CRAFTING A CUSTOMER SURVEY

Where would we be without our customers, guests, followers and all of you who help make this whole dream possible? As a business, it is imperative to get feedback from anyone and everyone who is interacting with your services or products (or both!) and creating a customer survey can seem like a daunting task.

If you've never made one before you might be wondering where to even start. We know the feeling and through trial and error have learned a lot about the types of questions to ask to get the most out of your customer survey. Before you scroll to learn more about crafting a customer survey, click the button to below to take ours and be entered to win a $200 gift card to be used towards any purchase including workshops, a stay at The Vintage Round Top, or our vintage finds and handmade items webshop!

DEFINE YOUR AUDIENCE

To start off, you need to know who you're asking, or better yet who is answering. Here are a couple basic things you might want to know about your customer; their age range, location, how long they've known about your business and how they found out about you. These questions will help you better understand their following answers and will help sort your customer demographic. In addition, this will also help you gauge whether or not you are effectively reaching your target audience.

WORK BACKWARDS

It can be difficult to pull questions from the top of your head, so take a moment and think backward. What are you hoping to learn? Is there a new product or service that you want to offer, but aren't sure if it'll be received well? Are you wondering if you should be giving more attention to a certain social media? Or maybe you'd just like to know what you could improve on?

Once you've defined what you'd like to learn, phrase the questions so you can get the most information out of them. Instead of asking "Would you attend a mini-session on Home Design?" ask "What topics would you be interested in attending a mini-session for?" then give participants the option to select the topics that are of the most interest. Remember to phrase the question without bias so that the answers are honest and true, the last thing you want to do is sway your survey one way without even realizing it!

INCENTIVIZE!

Think back to the last review you left or the last time you took a survey. Usually, there is an incentive for you to do so. For our survey, we decided to offer a $200 gift card to one winner who shared their feedback with us. We also offered extra entries for those who left a review on VRBO or Google. Some ways to incentivize your customers to share their feedback might be through offering some type of freebie for all, a grand prize for one, or discount code. If you're a graphic designer, maybe you send a free phone wallpaper to anyone who takes the survey (bonus because now you're capturing their email!) or if you're a florist maybe you can offer to waive the delivery charge for their next 3 orders. There are tons of ways to incentivize, just keep in mind to make it something that would make YOU want to take the next steps and click on that survey. 

We hope these tips help you create your next customer survey, and if you're interested in learning more ways to help grow your business or brand we encourage you to reserve your seat for our upcoming Business, Branding & Social Media Workshop on Saturday, March 24th! 

Photo by Carmen Collins