Surveys are undoubtedly one of the most efficient and cost-effective means of gathering sufficient data for statistical validity when you are looking to improve customer experience. Surveys are ideal for extracting meaningful insights into customer expectations and feedback.
Now when it comes to surveys, size is all that matters – because it is essential to accumulate sizable data to be able to understand how to improve your customer experience. This is where considering the survey response rate becomes crucial.
The survey response rate is the total number of individuals in your sample size, who have completed your customer closed loop feedback survey. It can be anything between 0 to 100 percent, though a lower percentage is less likely to represent the true mass of your target audience. A lower rate of response (less than 10 percent) can also indicate a bias among the survey takers. The average response rate varies between 10–20% for emails and 4–12% for SMS.
Now, the question is, if you have been recording consistently lower survey responses, how can you increase that number? Let us explore below.
How to improve the number of survey responses?
-
Offer incentives and rewards
Rewards are the best means of getting more people to participate in your survey and complete it. However, there are some ways to go about it. For instance, a small reward for each participant is always better than a large incentive for a handful of them. You can plan to offer incentives to the initial 100 participants or so.
Also, explaining to them how their contribution can make all the difference, is a brilliant way to ensure transparency and make the respondents feel valued. And here, it is equally vital to explain clearly how you intend to use their feedback and who else will be able to view their response.
-
Keep your surveys relevant and short
It is imperative to design surveys that are quick and relevant; they should not waste the respondents’ precious time. Besides, the more relevant your questions are, the more accurate the insights generated. As a result, you will understand exactly what you must change to improve customer experience. Here, you might consider checking popular survey platforms or talking with customer experience consulting services for surveys tailor-made for your business.
-
Employ cognitive dissonance
Adopting psychological theory is one of the most efficient ways to improve the number of survey responses. You can plan to promote the desired behavior by designing surveys that align with an individual’s values and self-belief. When the invitation for a survey resonates with their values, they will be more encouraged to respond. For instance, if they consider themselves to be helpful and conscientious, your survey invitation should play along those beliefs to convince them to help you out by filling out the survey.
-
Carry out surveys across several channels
Your aim should be to be on top of their minds. Conduct thorough research to monitor different platforms (email, social media, etc.) where your customers are active. Then reach out to them with gentle invitations to fill out the survey. When you plan to do this, make sure to strike the right balance so that they do not feel annoyed running into you all over the internet. Never spam them with invitations; this can be a major turn-off. Also, keep a close track of those who have completed the survey already and don’t send further invites to them.
-
Pick the ideal time for surveys
Make sure to choose the best time to send survey invitations to customers. While some surveys, like CSAT and CES, are best timed right after the customer has interacted with your business, others like the NPS differentiate based on customer type. Bottom-up NPS is suitable for transactional surveys or “hot” surveys and top-down NPS suitable mainly on random unbiased samples of contracted customer base. This could be achieved with a cold NPS survey (after a few weeks) on an uncontracted customer base. CX specialists recommend using the NPS question after transaction and create correlation between the performance of the channel and loyalty.
Final words
Low survey responses can be beyond frustrating for organizations; in fact, it can easily kill a survey. But fortunately, you are now familiar with tips and ideas to boost your numbers. The best is to reach out to professional customer experience consulting services offered by companies like Staffino.com. With them, you can look forward to significantly improving the quality of customer closed loop feedback and getting more people to respond and complete the surveys. They can also help you fine-tune your surveys with more customer-centric, easy approaches that help extract accurate customer and market insights.
