Sound Off! Make Customer Centric Decisions By Asking Your Customers

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Surveys and sentiment analysis: Make customer-centric decisions by listening to customers

It’s all too easy to develop products or services based solely on your own instincts or those of colleagues/employees. Too often businesses overlook their most obvious, accessible and valuable source of market intelligence: their customers.

In this article, we’ll look at some easy-to-apply ways to tap into this rich source of insight to make sure you launch the products customers actually want, in the manner they want them delivered and help them love your brand.

The most obvious, and time-honoured, way to find out what your customers want is through surveys.

Qualitative versus quantitative research: benefits and limitations

Don’t jump into formulating survey questions until you’ve thought carefully about what kind of information you hope to obtain. Only then can you choose the most appropriate research methodology to apply.

Qualitative surveys can provide high-quality, in-depth information about what customers think and feel about your products and services, as well as what choices they are likely to make, and why. Approach a well-judged cross-section of your customer base and you can learn a lot about customers.

Done effectively such surveys can yield richly detailed insights and really capture the complexities of an issue. However, it is a more time-consuming approach than quantitative surveys and it’s harder to discern broad trends.

Quantitative surveys, on the other hand, are designed to provide a rough idea of how many people, on average, behave in a certain way or have a particular preference, opinion or belief. So if you were planning a radical revamp of a product or service, for example, quantitative data could clearly indicate how many customers agree with the changes you propose to make.

Qualitative methods

A face-to-face or telephone interview with customers is the most straightforward qualitative method. There should be pre-planned ‘open’ questions (e.g. “What do you like about the product you purchased?” rather than “Do you like the product you purchased?”), plus ad-hoc follow-up questions where you need further clarification or a detailed understanding of any points raised.

While the process could be conducted online or on paper, a human, spoken conversation usually elicits more insightful, honest information. A skilled interviewer can often tease out valuable viewpoints by gently prompting the respondent to elaborate on brief, unhelpful answers that nevertheless hint at something more interesting.

That said, people are sometimes too shy to admit certain preferences or views to another person. A written survey can therefore elicit more honest responses if the subject matter is embarrassing, sensitive or emotive.

Wherever possible, customer responses should be captured via audio or video recording and the results transcribed to produce an archive of illustrative quotes.

Quantitative methods

A quantitative survey aims to capture a substantial volume of customer responses to ‘closed’ questions. Questions come in various forms, most commonly asking respondents to tick one or more answers from a list of choices, but also to rank answers in order of importance or rate them on a continuum (say, ranging from 1-5 or ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’).

Because quantitative research demands no elaborative detail, such surveys are easy and quick to complete. They are also uncomplicated to design if you use customisable templates via intuitive platforms like Typeform or SurveyMonkey, which also present data visually in chart or table form.

Simplify and incentivise

More customers will respond to surveys, and more honestly and in more detail, if you show that you appreciate their voluntary participation. This means keeping surveys short and simple to complete, and avoiding unnecessary questions.

Do you really need a name or address? People are often more honest if a survey is anonymous.

Mixed-method (qualitative and quantitative) surveys can deliver a well-rounded picture, but you should always open with closed/multiple-choice questions and introduce your open-ended, qualitative enquiries towards the finish. Where respondents quit the survey halfway through then, so long as you divide the survey into sections, you will at least have captured some usable data.

And last but not least, the incentive of a small discount on your products, or entry into a prize draw for gift vouchers, a PC tablet or whatever you can afford to give away, can significantly boost the level of response - and thus the credibility of your data.

Web analytics and sentiment analysis

You can also better understand customer needs by tracking and analysing their online behaviour. Platforms like Hubspot and Google Analytics can provide quantitative measurement of metrics like dwell time, bounce rates, visitor loyalty and visitor type.

And you can gauge what customers and potential customers think of your brand by applying sentiment analysis to social media platforms. There are plenty of free or low-cost vehicles for doing so, with Hootsuite, Trackur and Meltwater among the most popular and effective.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by BusinessesForSale .

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