How to Use Product Surveys to Retain Customers

Every business has two pools of people who can participate in making purchases: people who have never purchased an item from the business and people who have. Because of these two groups, every business faces two distinct challenges: how to get people to do business the first time and how to get repeat business from past customers. You can use product surveys to help you gain new customers and retain current customers. Of course, you need to use well-written product surveys and find ways to have the surveys filled out by customers.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

1. Determine which product(s) you want to have customers fill out a survey on to provide feedback. You may have an older product that you plan to update or improve and need to know what kind of improvements people want. You may have a new product you want to promote and can use the data collected to help advertise the positive aspects of the product to new and existing customers.
2. Create the survey to get specific information from your customers on various product features. For example with a television remote control, "The remote rests comfortably in my hand" or "The buttons are easy to locate to change TV channels in a dark room."
3. Avoid middle-of-the-road answers on your survey used to retain customers. Give people simple "yes" or "no" options. Never give people a "maybe" option. You can use the following wording after a statement: "strongly agree," "agree," "disagree" or "strongly disagree." For example, "I can easily find the button on my remote control to change television channels in a dark room: strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree."
4. Collect the data using a computer program designed to process the answers for you, such as Survey Gold or Select Survey (see Resources below). Survey programs generate reports automatically, making data access, preparation and management a breeze.
5. Analyze the survey data on a regular basis and actually apply the information to your product, advertising and other strategies. Sometimes it is difficult to accept results when they differ from personal viewpoints. Remember, the goal is to find what the customers want and then give it to them.

Tips & Warnings

• Don't provide a long list of different products for people to sort through to fill out your surveys. If people have to do any work to find their product before filling out the survey, they are likely to toss it.
• Explain to customers that you will not put them on any kind of advertising list through email or U.S. mail when they fill out your survey. If you start emailing a lot of ads to people, you will not retain customers.
• Make the survey as short as possible so people can fill it out in less than 2 minutes.
• Instruct people to mark their first reaction to each question instead of thinking about answers.
• Increase the number of surveys filled out by offering some type of incentive. Some companies provide coupons for a free product or add names to a raffle to win a big prize as a way of getting more responses.