Drive Your Survey Participation Rate Over 30% – Here’s How

The purpose of a customer experience survey is multi-faceted. At its core, it is an incredible tool that allows businesses to improve their products and processes, manage complaints and engage employees. Once you have created your survey and delivered it to customers on the appropriate channel, the main hurdle is getting people to participate. Many businesses struggle to get their survey participation rate over 10%, but it is entirely achievable. Here are three tips to help you.

Make Your Customers Feel Appreciated

The customer that feels valued is one who is more likely to be loyal to your brand and will invest in your business by providing feedback. Engaging your customers by asking for their opinion is already an indication that you value their relationship with you; however, often the feedback request feels automated and impersonal. Using personalization and direct communication, you can make each customer feel valued. 

When using email send your feedback request from a specific person rather than a group or department. If the customer interacted with a specific person then it’s best to have the feedback request come from that person.

Use language that implies that their personal input is valuable to a specific individual as well as the business. For example:

• Your opinion will help me and my team improve
• We want to know what you think
• Your opinion matters to me and the management at business name

Ensure that the request references the specific reason that the customer was in contact with you in the first place and include details of that original interaction. Don’t include too much unnecessary detail such as extensive product or order details as this removes the personal element from the request.

Making your customer feel as though they are being personally approached, will work well to increase your survey participation rate.

Keep Your Survey Short And To The Point

Show that you respect your customers’ time and keep your surveys short and direct. Letting them know how long it will take to complete also removes a barrier to entry. Research has shown that people are more likely to respond to a survey if they know upfront how long it will take them. In our experience, less than 2 minutes is optimal for higher survey participation rates.

Some examples of how to approach this include:

• Please can we have 2 minutes of your time?
• We want to hear from you – 2 minutes is all it will take
• Can you spare a couple of minutes to help us improve?

Offer Customer Incentives

You will find that some customers are happy to complete your surveys simply to ensure that you work towards providing a better service for them. Others need an additional nudge. Offering incentives is a great way to improve your survey participation rates and gather relevant, insightful feedback at the same time. Incentives don’t need to be financial and some examples of incentives you might want to try include:

• Early or exclusive access to products
• Recognition through membership of an exclusive customer tier
• Exclusive news or information
• Entry into a lucky draw for a prize

You want to strike a balance between people who complete a survey simply to add value and those who are completing it for the reward. Generally speaking, feedback provided without an incentive will be more detailed and of higher quality.

Driving higher survey participation rates also comes down to your consistency and effort in letting your customers know that you’re always considering them and their needs.

For a complete guide on participation rates and how to improve them, download our e-book: How To Lift Your Customer Survey Participation Rates.

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