Survey Your Way to Success: Why Creating a Culture of Customer Feedback is Critical

I haven’t eaten anything crunchy since I went keto.

On the other hand, I regularly consume a stick of grass-fed butter by lunchtime…something I never imagined would be considered “good for me” while I was pounding bags of Snackwells in the fat-phobic 90’s.

Nabisco, if you are reading this, I got this image of Snackwells from a site called HiLoClipArt. I’ll admit, it doesn’t sound hella legit.

So when my favorite keto-friendly, superfood bread company sends me a survey about CHIPS you know I can’t wait to share all my thoughts and prayers about being able to get my hands on my favorite snack food and still live within my new eating guidelines.

The thing - okay, one of the things - I love about Uprising Foods is how often they send me surveys about their current product lines, the buying and shipping process, and what they are considering for the future.

I love it because I know companies that survey their customers are more likely to stay in business. Having a culture around customer feedback allows companies to gather pertinent data so they know where to put their resources (or where to pull back) or what aspects of their sales process is a pain in the behind.

Big companies do this all the time. They use all the data that comes in from customer satisfaction scores to drive initiatives that set them up for big wins either financially or in terms of improving a critical aspect of the customer experience.

But as Adrian L. Brady Cesana points out in his book. The Four CX Pillars, “not enough companies - specifically small, growth-based businesses - do enough to make collecting customer feedback a core focus area to build a loyal customer base early on.”

Having a feedback framework in place can give you exactly what you need to create memorable customer experiences. In the Experience Economy, this sort of differentiation is often the only real advantage you have over your competitors.

And customers - your customers- are used to being spoiled by the big boys.

The truth is: if you, as a small business owner, aren’t being proactive in collecting and assessing customer feedback you are essentially hobbling your growth potential.

Because the good news is small businesses are infinitely more agile and able to assess and pivot more quickly than the leviathans of the marketplace when customer comments roll in.

So how can small businesses collect this valuable data from customers?

Right now there are so many free or low-cost tools to create surveys. Personally, I love Paperform and I have used it for years now - but a Google Form works too.

Pop a link in a well-written email and soon you’ll be in a position of having reliable data to develop or improve every aspect of your customer experience and to determine areas where the right amount of attention could lead to exponential growth.

Check out this recent survey I received from Uprising Foods (this one scared the heck out of me!)

In addition to making tasty, often purple, superfood bread, Uprising Foods always puts their brand personality front and center…on the front lines, if you will, of everything they send out to their list.

They really make you feel like you are part of their team…and because they have such a strong customer feedback culture, we really get the sense we are influencing their business decisions.

I’ll admit in this survey sequence I got a little nervous at the thought exercise of having to go back to a life without bread…but I love their clever effort to find out what I love about their bread and essentially who I would recommend it to.

I get the sense they are looking for new language to use around marketing their bread and seeing what buyer personas their current clients think might be viable. It’s an interesting approach to gathering market data.

But, of course, they don’t stop there.

They bring it home with an ask about how they can improve my experience.

A key point to remember in any feedback campaign is making sure the person you are asking feels there’s something in it for them.

And that you keep the ask short and sweet. Be transparent about the time commitment. Uprising Foods always says how long they anticipate the survey will take.

And to keep your customer base invested in being surveyed?

Uprising Food actually sends out emails letting you know you’ve been heard and presents the changes they’ve made to improve their CX based on what their surveys reveal. I also know that the generals actually take time to reply to individual emails.

All this creates a willingness in your customers to give you the insights you need to next level your business.

By introducing strategic requests for feedback early on in your relationship with your customers, your company will have a powerful tool for developing memorable customer experiences and identifying potential growth areas to boost the bottom line.

If you haven’t been surveying your customers - it’s not too late to create a great feedback campaign and start gathering data you can use to make strategic improvements to your processes.

Want to determine where you could open a feedback loop? Hop on my calendar and let’s chat about it.