There’s no better place to turn for important information on how to run a more profitable store than your customers. And a good way to get this information is through a simple, informal survey.
With a survey consisting of four to six strategically developed questions, you can come away with a wealth of information on several critical topics:
- What customers want that they’re not getting
- What they don’t what but are getting
- How regular of a customer they are (which will tell you to some extent how much weight to give to their comments)
It’s often the case that what we don’t know can hurt us the worst. Opening up to receiving possibly negative feedback isn’t always easy, but it can lead to greater success in any business environment. In other words, until you know what the problem is, you can’t fix it.
The majority of your customers won’t participate in the survey, and that’s fine. You can gauge the whole by observing the few. For instance, if you get regular surveys saying the participant wishes you had the 20-ounce version of a particular drink, you can be fairly certain that many other customers who don’t take the survey have the same wish.
Including a date and time on the survey helps in the event of bad service complaints. You’ll be able to determine who was working at that time and zero in on figuring out where the problem lies.
(It’s an understood rule in business that for every one person who takes the time to complain about something, there could be 10 – or 100 – others who have the same complaint but don’t voice it. For this reason, we should always pay attention to customer complaints.)
Next week, we’ll offer some sample questions you could use in a survey to get important feedback from your customers. Plus we’ll share a few tips that will encourage a higher percentage of your customers to participate in the survey.