Research: how to conduct a survey to get feedback from customers

Most often, when deciding to collaborate with a particular company, a customer is guided by the quality of service and the ability to satisfy certain needs.

Organizations and entrepreneurs that meet consumers' expectations gradually fill their client base, making their business more stable. To smoothly improve the service quality, it's essential to focus on customers' needs. These can be discovered not only from reviews. Another attractive option is questionnaire surveys. What exactly are they, and why are they necessary?

Why It's Important to Conduct Surveys

Businesses constantly need to address a large number of questions from customers, which often repeat. Processing them takes quite a lot of time.

To independently determine all potential clients' needs and save time, large companies conduct special marketing research. However, for small or medium-sized businesses, such significant expenses are not feasible. Therefore, they often use questionnaire surveys, a method of information gathering that is simple to implement and highly effective.

The Purpose of Conducting Questionnaire Surveys

Surveys simultaneously solve several main tasks:

• Obtaining independent opinions about a specific product or service.
• Often, customers are reluctant to express their opinions about certain products. Those who decide to respond tend to use common or clichéd phrases. This problem can be easily solved. By properly preparing a questionnaire, you can learn the real opinions of clients about a product or service.

Identifying Information About Customer Needs

Using data from questionnaire surveys, it's not difficult to determine the needs and desires of potential clients. This information can be used if the development of a new product or the optimization of a business process is upcoming. Having this information can protect your business from most risks.

Continuous Update of the Client Base

If social networks and other platforms liked by users are used to place questionnaire surveys, you can gradually fill the client base. Customers whose opinions are considered by the company tend to return more frequently.

Forming an Active Community

Questionnaire surveys allow attracting the attention of a specific user category. The only condition is the correct choice of topic. Because people understand the significance of their answers and see the company's interest, they approach the surveys and writing reviews more responsibly.

Increasing the Number of Visitors

Many people are interested in taking surveys. Therefore, they actively visit groups on social networks. This should be used to strengthen the company's positions.

The Attitude Towards the Brand Becomes More Loyal

Some citizens appreciate that their opinions are not only considered but also used, for example, in the development of new products or their modernization. Over time, such people give a higher rating to the goods.

However, it can only be used on the condition that the site is visited by a sufficient number of users daily.

Email Campaigns

If the company's database is filled with a sufficient number of email addresses, there will be no problems implementing this form of survey. Now there are many tools that can be used to create effective questionnaires.

But it's important to note that the number of users who respond to such messages is relatively small. This happens due to a lack of interest in such surveys or because such emails are categorized as spam.

Partner Exchange

If a cross-marketing action is planned, this form can be considered ideal. It's often chosen by novice businessmen, whose sites are visited by a small number of people. They seek help from partners.

To implement everything, it's necessary not only to choose a partner but also to prepare decent compensation.

Social Networks

Advertising specialists recommend using this option because it allows involving significantly more visitors.

When preparing such a questionnaire survey, you need to consider the characteristics of subscribers and whether they are the target audience.

Mobile Apps

Users mostly install various mobile apps consciously, so they already have a loyal attitude towards the product.

Using such apps, you can conduct a survey, saving a lot of time. With the right approach, you can survey many people in just a few days.

Since applications are suitable only for a specific audience, they can be used to establish consumer loyalty index. As for brand recognition, determining it might be problematic.

How to Properly Prepare and Conduct a Survey

A correctly prepared and conducted customer survey can achieve unique results. It can simplify the work of company employees and increase advertising efficiency. But to achieve the required effect, it's essential to approach the survey preparation responsibly. There are several stages, each of which is important.

Survey Purpose

Surveys are conducted to achieve various goals:

• expanding the target audience;
• increasing sales volume;
• introducing a new product;
• enhancing customer loyalty.

The primary purpose of surveys is to study customer opinions. It's important to understand that they can be used to solve minor tasks. For example, one survey can reveal opinions about a recently released product, while another can assess the effectiveness of an email campaign.

Survey Planning

To achieve a specific goal, everything should be done step by step. All questions must be interconnected and arranged in order of increasing complexity.

For convenience, questions can be divided into several blocks. This approach will allow for maximum responses.

There are many schemes that can be utilized in preparing question blocks.

What Questions to Include in a Survey

The survey should include questions that guide the customer. To get, for example, an opinion about a specific product, several specific questions regarding price, properties, and design should be asked. Only with this approach can information crucial for the further development of the business be obtained.

Motivation

It's important not only to properly compose the survey but also to motivate the customer to complete it. Various motivators can be used for this purpose:

• specific discounts;
• gifts;
• bonuses;
• other incentives.

The only condition is to provoke the customer to responsibly complete the questionnaire.

How to Properly Organize the Conduct of a Survey

Experienced advertisers and businessmen use several rules that help them more competently organize any survey of their target audience.

Studying the Target Audience

Many companies are not aware of who their target audience actually is. This affects the level of sales and profit volume. It's much easier to introduce a new product or service if there is a clear understanding of the clients' needs and desires.

Highlighting Services or Products That Need Support

Through a survey, it can be determined which product is currently relevant. This will help understand what is in demand. This information can be used by the advertising department or the public relations service.

Studying Competitors

Effective marketing research can identify direct competitors, their weaknesses, and advantages. Operating with this information makes it easier to plan further actions.

Determining the Right Prices

Surveys make it easy to find out what price for a product will be most acceptable to the customer. Of course, its cost must be calculated in advance to avoid operating at a loss.

Communicating with Customers and More

To expand the business and reach new heights, it's necessary to communicate not only with clients. Periodically, it's important to find out why people don’t purchase company's products. In this case, a questionnaire survey for those consumers who don’t belong to the target audience is required.

Choosing the Right Location

Regardless of the chosen survey format, it's very important to correctly determine where and how it's more convenient to publish it. Several requirements must be considered:

• The survey should be noticeable to everyone. This is especially important if it's published on your own website or on a partner's portal.
• The survey's theme and the page must match.
• The questionnaire should not obstruct the viewing of other content.

Why It's Better to Create a Questionnaire Survey Using Special Services

There are many services and tools perfectly suited for creating surveys. However, responsible businessmen interested in obtaining accurate answers choose services like webask.io

Using specialized services for preparing and conducting surveys is beneficial because they provide all the necessary tools to achieve the desired result. For example, you can use templates for marketing research, customer service, or staff work.

Despite the long existence of questionnaires and surveys, their effectiveness has not diminished. They can provide answers to many questions. The only condition is a responsible approach to compiling the list of questions and choosing the right platform to publish the survey.