or check out our website www.feedbackly.com

There you go! If you have any questions or comments, please be in touch. Hope these helped you to get forward with your customer experience project and survey design!