Posts published by Dayne Shuda

5 Smart Ways to Improve Your NPS Score

Survey Tips

Are you ready to supercharge your Net Promoter Score (NPS)?

As the game-changing survey, you’ll find that the NPS is the single best way to gauge your customers’ loyalty and find out how willing they are to talk positively about you to family and friends.

In this article, we look at five smart ways to improve your NPS score so you can make your customers happier and increase retention.

#1: Concentrate on Service

In this day and age, your customers expect incredible customer service. Make sure their experience is seamless and easy. Don’t waste their time and make sure your employees keep the customer at the forefront.

In addition, resolve any conflicts quickly.

#2: Engage Your Staff

Happy employees mean happy customers.

Treat your employees great, and you can be sure they’ll pass on the good service. An employee who is content at a job is more likely to share those good feelings and culture with your customers. (tweet this)

#3: Listen to Phone Calls

You can improve your NPS by listening to customer calls or watching employee/customer interactions at your place of business.

If an employee falls short, it’s time for some extra training.

#4: Provide Ongoing Training

Customer service training should go on all year long and not just once a year or at new hire on-boarding.

Create a culture of service by working on it on a daily basis.

#5: Say Thank You

You should, of course, say thank you in your NPS survey, but you also want to consider saying thank you after the results come in.

There are several options for thanking your customers for completing a survey. One way is to send a thank you email, but if you really want to impress, and you know your customer’s name, send them a hand-written note through the mail.

Final Thoughts

Surveys have their place for any business, especially when you want to know how your customers feel about your products and your service.

NPS surveys are important, too, as they give you a clear picture of how your customers feel about you. It helps you learn if you’re excelling or falling short. It also lets you know very specifically if you can count on your customers to be brand advocates, which is important to your overall marketing and growth strategy.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: Andy Beales on Unsplash

How to Know If You Have “Good Survey Questions”

Survey Tips

You’ve done your research. You’ve drafted your questions, and you think you’re ready to send your survey.

But, how do you know it’s good enough to elicit the kinds of responses you need?

While online survey tools make it easy to send surveys, you still need to do the legwork and create a survey that actually works. This requires careful planning.

Without it, you may not get the meaningful data you’re looking for.

To help you evaluate your survey, in this article, we look at how to know if you have “good survey questions.”

Take a look at the following and then look at your survey questions. If they meet these qualifications, you have good survey questions.

Have a Goal

Do you have a goal for your survey? It’s best practice to have a goal in mind before you start crafting your survey questions.

For example, ask yourself about the objective of your survey. What’s the most important thing you want to know? What else are you looking for?

Once you have your goal, you can craft questions to go with it.

Keep It Simple

We can almost promise you that your customers won’t answer long surveys (unless the reward is overly beneficial).

Because of this, you want to keep your survey as simple as possible. If your survey is simple, and short, you’re more likely to have a larger pool or respondents.

People are busy, and you want to provide them easy access to your survey. Make sure they can complete your survey in under 10 minutes. (tweet this)

If you want to ensure the best results, keep your survey well under five minutes. Show your respondents you care and respect their time, otherwise your abandonment rate will skyrocket.

Stay Away from Yes/No Questions

Otherwise known as a polar question, the yes/no question in most instances isn’t going to provide you much data.

With this question there are only two possible answers, and that is all you’re going to get.

You leave your respondents without a voice. They can’t tell you what they think, and they have no other choice by yes or no. It may be they are somewhere in between.

What’s more, this question is leading. If your respondent isn’t squarely in the yes or no corner, they are forced to pick one of those answers, creating bias.

You’re after real, authentic data, and the polar question isn’t the way to get it.

If you are really set on a closed-ended type of question like this, at least give your respondents multiple items to choose from. The multiple choice question is certainly a better option because you are giving them more choices.

In addition, you may also want to include a line for “other,” so they can add their own answer. After all, you may not have thought of all possible answers.

Use the Right Type of Question

When working with surveys, you’ll note there are many different types of questions.

In order to get the best data, you want to use the right type of question.

Qualitative questions are open-ended. Use these types of questions when you want a written answer.

Quantitative questions are closed-ended, and you offer options for respondents. These may include:

Check boxes
Drop down menus
Radio buttons
Rating scales
Ranking scales

Often, you’ll find that a mix of questions is ideal for your needs. You might even follow up with an open-ended question after a respondent answers a closed-ended question in a particular way.

Use Open-Ended Questions

This type of question can be very valuable because your respondents provide a comment. It can be one sentence or many and often gives you insight into how your survey respondents really feel about your business or your products.

The open-ended question allows you to really dig deep for data.

As we just mentioned, not all of your questions have to be open-ended nor should they be. Consider one or two open-ended questions so as not to overly tax your respondents.

Do be careful when wording this question. You want to ensure you aren’t leading respondents to a particular answer.

Ask One Thing in Each Question

This is a problem that derails many survey writers.

It happens when someone writes a question that actually includes more than one question. For example:

Do you like product x? What is your favorite thing about it? How is it beneficial?

Not only are you asking too many similar questions, but you’re confusing your respondents.

If it was open-ended, you might expect to only get one of your questions answered. If it was closed-ended, your respondents wouldn’t know what to answer, so your data will be skewed.

Each question should pose only one thing. Don’t make it hard for respondents to answer you accurately and precisely.

You might reword the above example like this: “What do you find most beneficial about product x?”

Don’t Use Leading Words

Great writers know that words can have very different meanings depending on their context.

Good survey writers are aware of the same nuances.

In order to get the most precise data from your survey, be very careful with your wording. Make sure your questions aren’t leading and that they say exactly what you mean.

Have others look over your questions to see if they interpret them differently than you meant them.

Avoid Double-Barreled Questions

Similar to the leading question, this one shows great bias.

For example, if you own a hotel, a double-barreled question might look like this: “Is our hotel your favorite place to stay?” Or, “What is the most economical hotel for you to stay at?”

Not only are these questions leading, but in the case of the last question, one person’s economical isn’t always the same as another.

Final Thoughts

Some sources attribute the following to Albert Einstein, “If I had an hour to solve a problem, and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask… for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”

As you craft your survey and look for good survey questions that produce the best data, consider this quote.

If you ask the right questions and in the right manner, you’re sure to get the data you’re looking for to meet your overall goals.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: rawpixel on Unsplash

Understanding Your Survey Results

Survey Tips

You’ve done your due diligence and created a simple, data-rich survey, and the results are pouring in.

Now what?

It’s time to review your survey responses. In this article, we look at understanding your survey results and how to move forward with them.

Display Your Results Visually

The human brain processes visual images 60,000 times faster than it does text.

So, take your data and put it into an image-based format. Think tables and graphs. This makes it easier not only for you, but for the rest of your team, to interpret the results.

Consider tables when looking at precise numbers or when you have just a few comparisons. Use graphs and other imagery when you have more to compare.

Ignore the Outliers

Once you have your survey data in a visually appealing format, you can concentrate on the high points. This means look at the biggest trends and for the initial discussion, ignore the outliers.

At first glance, you’re after the big picture of the data. For example, 15 respondents answered a question the same way, while two people didn’t. Save those outliers for a later discussion because they might even be mistakes.

You don’t want to miss the big picture because you focused on the smallest survey responses. (tweet this)

Use the Data Wisely

Let’s say you conducted a survey, and you wanted 100 responses, but you only got 10.

If your survey was about something as important as a major product change, you might want to send out a few more surveys a respectable time apart to be sure the data is correct.

If you do this, consider revising your survey and asking the question in a new way to elicit more responses.

Once you find your survey data correlates with one another, you can feel safe moving forward with your business change.

Final Thoughts

The best surveys are simple and specific with data that you can take action on. They begin with a well-crafted survey and end with a thorough examination of your survey results.

Finally, before you create your survey, write down its purpose along with what you think you’ll find. Then, you’ll have better results and something to compare them to.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: Helena Lopes on Unsplash

5 Unique Survey Questions

Survey Tips

Surveys are a terrific way to gather vital information for your business. You may have already started surveying your customers with this popular data-collection method.

You may have found that surveys can help you survey large groups of people in a cost-effective manner. Perhaps you’re getting ready to send another survey, and you’d like to send one that isn’t predictable or boring.

Asking unexpected, fun questions is a great way to encourage more survey responses. You might find that shaking things up a bit increases your response rates.

We put together this list of five unique survey questions so you an reduce your survey abandonment rates and encourage more respondents to not only start your survey but finish it.

#1: Picture Question – Choose One

The image choice question is fun for respondents, and it’s especially useful for your more visual customers.

This type of question is a simple, closed-ended question where your survey respondents can choose from one or more image answers.

You provide the images, and they are free to pick their favorite(s).

We like the image-based question because it’s highly interactive for your survey respondents and encourages engagement. This is especially helpful if your customers are suffering from survey fatigue.

Because your customers are hit every day with surveys, the interactive image-based question can energize your customers and make them want to complete your survey. This can reduce your survey abandonment rate and increase your response rate.

The picture question can help you break through the survey clutter and show your customers their opinions matter.

#2: The Constant Sum Question

With this distinctive survey question, you allow your respondents to express how valuable or important something is to them.

A constant sum survey question helps you collect a ratio of data showing it in comparison to other data.

For example, you might offer respondents a sliding scale that they can move themselves. You could ask them to show how likely they are to do a series of things.

Let’s say you own a clothing store, and you want to know how likely your customers are to spend money on individual items. They can move the slider showing how they spend their money. You might ask them to slide the scale on the following:

Pants
Shirts
Undergarments
Pajamas
Jewelry
Hats and Belts
Shoes

You can use this question when you are relatively sure your customers will make a purchase from you, but you want to know on what.

#3: Upload a File

There are times when you may really want to engage your survey respondents and asking them to upload a file on their cellphone is one way to do this.

Perhaps you’re looking for photos, documents or other information. If so, you can add an upload question to your survey.

Using this question allows your respondents to not only provide you a survey response but upload a file as well. It allows you to collect data that might not be available to you through standard survey questions.

While your customers will find this question fairly easy to deal with, you want to make sure to restrict the type of file your respondents can upload. For example, if you’re looking for an image, you don’t want them to upload a spreadsheet.

Be sure to provide hints and tips for users who may not be well-versed in mobile uploads.

#4: Reword the Question

Another way to make your surveys more unique is to get your creative juices working. Find fun ways to rewrite your standards survey questions so they inspire your respondents and elicit higher response rates.

Consider this survey question example:

How likely are you to purchase this product again?

Heck yeah!
Stuck in the middle.
Wishy washy.
No way.

By using clever choices, you give your customers a smile and create a survey they might actually want to complete.

Note, though, that this doesn’t work for all survey questions, and you should remain serious where it’s called for and if your industry wouldn’t work well with a bit of creativity.

Know your audience and use your best judgement.

#5: Throw in Some Humor

Yes, surveys are important for your data collection, and you don’t want to venture too far away from getting your results, but in the right circumstances you can consider using a little humor.

For example, if you have a long survey of 10 questions, and you want to add a bit of levity to the seriousness of it, you might through in a humorous question in the middle.

Do make sure the question still gathers data but ask it in a unique way. Perhaps halfway through your long survey, you might ask customers, “Are you tired yet?”

For the answers, make it apply to your business:

Choice #1: Yes! I’m as tired as I was walking from one end of your store to the other to find what I needed.
Choice #2: Of course not, you would never tire me.

From this question/answer, you add some humor, but you’re still able to take away vital data. If they chose choice #1, you might rethink your store layout for ease of use.

Bottom line have fun with your wording but do make sure you’re still getting valuable data about your customers’ experience with you. (tweet this)

Final Thoughts

Hilary Swank, a well-known actress, said, “If I’m going to do something different, and if I want it to meet someone’s needs, I really need to go the distance.”

If you take this quote to heart, you can see how important it is to first, survey your customers so you ensure you’re meeting their needs. Second, you want to create a survey that is engaging enough your customers will want to take it.

One way to do this is to throw in some unique survey questions to increase your response rate and engage your best customers.

Now that you have some survey questions to help you step out of your response, you’re well on your way to getting responses while making your customers feel that you went the extra mile to make sure their survey experience was one of a kind.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash

How to Use Survey Webhooks to Meet Your Business Goals

Survey Tips

You want to meet your business goals, and the survey is a terrific way to gauge whether or not your products and services are meeting the needs of your customers.

Along with your survey is another tool called the webhook that can help further your goals.

In this article, we look at how to use survey webhooks to meet your business goals. First, let’s define the webhook.

What is a Webhook?

A webhook makes it so you can receive notifications when something happens inside of your SurveyTown account.

For example, you might get a notification that a customer completed a survey. This then allows you to do something with your data, perhaps updating your systems as well.

Webhooks can be incoming or outgoing. For incoming, you’d be notified when something happens. For outbound webhooks, the system might be sending notifications to other apps about specific events.

Once you dive in, you’ll find that webhooks are incredibly powerful. They are an effectual way to send data between two systems. Webhooks allow you to push data from one system to another.

Finally, think of webhooks as you would a relay race. When one “runner” is triggered, it starts another sequence of events. In the case of webhooks, data can pass between platforms.

What Can You Use Webhooks For?

With webhooks, you increase your businesses ability to connect with customers. Here are a few ways webhooks can help:

By using webhooks you know when a specified event took place. For example, a survey was completed.

Webhooks help you let another software platform know the event took place. This is that outbound webhook.
You can ensure that your data is synced across your platforms when you use a webhook.
For businesses that utilize webhooks, they find they can set off a workflow in another platform.

Webhooks Help with Customer Service

Let’s say your customer contacted you through customer service. You might want to send them a survey to see how well they liked or disliked their experience.

This is where the webhook comes in. It can trigger a customer satisfaction survey after a specific event. You’ll find this action serves to improve your business while helping you better train your staff.

The webhook allows you to better understand your customers experience and pinpoint any areas where you might improve.

In addition, you can solve problems with unhappy customers. For example, a negative survey response might trigger you to open a support case with your customer.

By following up, you show your customers you value their feedback, and you have an opportunity to change negative feelings into positive ones.

Webhooks Help You Target Customers

You’ll find that webhooks also let you analyze your customers interactions with your business.

For example, when a customer first uses your app, first makes an order or first talks with your customer service staff, you can trigger a survey.

By triggering surveys for specific segments of your customer base, you get more actionable data to help drive your business.

As another example, let’s say you want to introduce a new product. You might use a webhook to set up a survey for customers who bought something similar. The webhook allows you to survey those customers to see how likely they’d be to purchase the new product.

Final Thoughts

As you get ready to plan your webhooks, map out your customer’s journey. Decide where the best place is for the webhook.

Do consider survey fatigue and make sure you aren’t sending the same customers repetitive surveys. The last thing you want to do is bombard your valued customers’ inboxes.

Use webhooks thoughtfully and with purpose, and you’ll find you’re not only meeting your customers’ goals and needs but your own in the process. (tweet this)

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: Efe Kurnaz on Unsplash

How To Filter Survey Reports

Survey Tips

When you conduct a survey, you may want to look at your survey from several different angles. Filtering your results can help you do this.

In this article, we look at how to filter survey reports into your report so you can segment your respondents according to how they answered your questions.

Slice and Dice the Data

Using filters in SurveyTown, you can get multiple views of your data by going to the Reporting Tab and using “Filter Results.”

This allows you to compare results based on different groups of respondents. By clicking on “Filter Results,” you can view various data. Simply go step-by-step and choose various data points to filter your responses.

Not only can you filter data by responses, but you can filter it by age, demographic, gender, ratings and more. You will have had to ask for this information in your survey, though, to be able to filter it.

It’s often helpful to explore the similarities and the differences between subgroups in your audience. This helps you identify your strengths, weaknesses and even opportunities. (tweet this) For example, you may find audience members of a certain age rated you five stars when you only expected three of this particular group.

Finally, here are a few suggestions for filtering your survey results. You can filter by:

Survey status
Response date
Question Answers
Age and/or Demographics
Survey Link – where they accessed your survey

Final Thoughts

You’ll find filtering your survey results beneficial for several reasons.

First, it provides you with more in-depth data and reports on how certain parts of your target populations answered specific questions. Second, filtering your results let you segment your respondents for further communication.

For example, you might filter all the people who answered question number three negatively and send them a follow-up email to try and make things right. Or, if you asked a question pertaining to a potential new product, you could filter out the responses that indicated they’d like to learn more.

Ready to get started filtering your survey results? Head on over to SurveyTown.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

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How To Survey Your Customers “Where They Are”

Survey Tips

Many of our customers ask us, “How do I get more responses from my surveys?”

One of our suggestions is to make it as easy as possible for respondents to access and complete your survey.

To help you get more responses, we look at how to survey your customers “where they are.”

First, let’s look at why it’s important to stay in touch with your current customers and their satisfaction levels.

Customer Retention is Vital

In today’s busy, ultra-digital world, it costs at least five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain current ones. For some businesses, the cost of losing a customer amounts to several hundred dollars.

While that doesn’t sound like a lot for one customer, imagine the cost for every five customers you lose – well over $1000.

This is where the customer survey comes in. It allows you to measure customer satisfaction, fix problems in your business, and ultimately retain more customers.

Now let’s look at how to survey your customers where they are by integrating surveys into your daily business activities.

Use Surveys During the Sales Process

We think this is one of the most effective ways to survey your customers and find out more about their interactions with your business.

By integrating customer satisfaction surveys into your sales process, you meet customers right where they are. You can send your survey post-purchase through your email list, or you can even link it from your checkout pages. (tweet this)

It’s advantageous to survey your customers early in their sales cycle during the sales process because it’s fresh in their minds. It also shows your customers that you truly care about customer service.

Early surveys tell your customers their satisfaction is important to you. It pays to let your customers know you are willing to go above and beyond to handle any issues or problems.

Send Surveys Multiple Ways

You know your business best, so you probably know the best avenue for sending surveys. If you don’t know, it’s time to learn where your customers spend their time.

Is it on email, in your app or on their phones? The good news is that you can survey them in any of those places.

Email provides a chance for highly qualitative feedback. Why? This is because the people who respond to email surveys usually care because they are invested in your brand.

These folks are likely to take your survey one step further and even provide answers to your open-ended questions.

Using surveys through your website or mobile app often provide higher response rates, although your responses might not be of the caliber of your email ones.

Customers will usually answer your questions, though, and are less likely to opt out.

When you send surveys out through SMS (text messaging), you’ll find these are an effective and immediate way to interact with your customers.

Text messages beg for a response, and you’ll find your customers more eager to answer short, specific surveys.

Bottom line – it’s not about which method is better. It’s about which channels are the best for your customer base. Where are your customers? Know the answer to this question and meet them where they are.

Review Responses Regularly

We often see businesses who get excited to send surveys, spend a great deal of time crafting questions and putting the survey together, only to shelve their results for “another day.”

Best practice says you should review your customer surveys on a schedule and on an ongoing basis. For example, set aside 30 minutes to review survey data and results at your monthly staff meetings.

By dedicating yourself and your entire team to reviewing customer surveys on a regular business, you create a customer-service oriented culture at your business.

It helps hold everyone accountable, and it gets your team onboard with improving customer service at your business.

In addition, by reviewing survey data at staff meetings, you might find that your team can identify specific customers and elaborate on why they responded the way they did.

For example, if a customer gave you bad rating, or if they left comments, you can discuss this with your team to learn more about any problems and how you can keep them from happening in the future.

You can also use this information to brainstorm on ways to solve problems, and oftentimes respond to customers to try to repair any damage.

Do be careful when sharing survey results with your staff to not make them uncomfortable with the results. Your survey review sessions shouldn’t be “blame games.”

Stay open to listening to your staff members while coaching them to provide better customer service.

Review Surveys with Customers

For businesses who have relationships with their customers and provide a long-term service or product, it can be helpful to meet with them at least once a year to discuss survey results.

This provides you the ability to meet with your customers in person to discuss their survey responses and dig deeper into any issues that may exist.

Go through their answers to learn more and improve your process. You might find that this review process coupled with the initial survey smooths ruffled feathers and may prevent customer loss.

Final Thoughts

You already know that listening to your customers and meeting their needs is key to your success as a business.

Customer surveys are a terrific way to learn more about how your customers feel about you, so you can use the data to improve your company.

But, perhaps you are struggling with how, where and when to survey your customers.

The best way to solve that problem is to survey them where they are. This might be a pop-up survey on your website at the right time in the customer journey, it might be a post-purchase email or a link on the checkout page. Perhaps it’s a text with a link included.

With more options than ever before, you can meet your customers needs and your own by surveying them where they are.

Increasing your response rate gives you a clearer picture for managing and improving your customer service while at the same time improving retention and raising profit levels.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

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Should You Reward Customers For Taking Surveys?

Survey Tips

There’s a fine balance between giving rewards for taking surveys and not giving them at all. The most important thing to consider is your results.

You don’t want to skew your results by offering rewards, and you certainly want to avoid tainted data as much as possible.

So, this begs this question, “Should you reward customers for taking surveys?”

First, let’s look at the distinction between reward and incentive.

Rewards vs. Incentives

An incentive is often given to respondents for completing a survey. A reward may be seen as a thank-you for finishing a survey.

This distinction may be important to consider when offering them to respondents. For example, big survey companies offer monetary incentives to random survey takers, and the results have a higher probability of being skewed.

A reward may be offered by your company to your specific customers for taking your survey, and it may be less skewed than the incentive.

So, one can deduce that it may not be the value of the incentive or reward that increases the responses, but it’s the way it’s offered that makes a difference to your respondents.

How to Decide

As you ponder the question of whether or not you should offer a reward, you want to consider the following questions:

Who is your target? Is it existing customers or a specific demographic? Will these people have something important to offer? If so, you might consider offering a little boost for taking your survey. Yet, if you’re sending out a blanket survey, an incentive isn’t a great idea.
What’s your relationship with your respondents? If you’re sending it to customers after they make a purchase, a thank you reward in the form of a coupon may be a good idea. On the other hand, you might not want to offer an incentive for a survey that isn’t specifically targeted.
Are people interested in my business? If so, a reward is a bonus. If they aren’t, then the reward will attract the wrong respondents.
How long is your survey? Short surveys don’t need a reward. A longer survey certainly merits one because you want to show respondents you value and appreciate the time it takes to fill out your survey.

When to Offer the Incentive

Should you offer it before the survey or after?

To increase your response rate, you can offer it before the survey. But, beware that this may cost more because you provide the incentive before anyone even takes your survey.

Your audience may take the incentive and leave your survey unfinished.

Conversely, offering the promise of the reward for taking your survey is a much better option because it’s a true reward provided after the work of taking the survey.

Final Thoughts

Offering rewards for taking your surveys may make respondents more likely to complete your survey, but you want to be careful with your offer.

For example, you don’t want to attract the wrong type of respondent. Consider the boat dealership that attracts online shoppers with the wrong type of incentive or reward.

The best way to avoid problems is to know who you’re sending your survey to. The reward should match the audience. (tweet this)

This way you won’t end up with people who misrepresent themselves. These folks may not know or care about your services or products. They simply want a reward.

Offering survey rewards should be well thought out. You want to consider the survey, your audience, and the results you’re after before deciding to offer a reward.

Finally, consider the type of reward you offer. It should fit the survey and the audience. These may be monetary, in the form of a coupon, or something that benefits a third-party like a charity.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: rawpixel.com on Unsplash