Get to Know Your Customers With Online Surveys

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Get to Know Your Customers With Online Surveys

By Steven Ray
2007-08-09

Get to Know Your Customers With Online Surveys

Many business gurus will argue that the most important ingredient in a successful business is a loyal following of satisfied customers. Whether you’ve been in business for decades or are just starting out, there are a number of ways to get to know your shoppers. You can send them individual messages asking for feedback, operate a telephone line customers can call to comment on or employ someone to carry out research. All of these will help you get a clearer picture of who your customers are, but odds are that knowledge will come at a high price.

Get Customer Information Directly
There’s no better place to go for information than the proverbial horse’s mouth – which is why more and more businesses are turning to online survey software to do research on their clients. By following a few easy steps, anyone can create an engaging survey that is both easy for respondents to complete and simple for businesses to interpret.

You have control over how the survey is deployed – which means you can ask specific customers why they’re choosing one product range over another, survey clients from a particular region or take a random sample from your entire customer base. And often, because once people start filling in a survey they’re not likely to skip questions, you’re able to get to know your customers a little better by choosing your questions carefully.

Great Options for More Information
When you’re considering a new product rollout or trying to decide between a few new services you might add to your portfolio, the best way to make an informed decision is to ask the people who already use you as a supplier. A well-constructed online survey can give you a great idea what services or products your existing clients are interested in, or getting elsewhere already.

For example, if you’re trying to choose between selling new blue widgets or new orange widgets, you can ask questions designed to determine whether your existing widget customers would like to see blue or orange widgets added to your stock list. You can do this by asking a selection of questions ranging from the standard, dichotomous question, “Would you like to see a wider variety of widgets for sale here?” to a multiple-choice matrix question series offering a variety of widget options that respondents can indicate their interest in by ticking simple boxes. Finally, if you give your existing widget customers the opportunity to fill in an open-ended question at the end of the survey, you might find they overwhelmingly suggest a type of widget that you had never considered.

Using online surveys to get to know your clients can help you tailor future marketing as well. For example, including a couple of questions regarding how customers would like to receive information about new products and services will give you a good idea which marketing approaches are most likely to attract repeat customers. Targeted marketing saves you wasted time, and money.

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