Consumer Surveys: Determining your business strengths and weaknesses from the perspective of your customersConsumer Surveys:

Obtaining quality customer feedback can be difficult for businesses. Some customers will be less than honest in face to face feedback with businesses because they don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. Online feedback often seems like consumers either are super supporters or may have an axe to grind. What can a business do to gain insights from their customers that are actionable and create a better consumer environment?

A simple consumer survey can help you determine what really matters to your customers, ways you can improve, areas of strength, and potential points of emphasis with staff. A low-tech survey comes in two basic varieties; a secret shopper or a randomized survey for active customers.

Secret shopper surveys are generally arranged by the business through a third party (like Emporia Main Street). The third party will work with the business to generate a list of questions that can provide insights into the customer perceptions of the businesses activities. The advantage of a secret shopper is that neither the business owner or the staff knows when they are being shopped and surveyed to receive feedback. Generally, the secret shopper results are distilled into a singular report for use by the business. If you are interested in utilizing secret shoppers, please contact Emporia Main Street.

A randomized survey for active customers asks for feedback from your consuming public while they are engaged with your business. The surveys are generally shorter and more targeted for specific pieces of information. You may want to focus on customer greeting, for example, instead of multiple elements of the consumer experience, and then rotate through other topics in future consumer surveys. Often they come with some sort of “reward” for participation that can be used during the next visit. It’s important that you have some sort of neutral “feedback box” that allows consumers to feel like their suggestions are anonymous, otherwise your feedback may be skewed. You may not want to provide a survey to every customer in every situation (thus the “randomized” nature of the process), but you do want to have the ability to record feedback when it is useful and appropriate.

What types of questions should you ask in a survey? The questions may vary from business to business, but the following are some question category examples:

Storefront quality- Obtaining information about cleanliness, curb appeal, window displays, and other aesthetic elements can help businesses determine the quality of their first impression from the consumer’s perspective.

How did you find us?- Asking questions about how consumers know to use your business can help you make more targeted media investment decisions, or it could highlight issues with your online presence. This type of question obviously doesn’t apply to secret shopper surveys.

Customer greeting- Few things are more awkward for a customer than a poor (or absent) customer greeting. A bad introduction will taint the rest of the customers experience. Questions pertaining to when the customer was greeted and the quality of the greeting create opportunities for staff training.

Business layout- The consumer perception of your internal environment may encourage changes in layout, updated aesthetics, or point to some “to do list” items that need to get done.

Products/services provided- Product and service requests can get a little tricky. There are customers that will ask for unique items that don’t have a substantial market and could lead to unprofitable offerings. There are services that simply don’t fit within a business mission or require additional insurance/licensing that aren’t worth the marginal sales/traffic gain. However, when you can utilize your actual market representatives to help you scout product and service offerings it can help your business remain “fresh” in the mind of consumers and show that you are responsive to your customers wants/needs.

Sales/register experience- When people give you money for goods and/or services, you want them to feel good about the transaction. Was the transaction prompt and seamless? Were all questions answered? What was the staff demeanor like during the transaction?

Closing statements- What is the last impression of the customer as they are leaving the business? What is your staff doing to ensure repeat traffic?

Overall thoughts- Providing a general section for people to communicate their thoughts can provide helpful feedback or kudos for ownership/staff. Providing some sort of reward applied to a future visit can make people feel good about making suggestions.

If you are interested in collecting customer feedback, please contact Emporia Main Street! We may have tools that can help you gain insights from outside perspectives.