Conducting a customer survey
Once you have developed the questions and content for your customer survey, you are ready to conduct the customer survey. You have defined the objectives of the customer survey, made them measurable, formulated suitable questions and answers, and created the customer survey.
The next stage is conducting the customer survey itself: inviting and surveying your customers or survey participants.
Preparation
Before conducting the customer survey, complete the following steps:
- Define the survey objectives
- Develop the questions
- Compare and select a tool
- Create the customer questionnaire
Recruitment
The next steps involve inviting participants, publishing the questionnaire, continuously optimising it and analysing results in real time. This section assumes that you are conducting the customer survey yourself rather than commissioning an agency. This gives you control over every aspect, enables quick optimisation and ensures that you retain control of the data at all times. However, it also means that you must plan every step carefully and bear considerable responsibility.
When conducting the customer survey, pay attention to the following points:
- Are customers providing feedback about the survey?
- Is this feedback being considered and acted upon appropriately?
- How is the response rate developing?
- Who is responsible for reminder and thank-you emails?
- How long will the customer survey remain open? (The closing date should generally remain flexible.)
Conducting the survey
Once the customer survey is running, you should not simply sit back and wait. Communicate progress and preliminary results to the relevant teams, respond to feedback and optimise the survey while it is live.
Tip: Contact the customer support team for your survey tool and ask for benchmarks. Is your response rate above average? If not, what do they recommend? A good customer support team will be happy to help.
