Understanding how customers feel when they shop with you is crucial to improving your products and the overall shopping experience–who doesn’t want happy customers? They’re more likely to come back, recommend you to a friend, and be your biggest cheerleaders.
Conducting a customer experience (CX) survey can help you uncover what’s going on in the minds of your customers so you can deliver a better journey that puts shoppers first.
What is a CX survey?
DTC and ecommerce brands are starting to realise the power of customer service as a differentiator. Providing shoppers with an exceptional experience that’s geared towards their unique wants and needs gives you a competitive edge and drives more sales through personalised offers and communication.
But it can be tricky getting customers to respond to an email survey packed full of questions when all they want to do is enjoy their new product. This is why we’re seeing an increase in brands using SMS for customer surveys and customer service in general, which is setting them up for success and helping them health check customer sentiment.
An SMS customer experience survey essentially allows customers to answer questions via text message. You can use a range of different questions, from open-ended to 1-10 style questions to gain a better understanding of your customers’ opinions, and shoppers can respond in their own time.
Why SMS is the perfect tool for a customer experience survey
Unlike email marketing, where open rates hover around 25%, text messages generate a really high open rate–we’re talking 98% here. And customers prefer it too. In fact, 76% of consumers prefer to be contacted via text over any other communication channel, and it drives a much higher response rate at 40% which, let’s face it, is absolutely vital for a customer survey.
Aside from fast and plentiful open rates, there are several other benefits that running a customer experience survey via SMS can bring:
- Easily accessible: the vast majority (if not all) of your customers have a mobile phone with SMS capabilities. But, more importantly, they check it often–in some cases, every four minutes
- Spark casual conversation: emails often feel a lot more formal than firing off a quick text. Sending surveys via SMS provides a more open, relaxed feel, which can encourage customers to share their true thoughts
- Quick results: the speedy open rates and high response rates mean you can get insights from customers much quicker than other channels
- Track real-time responses: most SMS survey software allows you to monitor activities and collect results together in one central place so you can analyse them and identify patterns
How to run a CX survey by text message
Raring at the bit to set up your SMS survey and find out what customers really think about you? Here’s how you can get started.
1. Set your goals
First things first, figure out what exactly it is you want to find out from your customers. It might be tempting to ask them hundreds of questions, but this can be tedious from their end and lead to a massive amount of data that doesn’t really provide you with much insight.
Instead, decide in advance the key things you want to know, like how easy it was to purchase, what the customers' favourite part of the experience was, and where they’d like to see improvements. Once you know this, you can customise your survey questions to align with your needs and ensure you’re respecting your customers’ valuable time.
2. Send your survey at the right time
It’s important to send your CX survey at the right point in the sales cycle. You’re not going to get the answers you want if you send a survey to a customer before their product has even arrived. Instead, reach out when they’ve had some time to use and enjoy their product and have been through the entire shopping experience with you.
Give customers at least two weeks to try out your product or service–although this will vary depending on the type of products you’re selling. For example, if you sell perishable items like food, follow up with your survey after a week. But, if you sell big items like washing machines or TVs, leave it two to three weeks before following up.
Don’t worry–you don’t have to keep tabs on who ordered what and when they ordered it. These messages can be automated to go out at just the right time.
3. Keep it short and sweet
Text messages are notoriously short–often just a couple of lines in length. Avoid bombarding shoppers with paragraphs of text and keep your survey questions short and to the point. You can even get rid of the niceties and dive straight into the questions.
4. Personalise your survey
Encourage more responses by personalising your SMS survey to match each individual customer’s journey.
For example, include the name of the product they bought or ask them about their interaction with customer support if that’s something they did. You can also invite customers to expand on their answers depending on the results they give–if someone states they didn’t have the best experience, open up and ask them why and respond to their feedback appropriately.
5. Incentivise customers
Everyone likes to receive a freebie or a little thank you for doing their bit. Add in a surprise and delight factor along with your survey by rewarding customers for their time. You can do this with a special discount code, a free gift, or the chance to enter a giveaway where they can win a much bigger prize.
This sweetens the deal and makes customers more likely to share their experiences if they get something in return.
How Blueprint helps you to create SMS CX surveys
Blueprint’s SMS marketing software is the perfect partner for sending CX surveys and generating customer feedback. Two-way conversations allow you to dig deep into customer opinions and solve issues quickly, while the central dashboard means you can see all results in one place at any given time, making it easy to identify trends and patterns in the customer experience.
Use the platform for so much more too, whether it’s updating order subscriptions, creating personalised SMS marketing campaigns, or customer retention flows.
