• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Dgcustomerfirst Login - Dollar General Customer Satisfaction Survey Guide

  • Contact
    • About
  • Privacy Policy
  • Show Search
Hide Search

How to Launch a Web-Based Customer Survey

June 20, 2019 By Johnny

Having successfully designed a web-based customer survey, the next step will be that of launching it. Your web-based customer survey is likely to be more successful if it is launched in the right manner. Conversely, your online customer survey may flop if it is not launched in the right manner (even if it is an otherwise well-designed survey).

If a web-based customer survey is launched in the right way, many of your customers will know about it, and they will be inclined to take part in it. On the other hand, if you don’t launch your online customer survey in the right manner, you will end up with a situation where very few of your customers will know about it, and even fewer will be inclined to take part in it. Stop waiting, join the game now with lucky pharao online kostenlos continuous luck and many victories await you! That will in turn lead to a situation where you won’t be able to get feedback from a critical mass of your customers… In the worst case, it will be just as good as if you hadn’t undertaken a customer survey at all.

Now there are 3 key things that you need to do, in the process of launching a web-based customer survey:

  1. Set up the survey webpage/website: In the process of designing the survey, you will have made a decision on whether you would be running the survey on a webpage that is part of your business’ website, or on a standalone website (set up specifically for this purpose). If you opted for a webpage that is part of your business’ website, you would now need to create it — using HTML, CSS or whatever Content Management System (CMS) you use. It is at this stage that you would need to set up an authentication system, to ensure that only people who are really your customers take part in the survey. So the authentication system would, for instance, entail entering a receipt number, transaction number, store number… and any other such credentials that only your recent customers would have. After that, you would need to upload the customer survey questions on to that webpage, and have a mechanism through which the customers can provide answers to the survey questions. Then you can have a back-end, you know, some sort of database in which the survey question answers received from customers are collated. If, on the other hand, you opted for a standalone survey site, you would need to first register the domain name for it. Then you would need to get a web hosting package for it. After that, you can proceed to set up the survey pages: starting with one where the customers authenticate themselves by entering unique details that only recent customers would have. After that you can upload the survey questions to the website, and provide a mechanism through which the customers can answer them (and a back-end database through which the answers can be collated). Usually, it is companies that have contracted independent survey/research companies to do the customer surveys on their behalf that end up using the standalone websites for the surveys. But if you are doing the survey internally, there would still be nothing to stop you from setting up such a standalone website for the purpose of running the online customer survey. The most important thing is to ensure that the website/webpage that the customers have to visit to complete the survey is one that is accessible in a convenient manner.
  2. Get your customers to know that you are currently running a survey: Having set up the webpage/website through which you would be running the customer survey, the next step is that of getting the customers to actually visit that webpage/website, and complete the survey. So this is a question of publicizing the survey. To this end, you can have a message, on the receipts you issue to your customers at your stores’ checkout points, encouraging them to take part in the survey. Some people (a good number in fact) do tend to read their receipts carefully, and at least some of them are bound to act on the messages in the receipts encouraging them to take part in the receipt. So the idea is to have a message telling them that you are currently running a web-based survey, aimed at getting feedback from them (as your customers) and telling them to visit such and such a website to complete the survey.
  3. Encourage your customers to participate in the survey: Getting your customers to know that you are currently running a web-based survey at such and such a website/webpage is one thing. Getting them to actually complete the survey is another matter altogether. It is easy for the customers to take it for granted, unless you actually take the initiative to encourage them to participate in the survey. The simplest way to encourage your customers to participate in the web-based customer survey would be by telling them that the feedback they give would help you serve them better. Another (more effective) way to encourage your customers to complete your web-based survey would be by giving tangible incentives. This is where, for instance, you can tell the customers who would be taking part in the survey that they stand to be entered into sweepstakes upon completing the survey. Those would be sweepstakes where, upon being entered, they would stand chances to win various attractive prices, should they be lucky. You can actually include a list of past winners, so as to encourage more and more people to participate in the survey. Or you can have a discount code offered to the customers who complete the survey, for redemption during their future visits to your stores.

You will know that you have successfully launched a web-based customer survey once you start receiving feedback from meaningful numbers of customers through it. Conversely, if after having the survey running for quite some time you will not have started to receive feedback through it, it would mean that there were hitches in the launch. So what you would need to do in this case would be to re-launch it. This may be a question of making the messages (on receipts) inviting people to participate in the survey more prominent. Or it may be a question of verbally encouraging customers to take part in the survey: like where you instruct your checkout staff to tell customers about the survey and encourage them to take part in it…

In the final analysis, you need to manage your expectations. Don’t expect all your customers who get invitations to take part in the survey to actually do so. But even if just 10 or even 5 percent of your customers take part in the survey, that should be a good enough sample to make inferences as to what the other customers feel.

Filed Under: Customer Survey

How to Design a Web-Based Customer Survey

June 20, 2019 By Johnny

One of the best ways to get feedback from your customers is through a web-based survey. A web-based survey will make it possible for you to get feedback from customers who would probably have been unresponsive to other types of surveys. For instance, there are customers who would view it as ‘too much work’ to take part in phone-based surveys. But once they are given the opportunity to relay their feedback online, it looks convenient to them. Similarly, there are customers who would be hesitant to give candid feedback in face-to-face in-store interviews. But once they have a chance to relay their feedback over the Internet, they find it easier to give their opinions with the necessary candor. In a similar manner, customers who would have viewed it as ‘too much work’ to give feedback through snail mail (or even through email) may be better inclined to give the feedback, if they are offered a chance to do so through an online survey.

The success of a web-based customer survey depends on how well designed it is. You therefore need to take some time to design the survey properly, before going ahead to launch it. In the process of designing a web-based customer survey, you will need to:

  1. Make a decision on the survey objectives: So the key question you need to ask yourself here is as to what you will be seeking to achieve through the survey. This is important, because you have to start with the end in mind, if at all you are to achieve any level of success in any endeavor. Customer survey objectives differ. You may find one business undertaking a customer survey to (just) find out whether customers are getting satisfied with whatever it is selling. You may find another business undertaking a customer survey to get suggestions from customers on how to improve on its merchandise/services. You may find yet another business undertaking a customer survey to simply show the customers that their views matter (you know, as part of a broader customer retention strategy)… So they are so many reasons as to why a business can launch a customer survey. You have to figure out why exactly, in your case, you are undertaking the survey. The decision you make in that regard will then tell you what the best way to craft and launch the survey is.
  2. Make a decision on the format of the survey: Will the survey take the form of questions that the customers are expected to give answers to? Or will the survey be one where customers are to be given a blank space to write about their shopping experiences? If you have opted for questions, what form would the questions take? Would you be opting for a survey where there are very many questions, or one with just a few questions? Will you be running the survey on a webpage that is part of your business’ website, or would you be setting up a separate website on which to run the survey? Those are some of the questions you need to ask yourself while making a decision on the format of the survey.
  3. Make a decision on how you are to get customers to participate in the survey: Will you, for instance, be including a message in the customers’ receipts, telling them to consider taking part in the survey? Or are you to run an advertising campaign, targeted at your customers, telling them to take part in the survey? Or would you be opting for a system where you have the checkout staff at your stores inviting the customers to consider taking part in the web-based survey? Will you be linking the survey to a sweepstakes drawing in order to get more people to take part in it? Or will you be offering discount codes to the customers who complete the survey? Those are some of the important considerations here.
  4. Create the customer survey webpage: You can have a webpage where the customers would be entering some details from their receipts (the receipts they obtained after shopping at your stores). Then, after entering the details from the receipts – and hence proving that they really are your customers – they can be served with the survey questions. The most important thing is to ensure that the survey webpage is one that encourages to continue with the survey, rather than one that discourages them from doing so. The webpage should be one that works well both on the traditional computing devices (desktop computers and laptops) and in mobile computing devices. This is important because inevitably some people, possibly majority of the people, will attempt to complete the web-based survey on their mobile devices.
  5. Undertake a pilot trial of the customer survey: This is an important part of the survey design process. The idea is to see how well the customers respond to the survey, and whether there are parts of the survey that need to be tweaked, before it is officially launched. You may involve a limited number of customers in the pilot trial.
  6. Act on the findings from the pilot trial of the customer survey: For instance, the pilot trial may reveal that some of the survey questions are ambiguous. So your bit there would be to come up with clearer survey questions. Or the pilot trial may reveal that many of the customers who start the survey don’t complete it. In this case, the action to take would be to consider shortening it or dealing with whatever other issues that are making the customers not complete the survey.
  7. Figure out how the survey findings are to be acted upon: This is another easily overlookable (yet critical) part of the survey design process. It is important to first make a decision on how the feedback received from the customers through the web-based survey is to be conveyed to the respective departments in the business. It is also important to consider empowering the various line managers to make the (sometimes difficult) decisions they will need to make, on basis of the feedback received from customers through the survey. If you don’t deal with these issues at the survey design stage, you will end up in a situation where you won’t know what to do with the feedback received from customers.

Filed Under: Customer Survey

Acting on Online Customer Survey Feedback

June 20, 2019 By Johnny

Businesses launch customer surveys with the objective of collecting feedback from customers. But as many come to learn, collecting feedback from customers is one thing. Actually acting on the feedback collected from customers through the online surveys is another challenge altogether. It is very easy for a business to collect a ton of feedback from customers through online surveys, only to end up at a loss on what exactly to do with the feedback. It soon becomes clear that collecting the feedback is the easier part. Acting on the feedback is the real challenge.

Making a commitment to act on the customer survey feedback

It is important for a business to have made the commitment, right from the outset, to act on whatever findings it gets from the online customer survey. Otherwise there is no point in undertaking the customer survey, if the intention to act on the feedback received through the survey is not there. The problem here is in the fact that acting on the survey findings may entail having to make some hard decisions. It may mean, for instance, having to overhaul the entire customer service department. It may mean having to hire more staff to serve the customers (which would come with some cost implications). In a nutshell, it may mean having to change important business processes. All these are difficult things. There is a strong temptation to let things remain the way they have always been. Yet if the customer survey reveals that the customers are dissatisfied with certain things, then those things just have to be changed – whatever it takes.

The commitment to act on the customer survey feedback has to come from all levels of the business. It is therefore important for all stakeholders in the business to know that it (the business) is undertaking a customer survey. Then it is important to get all the stakeholders to be ready to do whatever they will be called upon to do, in the wake of the feedback received from customers through the survey. Otherwise if you only inform the stakeholders later (after the survey) that you undertook a survey, and the survey findings indicate that they need to do ABC or XYZ… they may be hesitant on act on the findings. But if, beforehand, you had informed the various stakeholders in the business that you were undertaking a customer survey, and that they should be ready to act on the feedback hence obtained, the response is likely to be better.

Authenticating the feedback before acting on it

Some of the people giving feedback in the online customer survey may be ‘jokers’. Yet some of the things that need to be done, in the wake of the feedback they give, have far-reaching consequences. This state of affairs makes it necessary to authenticate the feedback received from customers in the online survey, before taking actions with far-reaching consequences. For instance, you may find quite a good number of customers indicating that the checkout process is too slow. But just before confronting the checkout staff and castigating them, it may be important to undertake some investigations, to see whether indeed they are slow. Only after ascertaining that the feedback received from customers is factual (and that indeed the checkout staff are slow) would you be in a position to act on that situation.

So you should ideally view the feedback received from customers through the online survey as basis to launch investigations. This is of course especially the case with negative feedback. You have to undertake investigations, covertly if possible, to find out whether the feedback is factual. Then if it is, you can proceed to take action on it straightway.

What if your investigations reveal that the feedback received from customers is not entire factual? Well, even in this case, you’d still need to do something about it. For instance, the feedback received from customers may be to the effect that your checkout staff are slow. Yet investigations reveal that the checkout process is being undertaken as fast as it can be. In this case, what you’d need to do is relay the feedback (as it is) to the checkout staff. So this would be a question of letting the checkout staff know that there are some customers who feel that they are not being as fast as they should be. So the expected action on their part would be to avoid things that may make the customers feel that they are being served slowly. Remember, the objective is not just to serve the customers well, but also to make them feel that they are being well served.

Improving business processes in line with online customer survey feedback

Where the authentication process reveals that the feedback received from customers is factual, the next course of action would be to improve business processes, to enhance customer satisfaction. For instance, if the feedback suggests that the checkout process is slow — and investigations reveal that indeed the checkout process is slow — there are several things that can be done. It may be a question of hiring more checkout staff. Or it may be a question of buying scanners for use at the checkout points, as opposed to having the checkout staff key in the checkout details – if only to speed things up. At yet another level, you may find that what you need to do is retrain the checkout staff, or redeploy them to other areas where they can be more effective… The most important thing is to ensure that the feedback received from customers doesn’t go in vain. The least you can do with it is let the staff members know that customers feel this or that way, so that the staff members can figure out what to do about it.

What to do with positive feedback

If the feedback received from customers through the online survey is of a positive nature, it basically means that the business should keep up with whatever it is doing right. This positive feedback too needs to be conveyed to the staff members and other stakeholders in the business. The objective is to get them to understand that the customers feel that ABC or XYZ is being done right, and that it should be kept that way – or done in an even better way.

Filed Under: Customer Survey

  • « Previous Page
  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Page 3
  • Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Why are Some People Hesitant to Participate in Web-Based Customer Surveys?

June 21, 2019 By Johnny

Why Web-Based Customer Surveys are Better Than Phone-Based Customer Surveys

June 21, 2019 By Johnny

5 Mistakes to Avoid While Running a Web-Based Customer Survey

June 20, 2019 By Johnny

How to Launch a Web-Based Customer Survey

June 20, 2019 By Johnny

How to Design a Web-Based Customer Survey

June 20, 2019 By Johnny

Recent Comments

    Categories

    • Customer Survey
    • Dollar General survey

    Copyright © 2020