Are your customers satisfied? What’s irking them, and what would they want improved? To understand the customer experience and how you can do better to improve customer engagement, surveys are easily one of the best tools in your belt.
With the right surveys deployed at the right times in the customer journey, you can capture customer feedback at key touchpoints and unveil insights about how to improve and elevate the customer journey.
However, just any survey won’t do.
You need to leverage the combined powers of the key metric surveys (Net Promoter Score, Customer Satisfaction Score, Customer Effort Score), and add to that customer satisfaction surveys as well as follow-up surveys, and more.
All of these can be useful when they are sent across over time (and just when they’re relevant) so as to prevent survey fatigue. And once you’ve mastered the process, you will have a clear plan for customer engagement throughout your customer experience journey.
But, how do surveys really help with customer engagement?
Here’s how:
1. Improved Communication
When you have all the feedback in place – and are able to analyze it well – you will be able to better understand your customers’ expectations and preferences.
This will help you tailor your marketing and communication to truly resonate with your customers, helping you design messages that have an impact.
2. Valuable Feedback Collection
It’s one thing to go with your gut, but quite another to understand your customer’s perspectives. That’s why effective and candid feedback collection is so important. It helps your customers engage with your brand as they participate to give valuable insights.
3. Understand Areas of Improvement
What are your customers’ biggest pain points? By encouraging feedback and understanding just what bothers them (and all the things they love) about your brand and customer journey, you can identify areas that need improvement as well as just what you’re doing right!
4. Personalize Experiences
The more you understand your target audience, the more relevant you can make every experience for them. That’s why you need to begin by identifying and mapping your target customer personas and segments. Once you have this, you can make each aspect of your customer journey more relevant by presenting custom offers or services that will really have an impact.
5. Nurture Trust Over Time
What happens when your customers feel heard? They begin to trust you.
That’s why you need to not only take their feedback, but show them that you’re taking action on it. Show them that their feedback isn’t just a dead-end road, but one that paves the way for a brand that works with them.
The outcome? A long-lasting customer relationship that is beneficial for both you and the customers.
Getting the right feedback
While customer surveys have an endless list of benefits, just about any surveys won’t do. So, what are the things you need to keep in mind to capture genuine, relevant insights?
Here are some best practices to follow:
1. Keep it Short
Long surveys can be tedious.
This may lead to customers either not completing the survey (increasing abandonment rate) or providing mindless answers that don’t really reflect their real perspectives.
And as every true strategist knows, incorrect data is a lot worse than no data at all. It will lead you to make decisions and invest in alternatives that don’t yield the results you’re looking for because you’re chasing the wrong path.
2. Ensure Relevance
Imagine sending out a post-purchase customer feedback survey, except, the customer hasn’t made their purchase yet!
The survey simply doesn’t make sense. While this is definitely an extreme example, it illustrates the importance of relevance.
Review each survey you’re sending out, at what stage it reaches your customers, and ask yourself if it’s relevant at that point in the customer journey.
3. Offer Incentives
Your customers are giving you feedback on their own time. Thank them for it.
By offering incentives such as loyalty points, a discount code, or even a free product, you can make your customers feel more engaged and enthused about giving genuine feedback!
4. Track Response Trends
There’s no point of collecting data is you aren’t putting it to use. That’s why analytics are your biggest ally.
Chart out response patterns and see what changes over time so you can stay on top of any new customer complaints, identify changes in customer buying patterns, and pivot your CX strategy accordingly.
Ready to get started?
Your customer feedback surveys can be the most powerful tool in your arsenal, if only you use them right.
If you aren’t sure where to start, Sogolytics can help! SogoCX helps you execute a CX strategy that packs a punch. Simply get in touch with their CX experts and they will give you a free demo of the platform to help you get started!
