How can I create and conduct effective online customer surveys?

An effective customer survey is a great way of both getting to know your customers and learning about your own business and ways to improve it.  There are many ways you can conduct such a survey.

First, you must decide which method your survey will take: Email or web-based. An email is pretty much as you'd expect, whereas web-based is more of an instant pop-up survey, rather than a message sent to a customer's email inbox. Both are speedy and cost-effective, and can use images and sound files. Email surveys however are less flexible than web-based surveys and require a long list of email addresses you may not have. On the other hand, people often quit on web-based surveys half through and don't always satisfactorily identify themselves during their answers.

Decide on the Objectives of the Survey

There are six different questions to consider when setting up your survey:

1. What are its objectives?

2. Who is the target of your survey?

3. Are you asking the right questions (to generate yes/no answers), and in the right order?

4. Have you tested the survey yourself?

5. Do the customers know why you've contacted them - and what's their incentive to reply?

6. Are you actually going to act upon the results, no matter what?

For more details on how to set up a good customer survey, try SurveyMonkey or SurveyMethods.com. Or, why not watch this video: