Online surveys are a significant way in the process of research and data collection. Not only they provide you the valuable customer feedback but they also help your organisation in continuous growth by taking better business decisions. This gives a platform where you can learn more about the latest updates that can be brought in to your products and/or services.
In 2016, online customer surveys have continued to grow in the market and 2017 will carry these surveys progressively and effectively. With the channels to get in touch with your customers increasing spontaneously, the online customer survey platforms needs be prepared in such a fashion that those needs would persuade the customers to complete and submit their responses, even out of their busy routine, without demanding much of their time.
Gone are the days where businesses used to send out long online surveys to get their customers’ feedback. Time has changed now. And so are the trends in online survey space. Below are the 6 key elements that any online survey platform aspiring to get a top seat should consist of in today’s world:
- Keep it short and simple: You are well aware that how important it is for a business to hear back from their customers. So in order to hear back from them, you need to keep your survey questionnaire short and accurate (relevant). Long surveys will bore the customer off. Hence, surveys should be designed such that it should not need more than 2 minutes for taking a survey. For this the surveys need to be shorter, faster and more accurate. Once this is taken care of, the customers participate and the response received is within the expected time.
- Go mobile: As an organisation in this competitive market, your online surveys should be diligently designed to ensure a seamless experience for your customers directly over their mobile phone and tablet devices. Look around, people are more attuned to their phones than ever and thus making use of this power of mobile is far more sensible than utilizing any other technology platform right at this moment.
- Plan customer friendly surveys: Drop downs, text fields, radio buttons, etc. not only are time consuming way of receiving feedback but also they look boring if we see from a customers’ point of view. For a customer, any online survey should have a brilliant user experience that can keep them engaged to complete the survey. Online surveys should be created in such a way that the customer takes minimum number of clicks or taps (in case of mobile device) to complete the survey.
- Send it on time: A meaningful survey is the one which is received within the time so that businesses can take corrective or improvement steps based on the feedback. To receive the surveys on time, you should request for a customer feedback within time. In this world of automation, instant feedback surveys should get automatically triggered based on different actions taking place in CRM systems. There should be a strong focus on integrating survey tools with other business systems that will send out surveys automatically on time. Online survey software tools should more likely be integrated with CRMs, databases and other third-party systems via web service APIs.
- Analyse the data: To run a successful business, you need to analyze customer experience and feedback on the basis of the data collected. Feedback reports are the backbone to the whole concept of survey collection and feedback. A survey tool without the report generation section is never complete. So more and more businesses expect integrated analytics with their survey platform.
- Know your customer expectations: Nowadays, customers will expect you to know who they are. An online survey if not properly directed to the targeted customers will always go in vain. So a little bit of homework on knowing your customers will never harm and definitely add weightage on determining their thoughts.
Along with knowing your customer expectations, you also need to act accordingly. After receiving feedback from your customer, communicating and keeping up with them will definitely lead to a healthy customer relationship. If you don’t respond to the customer feedback (by making it personal or making it real time), customers may stop giving feedback altogether.
Of course, as time progresses, there can be plenty of more innovations and trends that will shape the way customer survey is used. However, the fundamentals would still remain the same: study your customers, respect their time, give good survey experience, track responses and act accordingly in a timely manner.
