survey respondents

How to Successfully Incorporate Remote Employees into Your Startup

The Importance Of Employee Reward And Recognition

Survey Tips

You know the importance of sending surveys to your customers. Most likely you do this because you are dedicated to improving your customer service.

Yet, the only way your business will shine is if customer service is part of the very fabric of your company. For this to happen, it must start with you, and your employees must buy in. (tweet this)

In other words, you can do all the advertising in the world, send surveys on a regular basis, and if your team isn’t on board, things will be tough.

One way to encourage your staff to provide the best service is to incentivize your managers and your team for good reviews. Let’s look at the importance of employee reward and recognition.

Reward Employees Named in Surveys

Let’s say a survey respondent names one of your employees positively in a survey. Consider rewarding your team member for the mention.

For example, you might give them a gift certificate, Friday afternoon off, or a small bonus.

Set Goals

If your first survey garnered less than perfect results, set a goal for your staff.

For example, if you send a Net Promoter Score survey, and it comes back on the low-end, set goals for each quarter. Your goal might be to raise your score by one-two points each quarter.

Then, if your team meets the first quarter goal, they get a reward. If they meet the second quarter goal, they get another, and the same for quarters three and four.

If all four goals were met, consider a bigger reward and recognition at the end of the year.

Get creative. Ask your employees what might motivate them, and then set the rewards in motion.

Final Thoughts

Providing the best customer experience possible is what sets businesses apart in the 21st century, and surveys help you uncover valuable data to do this.

Get your employees on board by rewarding and recognizing them for your positive surveys.

Because the happiness of your customers stems directly from the contentment of your employees, you’ll find that actively engaging them in the process helps drive business and your overall growth.

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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10 Proven Methods You Can Use to Get Customers to Answer Your Survey

7 Proven Methods You Can Use to Get Customers to Answer Your Survey

Survey Tips

You want to grow your business and provide the best experience to your customers. You know that happy customers mean repeat business and new customer acquisition as well.

To accomplish your business goals, you want to use an important marketing tool – the customer survey. Securing customer feedback is crucial to growing your business.

Smart businesses know that sending surveys helps you gain valuable information to propel your business forward. Plus, surveys are easy and affordable to create. (tweet this)

You’ll find there are a few tricks to sending surveys that get responses. In this article, we look at seven proven methods you can use to get customers to answer your survey.

#1: Make Customers Feel Special

Since you want people to complete your survey, you have to make them feel special. How do you do this?

You want to show you genuinely appreciate your customers’ participation in your survey.

There are various types of messaging to use in your survey that accomplish this, and here are two suggestions:

  • Use the subject line: “We want to know what you think.” This immediately sets the tone and lets your customers know that you really want to know their opinion on your products, services, or customer support. You might then elaborate a bit and tell your customers how their feedback will impact them and your business.
  • Or, use this subject line: “Please take a short five minutes to complete this important survey.” With this sentence, you tell your customers up front how long your survey is going to take them. Five minutes is a good length because most people have that amount of time to spare. Be sure that you have had sample subjects take your survey, though. You don’t want to promise five minutes when it is really 10. Don’t forget to thank them as well. Always remember that shorter surveys are better.

#2: Provide an Incentive

You can try the above tactics, but if they aren’t working for you, try something different in your next survey.

Offer your customers an incentive to raise your survey completion rate. Here are a few examples:

  • Offer a discount at the end of the survey. For example, you might provide a 15% off coupon for their next shopping trip.
  • Give your customers a gift certificate at the end of the survey – $10-15 is a nice range.
  • You can also offer a drawing as an incentive. For example, “Enter our survey and be entered into a drawing for a $100 gift card.”

Whatever incentive you offer, make sure you know your target audience. It should appeal to a broad range of your respondents.

#3: Use Multiple Channels

Sometimes businesses make the mistake of only sending surveys through one channel.

For example, if you post a link to your survey on Facebook, you won’t necessarily reach all of your customers. Some of them might not even use the social media platform.

The easiest, and usually the best way, to send surveys is through your survey provider or in other instances, your email marketing service provider.

If you have your customers’ email addresses, this is the most reliable way to get your surveys in front of your customers.

Next, you might consider posting your survey through your social media channels and putting it on a landing page on your website. You can also send survey links through SMS.

How does all of this help? It ensures that your customers will see your survey. If they ignore the first notice, but they see a link to the survey three more times, they might just click and complete it.

#4: Keep Your Survey Short

How long is too long?

Research shows that survey length is one of the most important thing respondents consider when completing your survey and accounts for many drop-outs.

As a rule of thumb, keep your surveys under 10 questions. For most surveys one-three is the ideal amount.

The last thing you want is your survey drop-out rate to increase because your survey is too long. Show your customers you appreciate their time by keeping your survey short.

It should only include the questions that you are actually going to act on in the near future.

#5: Be Timely

You want to send your customers their survey the same day they made their purchase or used their services.

It’s best if the experience is fresh in their mind because they’ll be more likely to complete your survey. If they can’t remember their experience, they might provide you with inaccurate feedback.

#6: Know the Goal of Your Survey

Before you even begin putting your survey together, you want to make sure you know the goal.

Perhaps your goal is to find out if your customers would recommend you business. Your go-to survey is the Net Promoter Score survey.

Or, your goal might be to find out how your customer liked the product they purchased. This is a short survey with detailed questions.

Next, you want to tell your customers up front what you’re going to do with the information. And, after the survey, when you’ve formulated your plan, email your customers and let them know the actions you’re going to take.

This helps them feel appreciated once again.

#7: Personalize Your Survey Email

Your customers expect you to know who they are.

According to a survey, when you send emails with personalized subject lines, your customers are 26% more likely to open them.

When survey respondents see their name in print on their screen, there is a subtle nod that encourages them to complete your survey. The human touch works when it comes to increasing survey response rates.

Consider using their name in not only the email subject line but the body of the email as well.

Final Thoughts

Now that you know the seven proven methods you can use to get customers to answer your survey, you’re ready to create your first survey.

You are also well on your way to understanding your customers’ needs and wants better so you can refine your products and improve your customer service.

By taking the time needed to create the best survey possible, you have a better shot at more responses which is just what you need to improve your business.

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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What to do with Negative Feedback - Proven Steps to Improve

What to do with Negative Feedback – 5 Proven Steps to Improve It

General

Sending out surveys always brings results, some positive and some negative.

While you may find yourself cringing as the negative results pile in, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. You of course appreciate the positive comments because they are reassuring, but the negative survey results are a growth opportunity.

Most business leaders know that negative feedback doesn’t have to spell disaster, and they instead turn it into a positive experience. (tweet this)

In this article, we look at what to do with negative feedback and five proven steps to improve it.

#1: Don’t Let Customers Down

Once your customers have taken the time to complete your survey, you don’t want to let them all down. Show your customers you value their time and their feedback by providing a response.

If you don’t, you show customers their input is useless, and they’ll likely never complete another survey for you again.

What happens after your customers send their survey feedback is the most important part of your survey

#2: Review Your Survey Responses

Gather your team and make sure everyone has read and re-read the customer feedback.

Delegate someone to respond to the negative feedback and someone to respond to the positive feedback.

Discuss together how your staff should handle their responses, especially to the negative feedback.

For starters, they should respond immediately. This isn’t something you want to fester. After all, the last thing you want are negative reviews all over Google and Facebook.

You can improve the customer’s opinion of you by learning more about what they’re upset about, remaining empathetic and showing you care. This is all regardless of whether you think the customer is right or not.

#3: Take Action

As you prepare to take action, it can be helpful to have a template for your employees to follow. Set guidelines and parameters so your staff is well-versed on just what to say.

They should always customize the response, though, so the template is really just an initial guide.

You may find that you can improve your negative feedback with the right response. Customers may even end up sticking with your company because of the way you handled their negative feedback.

Your follow-up is key to keeping the customer and turning them into one of your most loyal ones.

Train your staff to create a response that renames their concern, acknowledges it, and then lets them know how you can remedy it. Always let them know how much you value their input and how sorry you are for the problem.

#4: Review Responses

The next step is setting aside a time to meet with your staff to discuss your negative feedback.

This is so important because it’s the only way you’ll improve your business and your service and avoid negative feedback in the future.

#5: Analyze Your Data

Finally, as you review responses and make a plan for turning things around, you want to really analyze your data.

This means looking where the negative feedback came from. Is it just one department? Is it a particular area of the city or country?

By analyzing the data, you’ll find areas where you might provide more training. Or, you might learn you need to add a staff person because the wait time is too long. You also might find problems with products.

Analyzing your data provides a wealth of information and lets you know where to act.

Final Thoughts

When businesses respond promptly to negative feedback, they benefit. If you ignore, you’re likely to suffer in the form of bad reviews all over the internet.

Communicate with your customers. Try to fix the problem, and once you have, reach back out to those same customers and let them know what you’re doing to fix it.

This means contacting them more than once and showing them that not only did their feedback matter, but you took steps to make sure it didn’t happen again. Thank them one more time and let them know their role in affecting change.

Providing good customer service is vital to the success of any business. So, when you get negative feedback, you want to do everything in your power to improve it.

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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Decoding the Customer Effort Score (CES)

Decoding the Customer Effort Score (CES)

Survey Tips

Have you heard people toss the term CES around the conference room? Struggling to understand just what it means?

In this article, we are decoding the customer effort score (CES) so you understand how it can help your business.

What is the Customer Effort Score?

In the simplest terms, the customer effort score measures your customers’ perception of how easy or hard your company made it for them to complete their chosen action. (tweet this)

This could be anything really. For example, how easy or hard was it for:

  • A customer to buy something from your website or in your store.
  • Someone to resolve an issue with your staff.
  • A customer to register a product.
  • Your website visitors to navigate your website.
  • A person to leave you a review.

So, you can see that while the CES most often involves your service and support staff, it doesn’t always.

You can use the CES metric to evaluate how easy it is for your customers to deal with your business in a myriad of ways. One of the most common uses it to learn how easy it was for your customers to find a resolution to their problem with your service team.

In the 21st century and age of social media and review sites all over the internet, you know your customers want to do business with companies that are easy to work with. And, all too often, if they had a bad experience, they’ll spread it all over the internet.

You don’t want this to happen. It’s imperative that your customers are happy with their solutions and that they feel their issues were handled promptly and simply.

The CES allows you to determine if this is actually true.

When Should You Use the Customer Effort Score?

Best practice is to use the CES right after a customer has had an interaction with your business.

For example, you would send the survey after a customer purchased a product or service or had an interaction with your customer service department.

Your goal is to get real-time feedback. If you let too many days or weeks go between the interaction and the survey, you are likely to lose valuable data.

How to Measure Customer Effort Score

As we mentioned, you want to send out your CES survey shortly after any particular interaction.

The survey includes only one statement.

A sample question may look like this: “Your company (X) made it easy for me to handle my issue (buy a product, purchase a service, talk to support, use your website, figure out how to use a product).

The possible answers would be: strongly agree, agree, somewhat agree, neutral, somewhat disagree, disagree, or strongly disagree.

You might also ask the question like this: “How easy was it to solve your problem with (name of your business) today? The answer choices might be: very difficult, difficult, neither, easy, or very easy.

It’s also possible to send out your one question CES survey with just Yes/No as the possible answers.

Some businesses even include the option of allowing their customers to leave a comment. This can often provide a better look at what happened to that particular customer.

You’ll find many successful businesses measure CES right alongside the Net Promoter Score.

Why Use the CES

If you want to instill customer loyalty in the people who shop with you and retain them in the future, you want to explore the customer effort score.

The CES tells you in the most basic terms whether or not you are providing the best customer experience. If you are, great. If you aren’t, you know it’s time to improve if you want to better the customer experience.

When you reduce customer effort in all aspects of your business, but especially when it comes to service, you build customer loyalty.

Bottom line – you differentiate your business from the competition when you help your customers by providing them a quick and easy way to purchase from you, use your products or services, and work with your service staff.

Why Customer Effort Matters

You’ve been there before. You ordered something from a business, it didn’t work, and you called customer service. Then, you spoke with the first tier, second tier, and third tier, and yet you still don’t have a resolution.

That means you expended way too much customer effort. You probably won’t return to that business again, and you certainly won’t recommend them to others, and you may even broadcast your bad feelings about them.

Now, you don’t want that to happen to your own business, and that’s why your customers’ effort actually matters.

By reducing customer effort, this is what you get:

  • People who will recommend you to others in the form of positive word of mouth. This is where your Net Promoter Score can come in.
  • Customer retention increases and your customers purchase from you again.
  • Your costs decline because you solve customers’ issues quickly instead of spending additional money on labor costs.
  • Employee retention also rises because they are happy to provide a better customer experience, so they incur less stress and frustration.

How CES Helps You Improve Your Team

If you have staff members or customer service agents who above normal CES results in negative territory, you can recognize that they either need additional training or a new job.

Knowing your CES score can help you identify where you can help your team grow which ultimately makes your company stronger.

Do be cognizant though of your service staff who regularly handles the most difficult and complex cases. Naturally, their CES score may be less than the agents that handle the easier issues.

Final Thoughts

Measuring the customer effort score ultimately helps you grow your business. Combine it with your Net Promoter Score, and you’re well on your way to providing the best customer service.

Today’s customers demand a good shopping experience, and they’ll shop elsewhere if they don’t find it with you.

Effortless customer service will improve your bottom line. Make a concerted effort to eliminate hurdles and hassle for your customers, and they’ll soon be shouting your praises.

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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5 Reasons to Integrate Survey Results into Your CRM

5 Reasons to Integrate Survey Results into Your CRM

Survey Tips

A CRM (customer relationship management) platform is a vital centerpiece to your business.

Why? In our digital age, the business that builds relationships is the one that succeeds. The best way for you to set yourself apart from the competition is by using your CRM to interact with your customers.

And, when it comes to meeting the needs of your customers and providing the best products and services, you have to know what they want. One way to learn about their needs is through surveys.

So, instead of leaving your survey results out there on their own, you can send the information to your CRM.

In this article, we look at five reasons to integrate survey results into your CRM. When you do this, you can add this info to your CRM to enhance the service you provide your customers.

First, let’s look at customer feedback.

Why Feedback is Important

Before we get into the importance of integration, we want to discuss why surveys are so important to the customer service experience you provide your customers.

Feedback is vital to understanding the desires of your customers and to learn how they feel about you. It’s nearly impossible to improve your customer experience if you don’t ask people what they think.

Asking for input means you can take action quickly.

Because feedback is so important to your success, it doesn’t help you to keep it outside of your CRM. Enhancing the customer experience means seeing the big picture, and that’s best done through integration.

Now let’s discuss why you should integrate your survey results into your CRM.

#1: You Get Immediate Feedback

Integrating your survey into your CRM software gives you more power to convert leads into customers.

For example, if someone contacts you through your website, you can set up an automatic survey to learn more about them. Once you get this feedback, you can qualify the lead based on their survey responses.

#2: You Get to Know Your Customers

Let’s say you use a survey platform like Survey Town, and you have a CRM. If you integrate them, you have access to all of your customers’ information in one place.

For example, you may have a website lead, Bob Smith. You have the info he requested on your contact form. He may have even made a purchase from you, and that information is in your CRM.

You sent out a survey last week, and Bob Smith completed it. Because you have an integrated system, you can see his data in your CRM and use it with the other data to reach out to him and provide him with just what he’s looking for.

Or, conversely, if he hasn’t made a purchase yet, you can send him a survey to learn more about his needs.

#3: Provide Better Customer Service

Your customer just purchased several items from you. Then, you wait about two weeks, and you send them a survey to get their feedback on your products/services.

The survey responses land in your CRM, and you have all the information you need to reach out. This is especially helpful if the comments are negative.

By having this leverage, you may keep bad reviews off social media and Google because you can respond faster.

An integrated system lets you respond to negative experiences and provide immediate solutions which is a win-win for everyone.

#4: You Reach Qualified People

You can use your CRM data to conduct better surveys. For example, if you send a survey on its own, you may not have a way to tie it to a person. But, if you integrate your CRM, you have a better chance of reaching qualified people who give you great feedback.

Customer feedback surveys and customer relationship management systems are uniquely intertwined.

They pack a powerful one-two punch when it comes to building customer relationships and improving their satisfaction.

#5: You Get Your Staff Involved

Another benefit to integrating your survey results and your CRM is the help it provides your employees.

This integration gives your team members the ability to handle leads in a more informed way which in turn helps them convert more of these leads into paying customers.

If closing sales is your goal, integrating your survey results into your CRM is a must-do.

Improve Your Systems

We’ve looked at some ways this integration helps with your customers, but let’s also look at how it helps your business.

When you tie the two together, you simplify your processes. Everything lands in one place, and you aren’t spending time importing lists or manually sending out survey emails. Your integrated feedback and CRM solution does all of this for you.

When you can see your survey results along with the purchases and contacts each customer has had with your business, you have more insight into what works and what doesn’t. (tweet this)

This also helps your sales team and your customer service team because all of the info is in one place.

To Conclude

Marketing in today’s digital climate is all about the customer. You want to get them the right information at the right time, and you want to make sure you’re meeting their needs.

To do this, you may already be sending surveys which is terrific. Increase the power of your surveys by integrating them with your customer relationship management system.

By integrating, you’re also streamlining your systems. This makes your data work harder and allows you to build strong customer relationships.

Combining your survey feedback and your CRM helps you personalize your customer messaging and your marketing targeting.

You can send custom surveys that are tailored to happy as well as unhappy customers, again enhancing the relationship.

Bottom line – your goal is connecting your target audience with your products and services. To do this you not only have to know what they want, but you have to build a relationship.

Integrating your survey results into your CRM helps you connect everything together so you can grow a strong business.

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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What is an NPS Score, and Why is it Important

What is a NPS Score, and Why is it Important?

Survey Tips

For businesses who like to know what their customers think about their company, the NPS Score is an important tool.

But, you may ask, “What is a NPS Score, and why is it important?”

In this article, we look at the NPS Score survey and how it can benefit your business.

What is the NPS Score?

NPS stands for Net Promoter Score. It measures customer satisfaction.

This score comes from the Net Promoter Survey, and it’s a really simple, one question survey.

All you do is ask your customers this question: “How likely are you on a scale of 0-10 to recommend our (name of business/products/services) to your friends, family, or colleagues?”

This is what your answers mean:

  • Those who choose between 0-6 on the scale are called detractors.
  • People who answer with a 7 or 8 are neutral or passive to your business.
  • Respondents who choose a 9 or a 10 are your promoters.

To get your NPS Score, you subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters, and you have your answer. You completely ignore those who answer with a seven or eight.

The higher your score, the better you did.

Why is it Important?

Overall, the Net Promoter Score is important to your business because it provides a big-picture look at your customer loyalty. (tweet this)

You can see how this separates you from the competition, and it helps you see where you can improve.

The NPS Score also shows you how specific departments in your company are doing so everyone is getting equally high scores.

Plus, if you use the NPS Score, and you use it as a key indicator of how well your company is doing, you’ll see it helps drive your business growth as you work to improve your score.

For example, if your first score is under eight, and you make a plan for improvement, you can resend the survey six months later and see if your score grows.

The NPS Score Works

We like the NPS for many reasons, one of which is that you can gauge company success by this score.

Those people rated as promoters (score of nine or ten) are much more likely to be repeat customers. You are in essence closing the funnel because you are locking in future business.

So, by aiming for a promoter rating, you are helping ensure your success.

In addition, we like the score because it lets you know if you can count on word of mouth.

Hands down, word of mouth referrals are the most important piece of your marketing strategy. Word of mouth is better than any marketing strategy you can come up with.

In our hyper-digital age, people want to know what others think. They even trust the word of strangers. So, the more promoters you have promoting your business, the better.

Because you value the NPS Score, you can work hard for your nine or ten scores, and if you do, you’ll know that the referral is right around the corner.

Best practices are to track your NPS Score on a regular basis, compare the results over time, strategize for improvement and continue to evaluate the data.

Final Thoughts

The business environment is increasingly crowded, and it’s more important than ever before to not only get new customers but retain your current ones.

The best way to increase your business is to keep your customer base so happy that they’ll share how much they like you with friends and family.

The Net Promoter Score is the best gauge of customer satisfaction and one you can use to determine how content your customers are with your products and services.

Bottom line – the NPS helps you understand if your customers would recommend you to others. If your score is under eight, you’ve got some evaluating to do.

A low score means you need to have frank discussions about your products, customer service, and overall processes. Your goal is to get your score to nine or ten.

If your score is already a nine or ten, you still want to have a strategy session to make sure you carry on and provide for your customers, so they continue to sing your praises.

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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5 Smart Ways to Improve Your NPS Score

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.

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