Customer Survey Common Mistakes
Poor timing
It’s important to send survey invites at a time that is most convenient
for your customers to complete them. You must understand your customers’
business cycles so you don’t survey them during their “crunch time”.
Likewise, it’s important not to automatically conclude that the weekend is
the best time to deploy surveys. Consumers and business customers have
different email reading patterns and consumers may be busy shopping or
visiting friends and family on the weekend.
The main idea is to gain some intelligence on the lifestyles of your
customers so you can send survey invites at the most opportune time.
Surveys are too long
If your survey is too long, that may discourage a customer from
completing it. There are a variety of ways to shorten surveys with Zarca’s
platform, and conserving valuable survey space should be a priority when
designing surveys.
A shortened survey will strengthen the relationship between you and your
customers because it shows you respect the time and effort they give in
taking your survey.
Failure to speak their language
There may be a communication breakdown when surveys are filled with
jargon, technical language, or double-speak. Questions should be asked in a
direct, clear, concise manner that leaves no room for interpretation.
Likewise, when there is a significant non-English-speaking customer
population that impacts your company, it is of great interest to deploy
surveys to them in their native language.
Zarca’s platform can deploy surveys in all major languages and even some
lesser known ones. Connecting and relating to these cultural groups will
lead to a higher sense of loyalty and more long-term sales.
No follow-up
What good is a survey if nothing is done with the insights drawn from it?
Most companies administer surveys so they can gain insight on a specific
problem and take action to remedy it.
No company should deploy a survey if they intend to do nothing, or very
little, in reaction to the findings.
Survey invites never reach customers
Spam filters are increasingly trapping email that it considers “spoofed”
or junk, so it is important to find ways around that to keep response rates
high.
Zarca’s Trusted Email Relay bypasses spam filters to allow your survey
invite to reach its destination untouched.
No memory of past initiatives
It should be of interest to companies to view how customer perceptions on
a specific issue changes over time.
Consider having a common section in your survey to explore a topic that was
surveyed on in the past.
This will help the company see if they are improving, staying the same, or
declining on that topic by viewing customer attitudes in a time-series
format.
