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Customer surveys provide extremely valuable information for businesses. Owners and managers can use feedback to get to know their customers, improve their offerings and store location, and even decide which products and services to cut or eliminate.

The only problem is that it’s not always easy to get customers to fill out a survey.

Customers aren’t always eager to take time out of their day to provide answers to a business survey. But, just because it isn’t easy doesn’t mean it’s impossible to get customers excited about providing your business with helpful insights and feedback.

With these tactics, you can get more shoppers to take your customer survey and offer helpful, valuable opinions that can improve your business.

Tips to Get Customers to Take Your Survey

The keys to getting more shoppers to complete your customer survey are:

  • Getting your survey in front of customers.
  • Giving customers a reason to take the survey.
  • Making the survey easy to complete.

Each of these customer survey tips will help you improve one or more of these elements.

Collect contact information from online audiences. When you have a customer’s contact information — whether it’s their email address, phone number, or social media username — you can directly reach out to them and invite them to complete your survey. So, when you have the attention of audiences while they’re visiting your website or viewing your social media pages, encourage them to sign up for your newsletter, provide their phone number, or otherwise connect with you so you can reach out to them.

Collect contact information from customers while they’re at your location. Using online tools to collect customer contact information is often what owners and managers think of when they consider their options for collecting data. But, don’t overlook your ability to collect customer data in your store.

Reward customers for providing their contact information. Customers will usually be reluctant to provide their contact details unless they are getting something back in return. So, pair your information requests with offers that provide value to the customer.

Segment your list before you send a survey. Once you collect customer contact information, don’t go blasting out to surveys to everyone who signed up. Segment your list based on customer activity, and personalize your surveys based on how the customer has engaged with your business or what they purchased. For example, don’t send surveys with questions about your physical store to online customers. Send surveys about your clothing line to shoppers who purchased t-shirts, not home goods.

Promote your surveys in your location. Getting customers to know about your survey is the biggest hurdle in getting shoppers to provide feedback. When you don’t have their direct contact information, you must try other methods to let shoppers know about your survey. You can do that by promoting the survey in your location so shoppers become aware of it while they’re in your store.

  • Mention the survey on your in-store digital signage content.
  • Remind customers about the survey through your overhead messaging.
  • Train your team to mention the survey while engaging with customers.
  • Trigger push notifications to customer digital devices using WiFi marketing.

Position your survey from a marketing perspective. Like everything else in your business, customer surveys are something you must market to shoppers. You can’t just put a survey in front of them and expect them to want to complete it. Take a marketer’s approach to your survey promotions. Help them see what they get with the survey and what’s in it for them.

  • Be upfront about how long the survey is or will take (5-minutes, 7-question, etc.).
  • Lead with the benefits. (improve our check-out process, get more of what you want on our menu, etc.).
  • Let loyal customers know they’re helping your business (help us open another location, your feedback will help us improve, etc.).
  • Be grateful and thankful (thanks in advance, we appreciate you and your opinion, etc.).

Reward customers for taking a survey. Just as you have to give customers an incentive to hand over their contact information, you need to guide them toward completing your survey by offering incentives. Studies have found that incentives can increase survey response rates by 5-20% so don’t just come out and ask customers for feedback. Let them see how completing the survey will benefit them, and provide discounts, upgrades, and freebies for those who offer feedback.

Keep it short and simple. Your customers are doing your business a favor by completing a survey. So don’t make it hard on them. Make it easy to complete the survey.

  • Keep the survey under ten questions.
  • Put the easiest questions at the beginning of the customer survey.
  • Don’t ask too many open-ended questions.
  • Use a customer survey platform that is simple to use.
  • Don’t send surveys to customers too frequently.

Gamify your surveys. Make it even more appealing for shoppers to complete your customer survey by turning it into a game. Gamify your surveys by giving awards and points to customers as they complete questions. Provide badges and special statuses to customers who regularly offer feedback. Something even as simple as a progress bar during the survey can make the questionnaire feel more engaging and rewarding.

Improve Your Customer Surveys. Improve Your Business.

Customer surveys help you collect valuable feedback about your business. It helps you pinpoint what people love about your brand, discover what other offerings you could provide to help customers, and see what parts of your business annoy or frustrate shoppers.

The insights you collect from customer surveys are too important to overlook. So don’t let a struggle with collecting customer feedback stop you from getting this important information.

Use the tips provided in this post to get more customers to complete your surveys. And, contact Spectrio today to learn how to leverage the location marketing tools mentioned in this post. We’d love to show you how digital signage, overhead music, and free customer WiFi can help you better connect and communicate with the customers in your store.