3 Ways to Use Surveys for Improving Your Business in 2019

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Using surveys can be extremely good for a business on multiple levels. However, as a Harvard Business School expert points out, if they aren’t used or done correctly, they are a hindrance. The best areas to use surveys for a business include marketing, product development, and customer service. One also shouldn’t forget that the quality of the survey is crucial for success.

How to Improve Your Company: Top 3 Ways to Use Surveys in Business

1. Collecting information for marketing

Surveys are one of the best marketing tools because they provide you ‘real’ information about your customers. The value of the data you can collect through them is high, so it’s essential to have surveys in key marketing areas.

This means you should:

·      Collect customer data

·      Study your target audience

Collecting your customer data is rather easy as you can ask people for this information when they register on your website, sign up for a newsletter, or make a purchase. You can also ask your sales department with gathering this data. Use it for your creating your email marketing lists.

To study your target audience, you should post short surveys on social media and your blog. Be sure to include them in an occasional email. You should also offer a chance to fill out a large detailed survey of preferences to anyone interested in sharing the information.

However, avoid making big surveys a mandatory step for customers. According to statistics, over 70% of people find this annoying to some extent. Therefore, it’s crucial to make your marketing surveys as unobtrusive and engaging as possible. appliedsurveys.com gives multiple examples of short and interesting surveys for various industries. These can be used as inspiration for when you are starting to work with a survey builder.

However, every business is unique, so your questions should be unique as well, even if you need some common information. To keep your personal business survey engaging, you need to keep it short, relevant, and possibly add a bit of humor to it. This element usually works well for marketing.

2. Collect feedback for product development and improvement

If your business creates any products/services, you definitely should provide every customer with a post-buy survey. It might be best to send it out a few days after the purchase so the person has the time to use it and offer their opinions.

This data should be used with other analytics about the product performance that you are able to collect. Analyzing and processing it is vital for both, improving your current product and developing new ones.

In fact, be sure to build in a short survey that will be used in case of product malfunction. Use the data for finding and fixing bugs.

Including a question similar to’ what other products would you like to see to complement your current purchase?’ will help you generate ideas. You should also spread an occasional survey on this topic through your social media channels. This will help you see what exactly your audience is interested in.

Note that all product/service performance related surveys must have a field for the customer to fill with their unique complaints. The basic survey format of a multiple-choice test won’t be able to cover any eventuality related to bugs.

3. Collect data on customer service satisfaction

Make sure to follow up every interaction between your customer support service and customers with a quick survey. Ask about the quality of service people receive and if they have any complaints/suggestions.

You’ll need to pay close attention to these surveys and always check reports of dissatisfaction. If you outsource your customer support service, make sure they run the same kind of post-interaction checkup.

All in all, surveys are an extremely versatile tool. So long as you keep them short, to the point, and engaging, you are sure to benefit.