There’s no doubt that your current customers are a huge asset. After all, they’re the reason you’re in business! However, they may be able to help you even more than you realize. In order to keep your current customers happy and attract new ones, your business could benefit from an important and often overlooked marketing tactic—customer surveys. It’s as simple as asking a few questions and truly listening to what your current customer base has to say! Read on to learn how you can easily implement customer surveys to build success for your business. 

Understand Your Audience

You could send a survey to all current customers grouped together. This would help you establish an initial understanding of who is out there. You could include questions about how often they buy from you, what motivates them to buy from you, what they hope to see from your business and other questions to establish a base understanding.

However, if your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology is already intuitive, you should be able to segment your audience into groups based on buying habits, recency of purchase and other factors. For example, you may want to send a different survey to your top customers versus somebody who only made their first purchase last week. Segment the messaging for the surveys in any way you can based on what makes sense and what information your CRM system provides.

Choose Impactful Questions

“How would you rate your purchase on a scale of 1 to 5” is an example of a question you could ask, but it doesn’t tell you much if it’s your only question. Leave space for your audience to elaborate. Ask specific questions that you think could help inform future purchases. For example, impactful questions could include:

• “What made you choose us over other competitors?” 
• “What would stand in the way of you making another purchase with our business?”
• “What could we do differently to improve your interactions with us?”

It’s important to ask the basics, but you’ll get meaningful data when you ask impactful questions.

Develop a Cadence

Determine how often your company would like to send surveys and at what points in the buying process. For example, you may decide that you’d like to send a survey within a week of a customer’s first purchase and then again in six months if they have not purchased again. This will vary from business to business depending on how often customers typically make a purchase because some products or services will be purchased again more quickly than others. Evaluate the information you have and choose a cadence to send surveys that makes the most sense for you and your business.

Follow Up On Feedback

The most important part of sending surveys to your current customers is to actually follow up on the feedback. Thank your customers for taking the survey. Make improvements to show that you’ve listened to what they had to say. Provide updates that show you’re making progress toward making improvements. Remember that transparency is key to earning trust! 

Your current customers hold the information you need to succeed in the future. Don’t forget to ask them what they’re thinking! Ask the right people the right questions, make sure you’re asking questions that will inform how you proceed in the future, and most of all—thank your customers for their time and feedback. Without them, you wouldn’t be where you are today!