Surveys are a cost-effective way to gather a lot of useful information quickly. However, they’re not very helpful if no one responds! Figuring out how to get customers to fill out surveys is harder than ever, with so many other businesses making similar requests.
Still, it’s worth the effort. Surveys provide rich insights into customer perspectives, purchasing behaviors, unmet needs, and more. Plus, when asked in the right way, people do love to share their thoughts (and complaints).
In this post, we’ll explore ten key strategies we’ve successfully used to increase customer survey participation. But first, let’s take a closer look at the many obstacles standing in the way.
5 Reasons Customers Don’t Complete Surveys
So why can’t you figure out how to get customers to fill out surveys? The answer to that question is never simple. Response rates are determined by a host of factors and variables.
These can include the nature of the survey itself (is it easy to take, does it have clear instructions) and how it presents to respondents (do they have time to complete it, will they be rewarded in some way). Let’s take a look at some of the most common roadblocks.
1. Lack of Time
People are busy, and they also want immediate gratification. Many respondents will see your survey request via email or SMS and simply ignore it, thinking: “I don’t have time for this right now.” or “Why would I bother?”
You’ve probably ignored plenty of survey requests from the companies you frequent. When the tables are turned, how do you entice customers to act differently?
First and foremost, you’ll need to factor in time when creating your survey. Long surveys usually have lower response rates. So yours should be short and focused, rather than all-encompassing.
At the same time, it’s important to allow respondents to provide more feedback if they’d like to. It’s a classic, but the best way to do that is still to end with an optional, open-ended prompt for them to share whatever they’d like.
2. Survey Fatigue
Your customers are likely bombarded with survey requests from other brands constantly. Understandably, this leads to survey fatigue.
Some people refuse to answer any surveys. But even those who do are simply unlikely to engage with any individual survey, including yours.
To even the odds, your survey should be as easy to complete as possible, and be offered at a convenient time (and in a convenient way). As we explore how to get customers to fill out surveys, we’ll explain ways to make that happen.
3. Perceived Lack of Value
Your customers have a lot of demands on their time. If they don’t see any clear benefit to your survey, they probably won’t bother with it.
This perceived lack of value can manifest in a few ways:
- No incentive. A lack of reward can make people feel like their time isn’t valued or respected. If the business benefits from their feedback, why shouldn’t they?
- Lack of relevance. If the survey doesn’t seem relevant, customers won’t see the point in participating. As an example, a customer who only uses one of your products isn’t likely to answer a bunch of questions about a different product.
- Unclear purpose. Participants prefer to understand how their feedback will be used. If you can make it clear that their contributions will result in concrete changes, you’re making a much more persuasive argument.
4. Poor Survey Design
A poorly-designed survey scares potential respondents away quickly. Most people will decide whether or not to respond in a few seconds (or less!). If they can’t immediately understand where the survey is from, what it’s asking for, how to complete it, and so on, that decision won’t be in your favor.
Poor survey design can also impact the quality of responses you get. For example, there’s always a risk of anchoring or priming respondents. This is when the nature of some questions unintentionally influences the answers to others.
For instance, let’s say one question asks how important it is to receive fast customer service. Then, a later question asks about the overall quality of your customer service.
A respondent may rate the overall service lower, because they’ve been primed to think about a slower-than-ideal interaction they had recently. If the question about quality had been asked first, the answer might have been different.
You can’t completely avoid this kind of effect. But you can think carefully about what questions you use and how you word them. You can also be very deliberate when ordering your survey. It isn’t a disconnected set of questions – it needs to flow naturally from one thing to the next.
5. Accessibility
We mentioned ease of use, but don’t forget that everyone is different. To increase survey response rates, you’ll need to make your surveys readily accessible to as many people as possible.
At a basic level, this includes optimizing your survey for mobile devices. You can also eliminate technical barriers, and consider using multiple channels (such as email and SMS).
Beyond that, some people have physical or mental differences that can make answering surveys harder. If you don’t anticipate their needs, you risk alienating a portion of your audience.
How To Get Customers To Fill Out Surveys (10 Effective Strategies)
All of that might seem intimidating. And it’s true that no matter what you do, you won’t achieve a 100% response rate.
However, you can dramatically improve that rate (and your ROI) by understanding how to get customers to fill out surveys. Without further ado, here are our top ten tips.
1. Understand Your Potential Respondents
Who are you trying to reach with your survey? And what do you want to accomplish?
These are the first two questions you’ll need to answer. They’re key for increasing your response rates, and for making sure your investment (in time, resources, or both) is worthwhile.
As we mentioned earlier, if customers don’t find a survey relevant, they’ll almost certainly ignore it. To understand your audience and frame your survey accordingly, you’ll need clear customer profiles.
Even if your product or service is very niche, your customers aren’t a monolith. If you haven’t already, you can categorize them into segments based on demographics, purchase history, and engagement.
You can also create personas of your ideal respondents within each segment:
You can outline their demographics, needs, pain points, motivations, and even preferred communication channels. This groundwork enables you to ask the right questions, and increase your survey’s relevance.
2. Set Clear Objectives for Your Survey
What is the single most important thing you want to find out from this survey? Clear primary questions help you stay focused.
Let’s say you notice that a lot of your customers haven’t bothered to use a recently-implemented feature. That’s a problem, because it’s a feature your business has spent a lot of time and money on. As a consequence, your goals are to understand why the feature isn’t used, and to identify improvements you can make.
Knowing this, you won’t create a generic satisfaction survey. You’ll make your inquiries more specific:
Have you experienced any technical difficulties using Feature X?
If you’ve reached out to support about Feature X, were we able to resolve the issue?
What changes could we make to Feature X that would make it more valuable to your business?
For even better results, make your goal clear to customers from the beginning of the survey. For example, you might preface the questions with:
We’d like to understand why some of our customers aren’t using Feature X, so we can improve it or replace it with something that better meets your needs.
This gives people a clear incentive to respond. If they like the idea of Feature X, but they’re not happy with how it’s implemented, now is their chance to speak up.
Finally, this is a good time to consider what data points you’ll need to determine whether the survey has been useful. If you do end up changing Feature X, tracking key metrics will tell you whether usage (and overall customer satisfaction) has improved.
3. Choose the Right Survey Medium(s)
There are a lot of ways to create and send surveys. Which you opt for will depend on your goals, audience, budget, and level of comfort with new technology.
Keep in mind that you can also send the same survey in more than one way. While it’s best not to go overboard with this, especially in the beginning, testing out a few mediums can help you determine what’s most effective.
If you’re not sure where to start, here are some top options and their pros/cons:
- Email surveys. Email is extremely popular, since it’s straightforward and cost-effective. It’s also simple to track responses and personalize messages. However, emails can easily get lost in crowded inboxes, or caught in spam filters.
- Website-embedded surveys. If someone is already on your website, they’re at least a bit invested, and less likely to see your request as an imposition. Just keep in mind that website visitors are more often prospects than previous buyers or current users.
- In-app surveys. If you have a mobile app, it can be great for soliciting feedback while someone is actually using your product or service. You’ll need to time your survey carefully to avoid disrupting their experience, though.
- Social media surveys. These are excellent for quick polls and gauging general sentiment. But they might not be representative of your entire customer base – just the ones who use that particular platform.
- QR code surveys. QR codes are versatile. They can be easily printed on physical materials or displayed digitally. Ease of use does suffer, however, since they require extra steps from your customers.
- SMS surveys. Text message surveys can be effective due to their high open rates and immediate nature. However, be mindful of character limits, and avoid sending them too frequently.
What’s most important is to settle on your survey medium(s) early on. Your medium will shape how you build your survey – how many questions you can ask, what question types you can use, what design options you have, and so on.
4. Choose and Write Your Survey Questions Carefully
Questions are the heart of any survey. What questions you include and how you write them directly impacts response rates – and how useful the resulting feedback is.
The longer your survey is, the more likely people are to abandon it. So it’s vital to prioritize questions that directly connect to your survey goals. If a question doesn’t help you gather essential information, leave it for another time. And keep an eye on the overall length – less than ten questions is usually best, while less than five maximizes responses.
When writing the questions, use clear, straightforward language. Avoid lengthy sentences and technical jargon – anything that might lead to misunderstandings.
You’ll also want to steer clear of ‘double-barrel’ questions. Responses to “How satisfied are you with our product’s features and customer support?” aren’t very useful. It’s better to break that into two more focused questions.
Especially if your survey is on the longer side, you can keep respondents engaged through differing question types. Multiple-choice questions, rating scales, and open-ended prompts each provide unique insight, and the variety alleviates fatigue.
To make sure people only see the most relevant questions, you can also use skip logic. This adapts the survey based on previous answers. If a customer doesn’t use a particular service, you can save them time by hiding later questions about that same service.
5. Make Sure Your Survey Is Accessible
People tend to abandon websites that take longer than a few seconds to load. Similarly, if your survey is confusing or hard to interact with, they’re not going to stick around.
Unless your target audience is unusual, most respondents will be on mobile devices. Even if you design your survey using a desktop, it needs to be mobile-friendly.
Also known as a responsive design, this means it adjusts to different screen sizes, enables touch-friendly selection, and requires minimal scrolling. In addition, it’s best to avoid complex layouts, which can be difficult to navigate on smaller screens.
Fortunately, quality survey tools will handle most of this for you. However, it’s important to be aware of what responsive features are on offer, and to test your survey on a variety of device types.
That aside, you’ll also want to consider differences among your audience. If you have a diverse customer base, for example, offering your survey in multiple languages goes a long way.
Plus, if you’re not familiar with best practices for accessibility, now is the time to study up! All of your customers deserve an equal chance to have their voices heard.
6. Consider Your Survey’s Timing
When you send your survey impacts how many people respond.
Think about it: You’re more likely to ignore an email asking for feedback if it arrives on a Friday afternoon after you’ve mentally clocked out for the weekend. But if you see an email midweek when you have some downtime at work, you’ll be more inclined to participate.
Weekdays generally see higher survey response, with Wednesdays and Thursdays showing the best engagement levels. However, your unique audience will have its own preferences and quirks.
We’d recommend running a simple test to determine the best timing. Once your survey is ready, you can send out small batches at a few different times. Keep track of the open and response rates, and use that knowledge to schedule the rest of your invitations.
Don’t forget to factor in seasonality, especially if your business experiences peak periods or lulls throughout the year. Avoid sending surveys during your industry’s busiest seasons or around major holidays, when customers are likely to be preoccupied.
Frequency also matters. Bombarding your customers with surveys after every purchase or interaction triggers fatigue and annoyance. A good rule of thumb is to limit general/wide-reaching surveys to once per quarter.
More targeted surveys are best sent right after a customer has a significant interaction with your business, such as a purchase or support request. Your business is fresh in their mind, and the request isn’t coming out of nowhere. With the right tools, this kind of survey can even be automated.
Sending Respectful Reminders
Even if someone intends to answer your survey, it’s easy for them to get sidetracked. Another email or notification that comes through at the same time can distract them enough to forget.
So it’s okay to send a reminder or two. The key is to strike a balance between offering a gentle nudge and respecting your customers’ time.
We’d suggest waiting a while – at least 3-5 days after sending the initial survey invitation. You might send a final reminder about a week after that. Also, give them a way to opt out if they prefer
Your feedback is crucial in shaping Product X. Would you like to take our five-minute survey? If you’re unable to participate at this time, no worries – we know you’re busy! Simply click here to opt out of future reminders.
If the customer still doesn’t respond, it’s best to let it go at that point. You don’t want to irritate them to the point of damaging their relationship with your business.
7. Provide Incentives
Everyone likes feeling rewarded for their time and effort. That doesn’t mean you need to break the bank to boost customer survey participation.
An incentive can be any reward you provide to participants for completing your survey. It’s a common practice for long-form questionnaires that require more of participants’ time. However, it can still be a great way to build goodwill after a short survey.
The best incentives depend on your audience, budget, and the nature of the survey. Popular monetary rewards include a discount on the next purchase, free shipping, or a credit towards subscription renewal.
Non-Monetary Rewards
To get more creative with your incentives, you’ll need to understand what your audience values. The best rewards are relevant to both your survey and their interests.
A few ideas:
- Give them access to exclusive content. This could be a premium ebook or an exclusive webinar – content they can’t find anywhere else (and that as a side benefit, increases their engagement with your brand).
- Early access to beta testing or a new feature. If your audience is tech-focused or forward-thinking, this can be very appealing.
- Offer personalized rewards. You might give them priority customer support for a limited time, or a free trial of a new service or higher-tier plan.
- Simple recognition and appreciation. Not every ‘reward’ has to be tangible. You could feature respondents in case studies directly on your website, or highlight their feedback publicly (with permission).
If you intend to send surveys regularly, you might even create a tiered loyalty program. Completing a survey could earn the customer points towards discounts, perks, or early access. (If you have one, this can also be easily bundled into your existing loyalty program.)
8. Personalize The Experience
Generic surveys more often end up ignored. If you take the time to personalize the experience for your customers, it shows that you genuinely value their individual feedback.
Personalization starts before someone even opens your survey. Within your invitations, you can:
- Address customers by name
- Mention specific product or feature usage, or recent interactions
- Highlight how past feedback has led to positive changes
Inside the survey, questions should be relevant to each customer’s experiences when possible. Depending on your survey tool, you might use conditional logic to focus on the products, services, or features they actually use.
Earlier, we talked a little about segmenting your audience. That’s important here as well. It’s easier to personalize when you’ve divided customers into groups based on factors like:
- Usage frequency (power users vs. occasional users)
- Subscription tier
- Industry, business, or company size
- How long they’ve been a customer
This allows you to tailor your survey content and even the language you use to resonate with each segment’s unique characteristics.
9. Demonstrate That Their Feedback Makes a Difference
One of the best ways to increase survey response rates is to tap into the power of personal connection. This is a unique advantage for small businesses. You can communicate with your buyers in a more direct, individual way than your larger competitors.
To leverage customer relationships, make sure this personal touch shines through whenever you ask for feedback. Be transparent about your process, and explain how you use survey responses to make improvements, develop new features, and guide your overall business strategy.
Don’t just talk about it – back it up with real-world examples. Highlight specific instances where customer feedback led to positive changes. This demonstrates that you’re not just mindlessly collecting data, but actively listening to concerns and taking actions.
10. Show Appreciation and Close the Loop
Everyone wants to feel like their voice matters. That’s probably why they’re responding to your survey. Showing appreciation for their time and honesty builds trust and encourages future dialogue.
When a customer completes your survey, be sure to send them a personalized thank you message expressing your sincere appreciation:
Thank you, [Name]! We truly appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts. Your feedback is invaluable in helping us improve Product X – we couldn’t do it without you and our other awesome customers.
It’s also a good idea to share at least some of your survey’s results with participants, or even your customer base at large. Compile the key findings into an easily digestible format, such as an infographic or report, and communicate it through a visually engaging email.
For example, maybe a lot of respondents complained about the responsiveness of a key feature. After gathering the results, analyzing the data, and enacting change, your follow-up might begin with:
Based on your feedback, we’ve improved the responsiveness and sensitivity of Feature X by 40%! Read on to learn what’s been changed, and what we learned throughout the process.
Understanding how to get customers to fill out surveys means paying attention to the big picture. While none of this increases the response rates in your current survey, it can have a notable impact on questions you send a month or a year from now.
Using Survey Feedback To Improve the Customer Experience
Collecting survey responses is only the first step. For all that effort to be worthwhile, you’ll need to use the feedback you receive. By analyzing the results, you can turn actionable insights into an improved customer experience (leading to happier customers and higher revenue!).
The first thing you’ll need to do is contextualize your survey data. On its own, it can only tell you so much. You need to review it in combination with everything else you know about your customers, so you can identify the right improvements to make.
Let’s say that a significant portion of your buyers reported being unhappy with a specific feature. Not all of them responded that way, however, so where does the real problem lie?
Segmenting survey responses based on customer demographics, behaviors, and product usage can help. You might discover that:
- Customers on a lower-tier plan with a simplified version of the feature are unhappy, while those on higher-tier plans have no issues.
- Tech-savvy buyers are using the feature easily, while the more tech-challenged are struggling.
- When customers reach out to support for help with the feature they’re able to use it, but those who prefer to learn on their own are not.
Each of these results suggests a very different plan of action.
How can you perform this type of analysis? You’ll need as much customer data as possible, preferably housed in a centralized location. That’s where Groove comes to the rescue:
Groove is a customer service helpdesk that we’ve built specifically to meet the needs of small online businesses. It can assist with just about every aspect of your support process, from organizing inquiries to providing self-service resources.
Most importantly for our purposes here, Groove makes it easy to gather all of your customer information in one place. It provides a holistic view of the customer journey, by integrating survey data with support interactions, purchase history, and other valuable touch points.
You can:
- Route all email inquiries to a centralized dashboard, then organize/segment them using folders and tags.
- Take advantage of third-party integrations to pull in conversations from other channels, such as live chat and social media.
- View customer histories at any time, and create profiles with key details.
- Solicit feedback directly from users, both organically and via automated check-ins.
- Track important data on productivity, customer happiness, and more.
With Groove, survey personalization also becomes easier. You can leverage customer data to ask targeted questions about their recent support experiences or feature updates, and time your outreach based on individual engagement patterns.
You can even send short surveys directly by asking for customer satisfaction ratings. This feature lets you solicit feedback immediately after resolving a customer’s issue, while the experience is still fresh in their mind. This is a great way to increase response rates, and to capture more accurate and detailed information.
Grow Your Business with Customer Feedback and Groove’s Toolset
By implementing the strategies we’ve looked at here, from designing user-friendly surveys to personalizing the experience, you can unlock invaluable insights. What you learn fuels your business’ growth and drives innovation.
But while it’s important to know how to get customers to fill out surveys, that’s only the first stage. The real change happens when you close the loop, analyzing feedback and using it to take action and implement customer-driven changes.
Making those changes is a lot easier with Groove! Our customer service platform provides the tools you need to streamline workflows and optimize the customer experience.
Plus, it’s affordable and grows alongside your business. Check out the free trial today, and make the most of your customer feedback!
