One thing all businesses can agree on is the fact that customer satisfaction is essential to success. However, it can be difficult to gain trust and loyalty. This leaves businesses asking: how can I find out what customers truly want?
In most companies, the marketing department spends a lot of time evaluating market trends and trying to predict customer behavior. Instead of expending all that time and effort, why not go straight to the source and ask the customers themselves?
Leading marketers are aware that data-driven insights are gold when it comes to building marketing efforts. However, less than 40% of them are actually using customer feedback to help with their decisions.
In the past, there was a lot of time, effort, and cost involved in conducting consumer research. It could take several months of traditional research methods to get just a few simple answers regarding customer satisfaction.
We’ve come a long way since that time. Now, we have online survey tools, such as SurveyMonkey, Google Surveys, Typeform, SurveyHero, HubSpot, and QuestionPro.
These tools make it easy and cost-effective to get the answers you need quickly and easily. Plus, by sending these surveys out to your customers, you eliminate the guesswork when making business decisions. Below, we’ll look at 5 ways that you can use customer satisfaction surveys to make these decisions.
5 Ways to Use Customer Surveys to Make Business Decisions
Give Creative Team Something to Build on
As a business owner, you know that it can be a major and expensive endeavor to create a marketing campaign. You can use customer surveys to help give your creative team the confidence that they are heading in the right direction. You may even give them room to exercise more risk by creating surveys to test various versions of marketing efforts and gauging how your customers react.
Determine Where the Industry is Headed
You probably already know this- but in case you don’t, the digital world moves at a very fast pace. Therefore, it’s important to figure out whether the latest fad is just passing or if it’s going to be the new standard. Chances are that your digital team has a few thoughts about this. Allow them to put their thoughts to the test and get some data to support (or deny) their ideas.
This will also give you some insight into where the industry is headed. For example, the travel industry is always evaluating trends. For example, the insights team at Orbitz uses surveys to find out almost in real-time what their customers are thinking and feeling. They send out a question and have an answer in 24 hours.
Gain Insight into Your Audience
The key to making magic with your marketing efforts is knowing and understanding your audience. This means that you must know who your customers are and what they like. Customer satisfaction surveys allow you to gain insight into your target demographic, such as those who fit into a specific age group or live in a certain area. Of course, if you’re not sure who your target audience is, you can use surveys to help you determine that as well.
Learn More about Your Competition
There is more involved in consumer research than simply asking questions about your own brand/product/service. You can also learn more about your competition and the market you’re in. You can also gain some general insight into the industry as a whole through customer satisfaction surveys.
Gain Feedback on New Ideas
If you’re considering developing a new line or branching out with a new concept, customer surveys are a great way to find out how your customers feel about these new ideas. After all, moving in a new direction brings a good bit of risk. Customer surveys will help you determine if this new direction would be beneficial.
Conclusion
All businesses can agree that customer satisfaction is crucial to success. However, not all businesses are clear on how to find out how their customers feel about their brand, products, or services. This is where customer surveys come in. Surveys can be used to help businesses make their decisions- and since those decisions are based on customer feedback, chances are they can make decisions that will be viable for the business both now and in the future.
To learn more about marketing your small business, check out our What you need to know to market your small business article.
