Decades ago, marketers preferred conducting consumer surveys using paper questionnaires or face-to-face interviews. These modes proved to be highly cumbersome for those in-charge, giving way to online Consumer Surveys which are currently supremely popular.
What is a Consumer Survey?
Consumer Survey is a source to obtain information about consumer satisfaction levels with existing products and their opinions and expectations regarding new products and services.
For years now, Consumer Surveys have been instrumental in providing a platform for the clientele to opine about an organization’s products or roadmap.
These surveys are key sources of crucial information from the consumers which in turn can heavily impact a company’s overall performance.
Consumer survey should ideally be a systematically developed procedure by the marketers to garner insights in real-time. Satisfaction levels among the consumer database can be measured by asking the right questions, answers of which can be analyzed to create strategies for improvement. Product consumer satisfaction should be inline with the overall consumer satisfaction which can be established by analyzing the answers received from the surveys.
Consumer survey templates
Customer Satisfaction Survey Questions Templates: Customer Satisfaction Surveys contain questions, examples, and samples for organizations to measure customer satisfaction. These surveys measure customer experiences and project the degree of satisfaction with the organization’s products/services.
Voice Of The Customer Survey Questions Templates: Voice of Customer survey templates consist of evaluation questions that can help an organization to gain opinions and feedback for measuring the voice of the customer. These templates can be edited according to the applicability and target audience to receive better results.
Product Survey Questions Templates: Product survey templates created by experienced marketers and offer tried and tested questions that an organization can implement to gain insights about products.
Service Evaluation Survey Questions Templates: Customer service is the backbone of an organization. Timely updates on the performance of customer service executives can help an organization to maintain the quality of service they offer. Organizations can edit these templates as per implementation to gather useful data from the clientele.
Learn more: Consumer Survey Template
What is the consumer survey method?
Consumer Survey Method is a mode of collecting information from potential consumers using various mediums. There are four consumer survey methods:
- Written Surveys are used when a researcher intends to collect complete information for the consumers and there is scope for them to distribute these written surveys effectively. Written surveys should be kept concise so that consumers do not hesitate to fill them out. In case detailed information is to be extracted, questions should be carefully curated so that feedback is easily obtained. Written surveys can be sent to a sample of randomly selected individuals and responses can be analyzed to generalize it to the entire population. Usually used to gather information about sensitive issues as respondents can take these surveys home and provide feedback at their convenient time. For medium to large organizations, these surveys are key to reach every target location.
- Telephonic Surveys are conducted by calling consumers to gather feedback and opinions about their experience with the organization’s products or type of products/services which will definitely be successful. Volunteer surveys are generally carried out by preparing a phone bank where a group of people gather to answer a survey. The procedure for a telephonic survey is that the caller will explain the purpose of the survey in brief and ask for the permission of the receiver to ask questions. These surveys are easy to start, cost-effective, and simple to keep a note on the responses.
- Online Surveys include a survey developed using survey software such as QuestionPro and sent to the respondents using mediums such as email, social media, or embedded on the website. No special assistance is required to create and send out these surveys. The consumer results received using online surveys can be monitored in real-time through a central dashboard. These surveys are also extremely cost-effective and efficient in reaching consumers from every location in the world. On the basis of the target audience, these surveys can be designed to be either very specific in approach or can include a wide range of questions. Logic depending on consumer’s answers can be configured to get the best results. These surveys are user-friendly as they can have a progress bar for the respondents to know the survey level they are at, mandatory questions can be highlighted, etc.
- Focus Groups might not be conventionally considered to be a consumer survey method but is an integral source of data collection from the target audience. Focus groups are a representative group of individuals who exhibit the same characteristics as most of the population. Ideally, 6 to 10 people form this focus group. A mediator is appointed to supervise the discussion which usually lasts for 60-90 minutes. The role of a mediator is to give the discussion direction and prompt new ideas to discussion during the session.
Consumer survey question examples
Consumer survey questions can be classified into four major categories: Psychographic, Demographic, Consumer Convenience and Purchasing Patterns.
- Psychographic Consumer Survey Question Examples:
- Share with us your interests/hobbies
- Other questions which help in understanding consumer’s psychographics
- Demographic Consumer Survey Question Examples:
- What is your age?
- Please share your gender.
- What is your family income?
- What do you do for a living?
- What is your educational qualification?
- Where do you reside?
- Consumer Convenience Question Examples:
- What are the features that you look for from a product X?
- What are the type of advantages that you hope a product offers?
- What are your requirements for which you are buying this product?
- Do you hope this product eases your life in more than one ways?
- Purchasing Pattern Consumer Survey Question Examples:
- Who is in charge of making purchase decisions in your household?
- Do you buy products from a store or online?
- How frequently do you intend this product X?
- Have you set a budget for this purchase?
- If yes, how much?
- Are you really eager to purchase this product
Consumer survey research
The reason behind the success of most large organizations is the fact that they are dependent on their consumer database. This consumer database provides a pool of constant feedback so that the organizations keep making progress. Successful enterprises conduct regular consumer surveys to collect constant feedback and get actionable customer insights using robust customer experience survey software. Products and services must be aligned with consumer expectations and for that, constant consumer survey research is a must!
Aspects of Consumer Survey Research:
- Recruit an effective online panel from all sources such as communities, social media, etc.
- Monitor the quality of selected panel members.
- Panel member characteristics are filtered according to their personalities, demographics, psychographic factors.
- Send out the survey to the panelists and analyze feedback in real-time.
- Lucrative rewards for the panelists so that they stay motivated to be a part of the consumer survey research panel.
Pros of Consumer Survey Research:
- Consumer survey research can provide insightful information about consumer demographics such as age, gender, income etc.
- Factors that prompt consumers to make a specific purchase.
- Shopping patterns of most of the population.
- Is there scope for a new product/service in the market Will the new product/service be successful in a highly competitive market (If that is a case!)
- Customer awareness about the organization’s products in comparison with others in the market.
Consumer survey strategies can either be created right from the bottom or reference from other surveys can be taken to obtain awesome results!
LEARN ABOUT: Consumer Decision Journey
Consumer survey tool or software
Using a consumer tool or platform such as QuestionPro CX can aid your efforts in conducting and managing your customer experience (CX) and customer satisfaction (CSAT) questionnaires. Here are five reasons why using the QuestionPro CX software is advantageous for your organization.
Quick and hassle-free
Setting up and conducting surveys is quick and hassle-free. The platform also comes with a library of readymade customer survey templates that you can use with or without customization. You can make questions and survey design changes as you see fit and to resonate with your brand.
Customizable dashboards
Analyzing the data that you gather from customer surveys is essential to refine your customer processes at various touchpoints. You need to share that data will all the departments and functions to bridge any gap areas. The tool lets you customize your dashboards, assign role-based access, and share with relevant colleagues.
Promoter amplification
Use the platform to engage with your promoters by creating and implementing customer experience. Using promoter amplification, turn your promoters into brand advocates. Studies show that consumers that have had a positive brand experience are 77% more likely to promote your brand to their family, friends, and colleagues.
Detractor recovery
Detractors are a high churn risk and will switch to your competitor’s brand, given the right opportunity. You need to follow-up with detractors, address their issues to contain customer churn. This is what we refer to as detractor recovery. You can use the QuestionPro customer experience platform to uncover trends and patterns amongst promoters and replicate them to elevate your CX.
Revenue weighted NPS
The Net Promoter Score lets you measure customer loyalty and is done by asking customers a question right after a recent transaction via a survey. What many brands fail to take into account are the various consumer profiles. Organizations stand to lose a lot more if they fail to capitalize on the power of revenue-weighted NPS.
With the QuestionPro CX tool, you can use revenue as a metric to anchor and weigh your brand’s NPS.
