Surveys That Work: How to Get Real Feedback From Your Customers

There are a lot of split opinions on whether you should make your surveys overly simple in order to make the questions stand out or to make them more engaging in order to encourage more people to actually fill them out.
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Real feedback from customers will transform your business. If you want to get sales leads to chase you, it's vital that you know what they are looking for in the first place. But as people know most customers are far too lazy to actually fill out these surveys. It's difficult to get real responses unless you have a big audience to begin with.

As anyone selling on Amazon knows, reaching even ten comprehensive product reviews can take weeks without an established brand following.

Getting customer feedback can be done, though. It's just like nurturing a long distance relationship. This guide is going to show you how you can get real feedback from customers.

Choose the Right Platform

There's no use asking for customer feedback if you don't already have a plan in place for what to do with that feedback. There are many free and paid options available for people looking to get feedback from customers.

The main contender is Survey Monkey. This is a platform that collects 2 million responses on a daily basis, and they operate for a range of Fortune 500 companies. You also have Typeform, which offers free exporting of data if you don't want to take out a subscription.

Another option is Google Forms. This is the best option on the list for garnering real feedback. It comes with unlimited questions, unlimited answers, full customization, and the option to add images and videos. With visual marketing being so powerful, this is an ideal option.

Whatever platform you use; you have to make sure it does exactly what you want it to do. Never compromise on your form creation.

What Questions Work Best?

Actually coming up with questions that work is a tad harder than you might think. It's the most influential factor and it's where so many companies get it wrong. First of all, ask for as little personal information as possible, unless you are specifically looking for demographical data for your customers. People generally don't like to give out anything that's private.

As to what works best, you should ask questions that require relatively short answers. Make sure it's nothing redundant or anything that requires a great deal of detail.

To make your questions something that you can easily extract data from, consider using multiple choice only answers. These can also be ideal for getting customers to take time out of their day to do the survey.

Offer Something in Return

There's a right way and a wrong way to convince customers to give you feedback on surveys. Never offer anything of great value for filling out a survey, otherwise you are going to get people filling out the surveys for all the wrong reasons. Instead, offer something relevant to your company as a token of thanks.

For example, you may decide to offer a discount on one of your products, or you may decide to offer someone a free consultation. These prizes are relevant to your organization and they ensure that only people who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer will get involved.

Get Creative

There are a lot of split opinions on whether you should make your surveys overly simple in order to make the questions stand out or to make them more engaging in order to encourage more people to actually fill them out.

In this case, the results from visual marketing have demonstrated that the use of images and videos in strategic locations can make your survey more attractive. For example, you may decide to put a video at the start of the survey in order to thank people for taking the time to come to the page.

If you are speaking directly to the camera, it's like you are speaking to the customer on a personal level. This humanistic approach is perfect for making customers think you care about them.

Last Word - Sending the Survey to the Right People

It's amazing how many people are afraid to actually interact with their customers. They are terrified that their mailings will be listed as spam and they will stop dealing with them. But the reason they dealt with you and signed up to your list is that they want to hear from you.

As long as you are sending your surveys to those who have already made a purchase, you are going to increase your conversion rate. They are more likely to give you feedback you can use.

How are you going to utilize real customer feedback?

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