3 Ways Surveys & Private Feedback Can Help You Improve Your Business, Prevent Problems, & Grow

You probably know how important reviews are to marketing your local business. (And if you don’t, you might want to start here.) In addition to boosting your brand and helping new customers find you, reviews can offer you valuable insight into your business. So if reviews are so awesome, why send surveys? 

Here are a few stats to kick things off:

• 84% of customers say the experience they provide is just as important as the product or service.
• 73% of customers expect business to understand their needs and expectations.
• 67% of customers cite a bad experience as their reason for churn.

1. Surveys can fill in some crucial gaps

Let’s say you’re a local boutique. You send your customers automated review requests after transactions, and you’re getting lots of new reviews, but most of them are about the products purchased and not about the store setup or the customer service. Sending your customers short surveys can help you understand their experience with areas of your business they might not be addressing in reviews—areas that are just as important to your success.

2. Surveys can help you nip negative reviews in the bud

Even though bad reviews often contain useful information, no one likes getting them. Sending surveys can help you understand and meet customers’ needs and expectations before you fail to meet them. This not only helps you provide those particular respondents with a great experience, it helps you keep your finger on the pulse of trends and sentiments in the general public, so new customers are wowed from the get-go.

3. Surveys can help you predict business growth

Sending standard benchmark surveys like Net Promoter Score (NPS) can help you understand how likely customers are to recommend your business to others. The NPS calculation buckets survey respondents into the following groups:

• Promoters (NPS score 9–10). These are repeat customers and champions of your business who will refer others and drive growth.
• Passives (NPS score 7–8). These are satisfied or indifferent customers who may be easily wooed by competitors.
• Detractors (NPS score 0–6). These are unhappy customers who can hurt your growth through the grapevine.

Subtract your percentage of detractors from your percentage of promoters to get your Net Promoter Score, which will help you understand what kind of growth your business can expect to see.

Ready to find out what you don’t know about your business? The Swell Survey tool makes it easy to send simple text message surveys your customers will actually complete. You can also respond to surveys and chat with customers directly inside Swell, and a do-it-all dashboard helps you visualize and analyze the data you collect.

Learn more about Swell Survey here.