3 Simple Steps to Execute a Customer Survey Successfully

Recipients who had done business with a company may have filled it out, or they may have just ignored and unsubscribed. Those types of surveys are a thing of the past, whereas the future is all about field data collection apps and what they can do for you.

1. Define What You Want to Gain

While the email template as a platform may have become redundant, the content is not. Go back to basics when you’re trying to figure what you want to gain from your customer survey. You may have many questions about how you can improve your performance as a business, or how offers were received on an individual level. Regardless, defining a focused goal is essential if you’re going to gain any usable data using field reporting. Real-time information is very useful, but you need to make sure you know what questions you’ll be asking and where. This requires plenty of time and planning. Solid survey questions need to be crafted carefully with data gathering in mind beforehand for the survey to have any meaningful impact.

2. Take Your Customer Base Into Account

Traditional customer service surveys often fail to take into account the changing demographics of their customer base. Using field data collection software to gather information as customers are having their experience is much more in tune with the current technology-savvy generation of consumers. As Business 2 Community points out, making changes in real time as data is collected can be a useful tactic and a much more valuable use of collecting customer feedback. This is particularly true when you’re dealing with ever-evolving customer demographics.

3. Adapt Tried and True Practices to Mobile

One of the key aspects of any well thought out customer service survey, whether it’s an old-fashioned email campaign or mobile data collection solutions, is making the process of feedback as simple as possible for your customers, according to Tweak Your Biz. 

Therefore, it’s important to write your questions out beforehand with a team that understands the goal of the survey. This allows your field reps collecting data to approach customers armed with carefully crafted inquiries that capture truly useful data. The endgame of any successful survey should be information that you can then integrate into your business practices going forward.

Creating a successful customer service survey is all about fulfilling the basics of focused inquiry and data gathering goals with a well thought out plan, and then augmenting it with field data collection processes. The beauty of using today’s mobile technology is that you can capture customer information and experiences in real time. This is one of the biggest hurdles that businesses have had to address in the past, always attempting to grab the customer in the midst of a transaction or a recent experience to gauge how they felt about it. A combination of mobile data collection with a solid customer service survey is the pinnacle of capturing a true portrait of the customer experience with your business.