Simple ways to survey your customers

Get in-depth insights with these cost-effective options

Gathering honest feedback from loyal customers and employees can be like striking gold for your small business. While your
knowledge and ambition may drive your company’s revenues, an outside perspective can be the fuel that makes sure your doors are open for the long haul. Here are some options to consider when attempting to gather customer feedback.

Direct mail, in-person point-of-sale surveys, comment cards and polling phone calls are all commonly used, but online surveying is growing in popularity.

Amazon product reviews, Yelp and TripAdvisor are all popular because they are public social platforms used by consumers to vent frustrations and for act as food critics. Still, all too often, these platforms are not constructive for improving a business.

Direct online surveying is targeted, by simply inviting your most loyal customers and employees to tell you where you are succeeding as well as what areas of your business needs work. Survey Monkey is one of the most popular, but it can be pricey. Wufoo is a strong alternative with a great deal of customization but poor analytics. TypeForm is a straight-forward, single-question-at-a-time platform
but can make users feel as if the survey is taking forever. Finally, Google Forms is the free, least visually-attractive-but-straight-to-the-point tool that can help build a survey and deliver it fast and cheap but with few customizations.

With the exception of Google Forms, every one of these platforms has a business offering that you can pay for with all kinds of customization and user analytics. Ranging in price from free to $100 a month, survey makers can use tools such as unlimited
questions, individual survey taker profiles (keeping names anonymous if requested), sub questions, pop-up info displays, data visualization, question-by-question trends, metrics and much more. Plus, these platforms all supply survey delivery, website
embedding tools and use notification.

Of course, none of these are as simple as direct mail. If you’re looking for a digital means to recreate that experience, ask your website developer to look into the contact form options of your platform. Many allow for appointment scheduling and P.O.S. contact
forms to auto pop-up. If your site offers this tool, you might already have the means to generate and replicate a small-scale survey with every customer interaction. If not, give some of these other options a look. ♦