We conducted our first "formal" customer survey last week. (I say "formal" because we've solicited TONS of customer feedback over the past 16 months, just not all at once and not with a $100 AMZN gift card up for grabs for a lucky participant!)
Here are some suggestions based on our experience:
- Get a blend of qualitative and quantitative data. Quantitative data is quick to gather and useful to track over time. Qualitative data provides actionable insight and frames the all-important follow up calls. You're doing yourself a disservice if you don't try to get a balance of both data types.
- Ask the same question in multiple ways. For example, we asked customers to tell us what Argyle "does well", "does not so well", and "doesn't do but should start doing". These questions are just different ways to solicit product feedback. But by asking the question from different angles, we were able to get a suprisingly diverse set of responses. And we were able to easily identify trends across the questions.
- Ask questions that extend beyond your product. For example, we asked our customers to list other marketing software products that they use in addition to Argyle Social. This information will help us have more relevant sales conversations and plan future product development projects.
- Follow up with your participants. This requires a lot of work...but is also a HUGE opportunity. In my experience, nothing wins hearts and minds like getting feedback from a customer, contacting the customer to discuss the feedback, addressing it in your product/service, and the closing the loop. (Nevermind that this is a great way to confirm/rejigger product development priorities!) I'm doing lots of calls with our customers and our new account manager - Laura Coggins - later this week. I'm really looking forward to the conversations!
Anything else to add?