Assume you’re filling a glass with a hole in the bottom. Would you keep pouring or plug the hole first? It’s similar to customers.
Your customer base is like a water glass, and every lost customer is a leak in the glass. Keep filling it with new customers all you want, but if you don’t plug the leaks, you’ll never achieve a full glass. So, just as you’d patch the hole to keep water from escaping, you need to implement strategies to hold on to your customers and ensure they remain satisfied and loyal.
And to improve customer feedback and retention for your business, you must use surveys. Surveys are an incredibly powerful tool that can help you collect data about your customers’ needs, wants, and satisfaction levels.
However, creating an effective survey is not always easy. You need to consider several things, such as the survey length, the questions you ask, and the survey format.
In this article, we will share with you 10 effective ways to use surveys for customer feedback and retention. By following these tips, you can design surveys that are more likely to generate useful data that you can use to improve your business.
Customers are valuable assets for the success of any company. They will decide whether you grow or fall. However, a company’s ideal customers aren’t the ones who purchase products once but those who return to you repeatedly.
And as a business owner, you must ensure that your customers return to you. Customer retention is important for increasing loyal customers. It’s because existing loyal customer tends to buy more frequently and spend more overall than new one. Further, it will help you to increase portability.
A recent study found that retaining existing customers can increase profitability by 25% to 95%. It is huge. Moreover, loyal superfans not only drive sales and revenue but also help you grow your business through word-of-mouth marketing.
Due to your loyal customers that sing your praises and act as positive references, you do not need to spend much money on bulk SMS marketing, influencer marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, etc.
Additionally, when your customers feel heard, and their feedback is valued, they feel emotionally connected to your product. To determine the level of customer satisfaction, businesses use customer feedback.
If we never ask our customers for feedback, we won’t know what drives their satisfaction. And we cannot build a loyal customer base without knowing what drives satisfied customers.
Since customer feedback and retention are major factors for a company’s success, using the survey result is essential. They are cost-effective, effortless to implement, and offer valuable insight into customer behavior.
The customer survey results will help you understand the buyer’s journey, whether customers are satisfied or dissatisfied, and what you can do to keep your customers happy. It will give you a chance to revise your mistakes.
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Though there are many ways to collect customer feedback and improve retention, surveys are an effective way to gain insights into customer needs and expectations. But to get better results, you must use them effectively.
Here are the top 10 effective strategies for using Surveys for customer feedback and retention. Let’s discuss each of them one by one.
When preparing survey questions for specific customers, ensure the questions you ask are relevant. Not all survey questions are similar for everyone.
Further, the questions you have included must provide valuable information about the customer experience. Ensure the survey is brief and to the point to encourage a high response rate.
Customer responses are less likely to increase as you ask more questions. Ideally, 2 to 6 questions should be asked.
Ask for people’s first reactions to a new product idea, determine how frequently they use one like this, and determine what motivates them to buy it. What’s more important, price or quality? You can include those kinds of questions.
Consider each recipient’s specific needs, preferences, and characteristics when composing messages.
After preparing the specific questions, send them to your target customers. Otherwise, it won’t work as expected.
For example, asking your new customers why they left your product doesn’t fit. Instead, ask them onboarding questions.
Further, ask your long-term customers about their experiences with your product, whether they would recommend it to others, and how satisfied they are with their purchase.
Send surveys to specific customers based on their purchase history, preferences, and behavior. You can get the insight you need by designing your survey in a way that is sleek, professional, and trustworthy.
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The next way to use surveys is to set up a loyalty program that rewards consumers who participate in surveys and provide feedback.
When you offer incentives to your customers, they are more likely to complete the form. You can offer rewards such as discounts or prizes for completing.
Your efforts to prepare and send the survey form will be wasted if your customer does not fill it out completely. So, it is necessary to know when to offer incentives to your customers.
When you receive the survey results, the first thing you should do is determine why customers stop buying your product. People may leave your product because of poor customer service, competitor superiority, or the value breakdown.
If you find out what’s causing the problem, you’ll be able to determine if you can reengage each customer. Through surveys, you can easily obtain customer feedback.
You can use the report of customer loss survey to know which product of your company failed to meet customer expectations and how you can retain customers.
Further, even if a particular customer isn’t worth attempting to win back, you can fix the problem and enhance your product in the future.
For instance, when you discover that the lack of some major features is the reason behind most of your target audience leaving, you can add that feature to your product.
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When you try to re-engage with all lapsed consumers, you will waste your human resources, market budget, and time. Instead, be selective and choose only those who are likely to return.
Using the previous data and survey results, you can determine which customers are worth retaining and who are more likely to return.
Customers who have never filed complaints, recommend your products to friends and have a positive experience are more likely to return than those who left due to high prices and unsatisfactory service.
If your customers wander, give them a reason to come back. Consider offering a popup discount if you want to encourage inactive customers to buy.
You can send this discount offering or other custom messages directly to inactive customers through text messages or emails. Based on the survey or official records containing information about your customers, segment the tailored messages accordingly.
You can send catchy promotional text messages like, “Please Return,” “Visit this week,” “Get 30% off your entire order”, “Let’s get caught up,” and so on.
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You should not ignore the customers who provide negative feedback because there is a chance that they will inform other people about it. So, you must resolve them as soon as possible. This is the best way to meet the customer’s needs and improve the customer experience.
Investing in a customer’s negative feedback and solving them will make your customers happy. And it will increase customer loyalty, increase your revenue and reduce customer churn.
In the aftermath of a customer complaint, you can start a powerful conversation with them. You can maintain a positive brand perception, provide outstanding customer service, and increase retention by listening to their feedback.
This feedback can be used to improve the products and services that customers receive.
Use the data gathered from the surveys to personalize your customer communications and provide a more tailored experience.
Based on the needs, characteristics, and preferences of information gathered from surveys of individual customers, you can tailor messages to them.
By using survey data to personalize communication, businesses can improve the relevance and effectiveness of their messages, leading to higher engagement and better results.
You can send those personalized messages through social media, email, and text messages. Business-related mail must be sent through an official email address.
To send text messages, you can use your phone number. Most businesses use virtual phone numbers as their official business phone number.
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Using the survey details, you can know on which social media most of your customers are and use that social media to re-engage with your customers. You can create and publish content promoting your product on those preferred social media.
Since the goal is to connect with the customers and keep them engaged with your business, use social media most. Many popular brands use social media to regain customers.
Their feedback, either in messages, or the comment box, will give you insight information. Further, you can offer a special coupon to celebrate customer appreciation day or organize a contest where they have to vote for the item that they want back.
You can also share positive customer reviews on social media to showcase your commitment to offering excellent service. It can encourage your customers to return back to you and use your product again.
Monitor the results of your surveys regularly to track changes and trends over time. And use the survey results to identify areas for improvement and make changes that will positively impact customer satisfaction and retention.
You must consciously iterate the customer survey because, at the end of the day, you want maximum customer retention. Through each survey, you will have new information about the customers. You can see whether the improvement you have made based on previous survey results help you or not.
Keep improving your survey process by incorporating feedback and experimenting with new techniques.
Finally, it is also essential to close the loop. The best way to build a closed-loop customer experience is to route survey feedback directly to your customer service representatives. Follow up with customers after completing the survey to thank them for their time and let them know what action will be taken based on their feedback.
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After learning how to use surveys for customer feedback, let’s take a look at five surveys you can use to enhance customer retention.
The process of onboarding new users is where they are provided with the necessary training and skills to become effective users of a website, app, or software service.
When you do the customer onboarding survey, you will eliminate the risk of customer turnover and solve the issues if there are any. Insights from the survey can be used to improve your onboarding process.
It is crucial to make a good first impression to ensure a positive customer experience, which sets you apart from your competitors right away.
Onboarding surveys can be sent at any time, so there’s no right or wrong time. Your team will gain valuable insights immediately if you send it early. However, sending it later in the process will elicit more accurate responses as the customer will feel more comfortable providing honest feedback.
CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Survey) Survey helps you to identify where your clients are unhappy in their customer journey and deal with them before they go elsewhere.
You must keep in touch with your customers at the right time to increase customer satisfaction and maximize customer retention through CSAT surveys.
You should survey your customers every three to six months to ensure your team has time to act on and implement the feedback from the survey.
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It consists of two questions. One is to rate their likelihood of recommending your products or services. And next one is a follow-up inquiry regarding the specific score given.
And to improve your customer retention using Net Promoter Score surveys, you must act on detractor, passive, and promoter feedback.
NPS measures customer loyalty long-term, so it is crucial to send it at the right time. This is because you want your experience to improve or maintain what you’ve provided.
The Customer Effort Score Survey will help you to find out the pain points of your customer and enhance their overall experience. People want to use services that are easy to use. Otherwise, they’ll abandon your product and opt for something else.
But asking your customers how easy it is to use your product and what they like or dislike will help you to maintain a loyal customer base.
Nothing is more frustrating for a business owner than not knowing the reason for customer turnover. This will cost you a lot in the long run if you don’t take care of it. Understanding the cause of churn is the first step to preventing it from happening again.
It is here that the Customer Churn Reason Survey comes into play. You can send this survey to your customer and know why they would have churned.
Obviously, unhappiness is the main cause of churn. However, if you take the survey, you will find out the reason and can prevent it from happening again.
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A customer retention program cannot be successful if you ignore customer feedback. Gaining new customers seems pointless when you can’t keep your existing ones. The reason is that it makes no sense to spend resources to gain new customers if you cannot retain your current customers.
Run a survey in a different format and address the issues they highlighted on the form. In this way, they will feel that their opinions are valued and will not feel intimidated to share them.
Surveys can be used to monitor customer satisfaction levels over time and to identify trends in customer behavior. Further, it will help to build a strong relationship between you and your customers.
The top 10 ways mentioned above will help you effectively use surveys for customer feedback and retention.
Use the below customer retention strategy to reduce customer turnover.
Some of the main reasons behind customer churn are:
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