Your product doesn’t matter.
Don’t believe it?
Let’s talk about the giants to help you understand.
Sony and Microsoft sell gaming consoles with similar performance levels. But the PS5 has outsold the Series X at every turn. Why?
Because Sony offers a better customer experience—higher quality games, attractive platform exclusives and monthly free offerings for its subscribers (PS Plus members.)
In short, Sony knows it can’t compete with Microsoft on sheer product volume. So, it strategically leveraged its customer experience insights to draw in more users.
Woorise is the easiest way to create lead generation landing pages, forms, quizzes, surveys, viral giveaways and popups to help you grow your business from a single platform. Explore templates
You can do the same in your field. The best bit? All it takes are well-designed surveys.
This article will tell you everything you need to know. Let’s dive right in!
6 Survey types
Surveys are perhaps the most effective method for collecting customer experience insights. They let you pose targeted questions, receive unfiltered responses (at least in most cases), and are relatively easy to deploy.
Here are a few survey types that you can use to collect customer feedback:
1. Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys
Data from a 2023 study shows that 50% of customers switch to a competitor after just one bad experience. If it’s more than one instance, that number goes up to 80%.
That’s where CSAT studies can help. These surveys offer insight into immediate consumer satisfaction levels and are especially useful in tracking the success of specific events.
For example, wondering how happy users are with your software right after its launch? Use a CSAT questionnaire.
Regardless, when you design a CSAT survey, it’s best if you:
- Prioritize one query topic (Product Quality/Service Standards/Response Time)
- Follow up with an open-ended/MCQ question to let customers explain themselves
Here’s what a focused CSAT study looks like:
If you’re wondering about the instances where CSAT research is helpful, some good examples are:
- A couple of days after purchasing (earlier if it’s a digital product)
- A few hours into signing up for your platform
- When users are actively engaging with your app (use a simple, unintrusive pop-up)
- Immediately after a support call/chat or ticket resolution
- During post-checkout activity (also helps you leverage cross-selling opportunities)
As a rule, you’d want to conduct a CSAT survey when the experience is fresh in the customer’s mind.
2. Net promoter score (NPS) surveys
NPS surveys use a similar format to the CSAT variant. It has one primary query (Will you recommend X), followed by open-ended questions. The only difference is that an NPS study provides insight into a customer’s long-term relationship with your brand.
Generally, such surveys work best on a quarterly or bi-annual basis. But it’s also not a bad idea to push an NPS study before a particular business action.
For instance, you can request one before you create a marketing campaign plan. That’ll let you identify shifts in customer preferences and adjust your efforts accordingly.
Even so, some things are standard in all NPS questionnaires. This includes the following:
- Detractors (respondents unwilling to recommend) will assign you a score of 0-6
- Anything between 7-8 indicates passiveness (don’t factor in these responses)
- Promoters of your brand give you between 9-10
Once you’ve gathered the scores, use the formula below to calculate the result.
3. Customer effort score (CES) surveys
Studies show that customers who experience seamless channel transitions during support interactions are 80% more likely to stick to a brand. Put simply, the easier it is for buyers to become involved with specific actions, the better your chances are for retaining them.
A CES survey helps you gauge precisely that. Wondering if your sign-up process requires too much effort? Send a CES questionnaire to your users and let them rate it on a 0-10 scale.
In some cases, CES studies also help identify issues in other related areas.
For example, a low score for app simplicity/usage indicates confusing in-app walkthroughs. This is especially useful in B2B product marketing or the SaaS industry. After all, the easier it is to use a product/service, the higher the probability of someone buying it.
Now, there are three popular response formats for such surveys. They are:
- A Likert scale of 0-10 (0 being ‘very difficult’ & 10 being ‘very easy’)
- A straightforward questionnaire with the ‘agree/disagree’ option
- A visual/emoji rating system (😃/😐/🙁)
To gain measurable customer experience insights, it’s best to stick to the Likert scale. That makes it easy to analyze the results.
Speaking of which, here’s the formula to calculate your CES.
4. Goal completion rate (GCR) surveys
Similar to CES studies, GCR surveys track customer actions. The difference lies in the channels they monitor.
Where CES covers physical and digital customer interactions, GCR focuses on online channels. In short, it examines the reason why site/app visitors take (or, don’t take) certain actions on your platform.
For instance, are people abandoning their carts midway through checkout? GCR surveys can tell you why. Pop-up tabs that show up the minute a site detects user inactivity are another great example.
That said, since customer goals are subjective, there’s no standardized format for designing a GCR questionnaire. Still, it’d be best if you:
- Pace your triggers (1-1:30 minutes for site inactivity)
- Offer multiple response options (MCQs + open text fields)
- Incorporate a user-initiated form (‘Can’t find what you’re looking for? Tell us why’)
- Avoid using it on the homepage or in the initial funnel stages
- Always ask for contact information (lets you reach out to failed prospects later)
It also helps to conduct CES and GCR surveys together. That gives you a comprehensive overview of all customer-related actions.
5. Custom surveys
Studies show that 85% of customers want to share feedback on products and services. And sometimes, pre-designed forms don’t capture that data effectively.
That’s where custom surveys come in.
These are modified questionnaires that shed light on hard-to-uncover customer experience insights. However, that doesn’t mean that they cover unrelated query topics. They are still hyper-focused but may target two or more CX elements.
These surveys also blend multiple response options/question formats. For example, they can include open-ended questions, comment or text fields, a rating system, etc.
To understand this better, here’s a custom survey template that examines CSAT and NPS while factoring in audience demographics.
As for query topics, they can be anything—ask your audience their opinion on product features. You could even request feedback on ad perception and popularity to streamline customer acquisition costs. The choice is yours.
This flexibility is why custom surveys are so popular. Some other benefits they provide are:
- Offer Information on overlooked CX issues (especially with open-ended responses)
- Help collect qualitative insights from long-time customers
- Let you analyze multiple CX touchpoints and ditch a binary/restricted perspective
- Has higher response rates when tailored to consumer preferences
- Allow you to target niche CX aspects across specific audience segments
On a broader note, custom surveys are perhaps the most versatile option here. You can incorporate them into your CSAT research, NPS studies and CES forms.
6. Visual ratings
You already know what visual ratings are. You’ve seen them in customer support interactions, product reviews, and so on.
But if you need a refresher, here’s what the typical visual rating looks like:
As you’d have already guessed from that image, visual ratings are:
- Intuitive and easy to execute
- Often the fastest way to collect consumer feedback
- Easily understood by your buyers (helps avoid low completion rates)
- Universally recognized and, therefore, offer significantly high response rates
Regardless, its benefits can also be a detractor in some cases. For one, a visual survey will never offer detailed customer insights. They tell you whether a problem exists and not the actual reason behind it.
To get around this, consider using them only with AI-assisted customer service channels. This can include chatbots, self-service assistants, or automated support responses. If nothing else, that’ll at least help you review potential problems in your automation strategy.
7 Types of survey research methods
You rely on data in business for a simple reason; it helps you make informed decisions. The more information you have, up to a point, the higher the chance you’ll make the right decision. You can apply that simple insight of more information equals smarter decision-making to marketing, customer service, product development, or any other sector of your business.
There are many ways to gather data for your business. Too many to cover comprehensively in a single article, that’s for sure!
In this section will focus on several survey research methods. You’ll discover the pros and cons of each approach and learn the best time to use them in your outreach strategy.
1. Online surveys
Online surveys are probably the most popular and widely used research method, certainly by small and medium-sized businesses. The main benefits of online surveys are threefold:
- Easy to run: there are lots of online survey platforms available. That gives you plenty of freedom to design an interesting survey and embed it however and to an extent, wherever you want.
- Easy to Analyze: the same software platforms will present the data nicely. That’s great for presenting your findings and analyzing the results.
- Cheap or almost free: you can run an online survey on a tiny budget. Assuming you have an email list or a site with lots of visitors, you should get respondents.
Lowering the cost and barrier to entry means many businesses manage online surveys independently. That’s a good thing. Below is an example of what an online survey may look like:
If you decide to run an online survey independently, take the time to research proper data collection methods. That’s a general thing to keep in mind for any survey research method on this list.
While online surveys are great, they do have their limitations. One of the biggest issues you’ll have is getting people to fill out your survey. Adding a survey to your site without context will result in a low number of respondents.
Ideally, you need to funnel people to your survey.
When asking people to fill in an online survey, you should always:
- Explain the benefits for the respondent
- Share how long it will take to complete
- Share a link to your survey
If you find it difficult to run your online survey independently, you can always turn to a consulting company to run it for you. Alternatively, there are sites where you can list your survey for free or pay the business for a certain number of respondents.
Overall, online interviews are a great way to get a sense of market or customer sentiment.
It’s important to note that acting and making changes in your processes and products based on data you collect from surveys is one of the things most companies running surveys forget to do. According to a recent study only 17% of companies act on customer insights they collect.
Don’t forget to actually make changes or draw conclusions based on the data you work so hard to collect.
2. In-person surveys
If you want a more personal approach, try the face-to-face survey. Face-to-face interviews are a great survey research method. They are a good way to gain deep insights from the respondent rather than general insights into market trends.
With a face-to-face survey, it’s easier to gain an overall impression of the respondent.
You can pick up things from the tone of voice and facial expressions. You’re also more likely to get longer answers, plus you get to ask follow-up questions. Finally, with each survey you conduct, you’ll gain insights into how to improve your approach for the next time.
As with each of the survey research methods on this list, there are limitations to face-to-face surveys. The most obvious problem is the sample size. The more face-to-face surveys you do, the more time it will take you and the more expensive the research will become.
Another issue you’ll run into is keeping track of responses and analyzing data. Whereas online surveys track everything for you automatically, you’ll need to do this manually with in-person surveys. If you bring a tablet with you to your interviews, you can use Google Sheets as a database for tracking qualitative and quantitative responses and then visualize that data using Sheets’ charts and graphs features.
If your sample is highly targeted, consider using face-to-face surveys. For instance, such surveys might be the better option if you want to determine your staff’s perception of your brand. But if you want to know your customers’ perception of your brand, online surveys may be your best bet since that’s a larger sample.
3. Focus groups
A focus group is a small group of people you get together to discuss a particular topic or a product. One group typically has five to ten people. The discussion is often facilitated by a moderator who gauges the group’s reaction and collects responses.
If you want to run a focus group, you should make sure your moderator will remain neutral throughout the discussions. They shouldn’t ask leading questions that may influence the answers of members of the group.
But how can you ensure the neutrality of your moderator if humans are inherently biased? You can’t. But you can at least make them act like they are during focus group discussions for the sake of the study. Brief them and make them understand your research goal. The person you assign to be a moderator should also have the following traits and characteristics:
- They can listen attentively with sensitivity.
- They are someone members of the group can relate to but at the same time, someone who exudes authority. For example, a male moderator is more appropriate if members of the group are males discussing sexual harassment in the workplace.
- They have adequate knowledge of the topic being discussed.
- They believe everyone has something to offer in the discussion.
Focus groups are one of the more expensive research methods. Companies typically pay $400 to $600 to each participant. Then there’s the amount you pay a trained moderator should you decide to hire one.
Focus groups can be hard to organize. You need to collect a group of people together and get them in one place. Though, video conferencing tools like Zoom or Whereby mean you can run a focus group remotely nowadays.
Focus groups are great for getting detailed impressions from a representative group. If you want to look at customer behavior, attitudes, and even at perceptions of processes, this is a great method for you.
You don’t need to be an offline company to use a focus group.
Fact of the day for you: Twitter used focus groups to come up with their platform. From the focus group discussions, they found people didn’t like Facebook’s cluttered news feed. They used that insight to come up with a more streamlined news feed for Twitter.
4. Panel sampling
Panel sampling involves randomly choosing a group of people to be part of a panel that takes part in a study over time. Panel samples allow researchers to study changes within the population, your customer base, or changes in individual people.
Companies, for instance, use them to generate qualitative data on customer experience as the product develops over time. If you want to track customer happiness over time, you can use panel sampling as well.
Panel sampling is a research method used more by sociologists than businesses. One of the major problems with panel sampling is attrition. It’s hard to keep the same people involved in your study over a period of months, or potentially longer.
Then there’s the fact that members of a panel tend to stick to the attitude or position they showed or expressed right from the start. So, they can end up misrepresenting the general population which they were supposed to represent in the first place. The general public’s attitudes and opinions, after all, are more likely to change over time because of external and internal factors.
5. Telephone surveys
Telephone interviews are a popular and widely used survey research method. Here are three good reasons why companies use telephone surveys:
- Targeting: you can run surveys targeting a particular demographic of a population
- Sample Size: it’s possible to gather a lot of data in a short time period
- Cost: it’s affordable. Assuming you have access to relevant contact information
Telephone surveys are often used to gauge customer satisfaction or get a sense of trends. They’re effective because they combine some of the automated benefits of online surveys with some of the personal benefits of in-person surveys.
If you see a poll by Pew, Gallup, or any other big polling firms, there’s a good chance that the data was gathered from telephone surveys. Telephone polling is used a lot all over the world around elections.
If you have an idea for an interesting study, it could be worth contacting a polling company to conduct some research for you. A good study with some interesting insights could be the hook you need for a good PR story.
Thanks to Voice over IP (VoIP) technology, it’s a lot cheaper to run telephone surveys than it used to be. All you need is a VoIP phone service with features like call recording, call queues, and call routing. With that said, if you don’t have the in-house manpower to run a phone survey yourself, you’ll probably want to look at outsourcing this to an agency with a VoIP system and a proven track record.
6. Mail-in survey
Mail-in surveys are mailed to respondents by post. They’re relatively inexpensive, and you can target a large geographical area. According to the National Public Research, a medium-scale mail survey can cost at least $5,000. That’s far less than the $10,000 to $15,000 you’ll need at the very least for a telephone survey, for example.
Response rates for mail-in surveys are also surprisingly high compared to other survey research methods. According to the latest benchmark report on surveys, mail-in surveys have a response rate of 50%. It just goes to show that you shouldn’t overlook traditional marketing channels.
The high response rates may have to do with the fact that respondents can answer the survey at their own pace. Because respondents more or less have all the time in the world, they can give comprehensive answers to the questions. They can be honest with their opinions as well since people are typically more comfortable expressing what they think and feel in writing.
With mail-in surveys, however, follow-up questions are not possible. That’s why your questionnaire design should be good from the get-go. If your questions were vague from the start, and you didn’t get the answers you needed, you’ll have just wasted your time and effort in administering the survey. You’ll have wasted the respondent’s time, too.
7. Kiosk surveys
The final and more niche option for gathering survey feedback is by using a kiosk survey. This is a survey on a computer screen located in physical locations such as offices, stores, lobbies, and hospitals. Kiosk survey research gathers instant feedback for a product or service.
Kiosk surveys are a good way to connect with local shoppers and residents. If you run a local business, it might be worth investing in this survey research method. It’s one way to get real-time feedback from your customers about their experience with your brand. You can then use the results of your survey to make the necessary adjustment to your strategies.
These types of surveys are becoming more and more popular at networking and business conferences. For example, a brand may set up a kiosk survey at their booth to gather reviews for their G2 or Capterra profiles.
It’s time to get some feedback
When gathering customer experience insights through surveys, it can be tempting to go overboard.
A common mistake most people make is to send surveys too frequently or focus on a range of topics for their questionnaires.
But remember: volume doesn’t always translate to accuracy.
More importantly, always use different survey types in tandem with each other to get a complete picture of your customer’s needs and preferences. For instance, CSAT and NPS forms go hand in hand. GCR and CES studies work the same way.
Finally, always set clearly defined objectives. Know what you want from your audience, understand your metrics and, only then, execute.
