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How to Increase Customer Satisfaction Using a Text Survey?

It takes brands an average of 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience. After all, it’s all about who puts up a 5-star service. And a text survey helps you increase customer satisfaction by gathering feedback on questions that otherwise go unanswered.

We all know that 97% of texts are read within 15 minutes of delivery. So, text surveys will get a higher response rate than any other method like email.

But a survey via text will only be helpful if you know which is the right question to ask at the right time during the customer journey. So, here we bring all answers to your queries in this comprehensive blog post on text surveys.

What is a Text Survey?

Text surveys are simple surveys that are based on a scale from 0-10. These surveys are sent out as text questions via SMS or email during various points in a customer journey. They are usually a set of simple questions, like

Would you like to refer JustCall to your friends and colleagues?

We hope that your issue has been resolved. How was your first experience with our service expert? Rate us on a scale of 1-5.

A survey via text helps companies and businesses gather customer feedback, leading to further design of customer service processes.

If text surveys bring in negative feedback, you get to know the loopholes in your service. Working on your minus points improves customer retention, lowers customer churn, and increases the chance of referrals.

Why are Customer Satisfaction Surveys so Important?

Customer Surveys are a truly powerful tool. Virtual customer service surveys pay attention to the human factor and are incredibly valuable. When conducted properly, a survey will give information like no other tool.

Here’s why a satisfaction survey is so important:

1. Surveys act as customer satisfaction meters.

2. Customers can freely express their opinions. The presence of a special feedback form or tab shows that the company takes customers’ opinions seriously. This greatly affects their attitudes toward a product.

3. Progressive monitoring is a must. With periodical surveys, you are able to keep track of demand changes. Tracking changes will help evaluate your progress.

4. A comparative analysis of people’s feedback makes you aware of your weak spots. You can accordingly prioritize which problems to focus on and ultimately solve them.

5. It’s a fact that happy customers return and repurchase. And in general, the more customers you have, the more goods and services you can sell.

How to Collect Customer Feedback Using Customer Service Text Survey?

In order to collect feedback using text surveys, you need to keep track of the customer journey.

By this, we do not mean that you keep following the customer. But you need to have an idea of when the customer feels much cared for or when they feel lost and confused with your service.

It is a good practice to send out automated SMS surveys or run SMS campaigns at multiple time points throughout the customer journey. But make sure the time is right.

Send the Surveys at The Right Time!

Give a lot of thought to the placement of your surveys over the course of the customer journey. It wouldn’t make sense to send a survey to someone who’s only just subscribed to your blog. Nor would it make sense to send one year after a customer stopped doing business with you.

Surveying at different stages helps improve customer satisfaction and hence retention.

When Do You Send a Customer Service Survey?

Send it after a lengthy interaction with one of your teams, a few weeks after purchase or onboarding, and a few times throughout the year to measure the customer’s happiness.

  • Surveys following a purchase – They reveal customer satisfaction at that particular moment and thus lay the base for a good relationship with those customers.
  • Periodical surveys – They discover how specific segments of your customers are experiencing your products at certain moments in time.
  • Ongoing surveys – They help you permanently take the pulse of your customer’s satisfaction and ensure you maintain high-quality standards.

Types of Customer Satisfaction Surveys

SMS Survey

SMS surveys are the most relevant tools for gathering customer feedback and increasing customer satisfaction. Almost everyone at every time of the day scrolls through a phone. Hence, SMS surveys get the maximum response rates.

With SMS surveys, you can gather feedback from a large number of people in a go by sending people a mobile survey via text. You can grab the levels of customer satisfaction at various critical time points throughout the customer’s journey.

You can run automated campaigns to send SMS surveys to:

  1. Patients, after they have had an appointment completed with a doctor
  2. Customers about the newly launched feature(s)
  3. Students about the new online bookstore
  4. Real estate clients about the recent visit to a plot, etc.

Email Survey

Email surveys are powerful feedback collection tools that comprise questionnaires. This can be as easy as an e-commerce site asking about the recent purchase made, like:

How likely are you to buy again from us?

When customers buy from you or avail of your services, they register their emails. Your company’s CRM gets all details saved. You can easily send surveys to these emails in one go.

In this way, quick and reliable feedback can be collected from the brand’s targeted audience.

text-survey

Post-Call Survey

Call centers and contact centers majorly depend on post-call surveys to gain valuable customer feedback soon after their interaction with agents on call.

Surveys are a good way to obtain the voice of the customer, but they should be timely, quick, and easy to respond to. Companies should utilize this feedback to adjust contact center procedures and improve the customer experience.

CSAT

Customer satisfaction (or CSAT) surveys are one of the most effective ways for your brand to keep a pulse on how customers are feeling.

CSAT, or customer satisfaction survey, measures a customer’s satisfaction with your products or services (unlike NPS, which measures customer loyalty). CSAT surveys consist of questions like:

How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the products/service you received?

Businesses should use a CSAT survey to measure whether or not their products and services are meeting customer expectations. If customers consistently rate an item as a 4 or 5, it’s a strong product you should promote.

CES

Customer Effort Score(CES) is a customer satisfaction metric that measures how much effort it takes to use your product or service. Or how easy it was for customers to have a problem solved by your service reps.

It asks customers to rate the ease of using products or services on a scale of “very difficult” or “very easy.”

You can send out a CES survey:

  1. Soon after a client approaches and makes a purchase with you.
  2. To get feedback on how satisfied customers are with the new user interface
  3. Soon after an interaction with your service agent or expert

NPS

An NPS, or Net Promoter Score, survey measures customer loyalty. They are meant to evaluate the likelihood of recommending a company/brand/ product to friends and acquaintances.

Respondents are offered a scale ranging from “I won’t recommend in any case” to “I would definitely recommend.”

Then, the interviewer divides them into three groups and calculates the index of both supporters and opponents of the brand.

What Is the Cost of Sending SMS Surveys?

The kind of surveys you send out and the software you use determine the cost of sending SMS surveys. The basic service of generating simple-response surveys and sending the survey links to customers begins at around $29 per month with response storage and analysis tools.

The cost also varies depending on the number of messages you want to send, as few software businesses charge a lower amount for the higher messages you send out.

SMS Survey Use Cases & the Right Survey Questions to Ask

The type of customer feedback surveys or SMS surveys depends on the use case of the particular business or company.

1. For a real-estate, the survey will have questions like,

How did you like the recent properties shared by Allen?

Would you like to book your next plot visit?

2. For a bicycle company, the survey questions may be like,

How did you like your recent bicycle purchase?

Would you like to register for the upcoming discount sale?

3. For an online book store, the survey can send out questions like,

Did you get the detective series you were looking for?

Would you like to buy the latest children’s books combo?

A few of the commonly used questions are listed below: 

  1. How often do you use the product or service?
  2. Any alternatives that you considered before purchasing the product?
  3. Does the product help you achieve your goals?
  4. Which latest features did you like in the product?
  5. How long have you been using the product?
  6. Any improvement(s) that you would like to see?
  7. Which product feature do you use most often in your day-to-day?
  8. Any roadblocks while using the product?
  9. How fruitful was your interaction with the agent?

5 Examples of SMS Feedback Surveys

There are several ways you can benefit from text surveys. The following are some use cases that we’ve come across recently.

1. Customer Engagement Text Message Survey

A good customer experience is highly correlated with company revenue growth and customer loyalty. A text message survey is a simple way to collect information about an experience or event.

For example, you can measure a Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) or Net Promoter Score (NPS) for a specific experience with your service or product.

You can also use automated surveys to gather information on the right channel at the right time for your audience.

2. Workshops and Events SMS Feedback Surveys

You can use a text message survey to collect feedback on your workshops and events to improve your offerings.

The participants can be given a number to text at the end of the workshop. They can provide qualitative feedback and an overall score via text by responding to a simple survey.

The information can be sent to a spreadsheet where you can view it instantly. You can organize and analyze it to understand the audience more effectively. 

3. Stay-in-Touch SMS Survey

Keeping in touch with a large customer base can be a challenging task. Don’t you agree?

A text survey is a simple yet effective way to stay connected with all your customers. Customers are the lifelines of your business, and understanding what they think about your products is of utmost importance.

You can use the SMS survey to ask questions about their experience with your service or product and get feedback regularly. This will help you in making important decisions about your business.

4. Text Message Poll or Voting SMS Survey

You can quickly receive and tally votes at scale using a text poll. For example, you can use an SMS survey to receive votes for the “people’s choice” award at your yearly conference.

This is an easy way to collect and tally votes from many participants and respond in real-time with text confirmation messages.

5. Market Research Survey Via Text

If you’re planning to enter a new market or launch a new service or product, conducting a text survey is an excellent way to collect information about your target audience. You can find out about their wants and needs, which will help you formulate effective business strategies.

A text message survey can also be used to ask questions about what the customers think of your product or anything else that’s essential to you.

Customer Satisfaction Survey Best Practices

Following are the SMS texting practices to keep in mind when sending out customer surveys.

1. Try to Keep it Short

Have you ever sat and answered a 20-minute-long survey? Probably, that has never happened. Similarly, you do not want a happy customer to get irritated or tired of answering the questions and lie or skip over the entire survey in due course.

Keeping your survey questions simple with limited words wins more answers. By keeping less, we mean staying away from unnecessary words and phrases.

“In customer survey questions, Less is More”

2. Keep Open-Ended Questions

Open-ended questions let customers blurt out their thoughts and experiences. It is a smart move to first open up with a short survey question like

“How did you like our first one-to-one expert opinion?”

You can follow this with an open-ended question, like,

“Why do you feel it this way?”

How can we improve your experience with the company?

Do you have any additional comments or feedback for us?

3. Use a Common Rating Scale Throughout

Keep consistency in the type of scale that you use during a customer survey. At the beginning of the survey, on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 denotes “Strongly Disagree,” then it should denote the lower negative metric throughout the survey.

Similarly, if a score of 5 denotes “The best” or “the most important,” then 5 should denote the upper positive response throughout.

Keeping a constant scale saves you from the confusion of conclusions and taking the wrong feedback.

Get Valuable Customer Feedback Using Text Survey

We hope that the above guide about text surveys will help you run smooth customer satisfaction surveys via text to gain insights into how your clients perceive your product or service.

The average click-through rate for a text message is 20-35%. With the feedback they provide, you can improve your product, your service, and the overall customer experience. This definitely will lead to lower churn, a higher level of customer loyalty, and hence more customer retention.

Still in doubt regarding your texting strategies? Get on a one-on-one call with our experts today!

With a foundational role at Saas Labs, Anand has been a key player in establishing the Product Management function and spearheading the launch of our Conversation Intelligence solution. His expertise in AI innovation guides both the strategic direction of the products and a team committed to excellence.

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