Increase customer survey response rates in 5 simple steps

by: Matt Smith

You probably already use surveys to track your financial institution’s performance or to analyze your market, but are you really getting the most out of them? Today, most surveys are overlooked by consumers, with low completion rates preventing companies from getting the information they need. There are ways to change this, however, and create effective surveys benefit both you and your customers.

Surveys not only allow you to track your progress, but they also help you retain current customers and increase customer satisfaction. When a customer receives the chance to give feedback, they feel that the business actually values their opinion. This doesn’t mean, however, that they are willing to complete the survey. If you want to create surveys that will provide you with the important information you need, and also actually get completed, consider these five simple tips:

1. Keep your surveys short

While sometimes asking 50 questions in a survey may be critical to achieve the responses desired, keeping your survey short and concise is the best way to improve the completion rate. Further, with a shorter survey, you should blatantly state– to set the expectation–how long the survey is expected to take, and shorter time commitments are better. The longer your survey takes to complete, the higher your chances of people dropping out and not completing the survey. You must keep in mind that while you may have a lot of questions you really want to ask your customers, they all likely have busy lives and can’t—nay, won’t—spend long taking a survey. Most survey participants are only willing to spend up to 10 minutes completing a survey, and SurveyMonkey research shows that significant abandonment rates will occur after 11 minutes. A one- to five-minute long survey is recommended and likely to generate the most responses.

 

 

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