The “why” of customer surveys

Survey know-how series, part two of four:
Explore the value of knowing what’s on the minds of your customers.

We’ve all heard banal business expressions from motivational speakers and management books about customer satisfaction, right? Maybe something like …

• It takes years to win a new customer and seconds to lose one.
• It costs up to five times more to win a new customer than keep an existing one.
• A two percent increase in customer retention has the same effect on profits as cutting costs by 10 percent.
• The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

OK, so that last one was from my mom and not a *traditional* motivational speaker. But if you boil it down, these types of phrases are just reminders to make sure that you’re taking care of your most important market: your existing customers.

So, how do we do that?

By asking our customers to tell us about themselves and their experience with us and then – and here’s the kicker – listening to them. You have several options when you think about using a survey tool like Emma’s to connect with your customers.

1. Getting to know your audience helps you market and serve them better than you can by simply guessing. Additionally, just the experience of being invited to share an opinion can be therapeutic for a frustrated customer, or inspiring for one who likes you already. A positive experience like that is just one more touch-point that you now have with that customer.

2. Negative feedback is no fun, but it can be extremely valuable for you if it helps you spot and fix problems before a greater percentage of your audience catches on. Customers who are willing to go out of their way to share a frustration with you (instead of simply taking their money and their word of mouth elsewhere) are invaluable. Reward these folks and encourage your team to be truly thankful for them.

3. Surveying people who either have stopped being a customer, or decided never to be a customer during the sales process, can help you fill holes in your service and boost both sales and retention in the future.

4. Lastly, you may receive positive feedback, which is motivating and encouraging. At Emma, we regularly share positive messages about our team and our service along with customer suggestions, and they each fuel our staffers in different ways.

What now, you ask?
A good place to start is to think about your business strategy and form a survey to help you with that purpose.

If…
If you’re finding engagement is decreasing

Try this:
Ask your customers what type of content and offers they are interested in

And don’t forget…
List a few options – don’t make your subscribers come up with them

If…
If you’re wanting to boost sales and retention

Try this:
Ask your lost sales what you could have offered to snag their business

And don’t forget…
Of course, that doesn’t mean that you necessarily should offer it. But it’ll give you a good idea of what types of customers your competitors are getting

If…
If you’re interested in serving your clients better

Try this:
Ask them about themselves and what they’ve liked in the past so that you can continue to improve

And don’t forget…
This also may help you create a picture of your customers, which may surprise you

Happy surveying! One thing to keep in mind in all this, however, is that unless you take great pains to get a representative sample of your clients, take care before you act on results. These types of things have a self-selecting characteristic, in that usually you will hear from the very happy and the unhappy. The reasonably satisfied aren’t always motivated to reach out, so take your results with a few grains of salt, or any condiment of your choosing.

Missed part one? Read about the “how” of designing effective surveys.

Next time, we’ll explore the “when” of surveys, with a post about using this tool for event registration and follow-up.