If you don’t get many survey responses, it’s probably because your customers suffer from survey fatigue. Here’s what to do about it.
Customers are overwhelmed by surveys — at the bottom of receipts, on their smartphones, at the end of phone conversations, in their email inbox, etc. That’s why they fill out fewer and fewer, says corporate survey expert and President of Great Brook Consulting Fred Van Bennekom.
Here’s what you can do to keep customers responding to your surveys, according to Van Bennekom:
- Don’t over survey the same people. If you do transactional surveys, you run a great risk of this because your best customers buy frequently. Make sure customers aren’t asked to respond any more than three times a year.
- Coordinate your efforts. Nearly every department craves customer feedback. But customers don’t want to give it to every area individually. Work with key areas to create questions that will satisfy everyone’s needs for feedback and put it all in one survey.
- Keep it short and engaging. Transactional surveys should be just a few questions. You can do a longer relationship survey once a year. Either way, ask questions using customers’ language and based on their experiences (not your processes) to keep them interested and answering.
- Offer incentives. You’ll increase response rates if customers get something for their time — a discount, donation on your part to a charity, small gift, etc.
- Follow up. Tell customers what you’ll do with their feedback, do it and remind them of what you did.
