How To Boost Survey Response Rate

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July 26, 2022 Marketing

Surveys are a vital part of any business, and they are among the most effective and easiest ways to gather information from customers. A high survey response rate is an indicator of customer satisfaction. If people don’t care about the survey, they’re not going to fill it out. And if people aren’t filling it out, you can bet they aren’t happy with your products or services.

It’s logical enough: the higher the response rate, the more satisfied your customers are with what you’re doing. However, with the complexity of today’s society, it can be challenging to ensure that your survey response rate is as high as possible. Keep reading to learn how to boost the survey response rate for your business.

What Is A Survey Response Rate?

A survey response rate (or completion rate) is the percentage of people who completed a survey out of those asked to take it. The equation looks like this:

Survey Response Rate = Number of People Who Completed The Survey / Total Number Of Surveys Sent Out.

In other words, if you sent out 1,000 surveys and received 100 responses, then your response rate is 10%. This article will cover essential tips you can use to increase your survey response rates to get the most out of your data collection efforts. However, it first makes sense to understand why increasing your response rates are important.

What Are The Benefits Of A High Response Rate?

A good survey response rate is a vital indicator of customer satisfaction. By running surveys, you are trying to understand what your customers actually think about your products or services and how happy they are with them.

If the survey response rate is low, it means either the product or service isn’t doing well, or there isn’t enough information from the customers to know if it’s doing well accurately. Either way, you need to find out as much as possible about your customers so that you can provide them with what they want and make sure that their needs are being met during every stage of your business life cycle.

How To Increase Your Survey Response Rates

The most important thing is to get potential survey-takers to actually open the surveys you send them. If you start with zero responses, it’s hard to improve your survey response rate. Here are some ideas for getting people to open your surveys.

Offer Something In Return For Participation

The value of your survey response rate goes down the more people who don’t open your survey. One way to improve this is to give a free incentive for taking surveys.

Be sure to make it clear that the incentive isn’t something you are looking for just to get more responses – it has to be something useful and useful enough that you would actually use if you were in the customer’s shoes.

Give Customers A Gentle Nudge

A gentle nudge is a little firmer than an incentive but still much gentler than a hard sales pitch. If the incentive didn’t work, it might be worthwhile to give people a reminder to respond to your survey.

The goal here isn’t to annoy people into taking your survey because once you’ve annoyed them, you may have lost them forever. However, if you are able to gently remind customers of the survey and persuade them that responding would be a good idea, then it could improve your response rate.

Pick The Right Time To Survey Customers

There are studies proving that survey response rates go up at certain times of the day. For example, if you send out a survey at the beginning of people’s workdays, they just don’t have time to complete it and may forget about it by the end of the day. However, you get significantly better responses when you send surveys out Wednesday through Friday between 9 am and 4 pm. So, keep this in mind to maximize your response rate by choosing the right time of day to survey customers.

Keep Things Short And Sweet

It’s best to keep your survey responses short and sweet, especially because of limited attention spans. Some people spend hours on social media every day. However, when they get a survey, they only want to spend a few minutes on it. So, keeping it short and sweet is a good idea.

Use Fullscreen Mobile-Friendly Forms

If you want to improve response rates on your surveys, you need to make sure that people who take them have the best experience possible doing so. One way to do this is to use fullscreen mobile-friendly forms.

This means that the text and questions are always large enough on a phone screen to make it easy to read. This way, you will get higher survey response rates as customers have a better experience with your surveys.

Pick The Right Channels To Display Surveys

You should consider where you are going to display your surveys. When you decide where to display them, think about the most important channels for your business. For example, if your business is mainly online-based, then it would be a good idea to make sure that people who respond to surveys are able to do so in that channel.

Use Personalization When Possible

Personalization is everything when it comes to surveys. It goes without saying that customers are more likely to respond if they feel their needs and wants are being addressed.

So, make sure that the survey you send reflects individual customer preferences and shows the respondent how their feedback will help improve the quality of your product or service. Also, personalization can reduce your costs by reducing the number of responses you’ll need to get a representative sample of your customers.

The Bottom Line

High response rates on surveys can greatly impact the quality of information you use to inform decision-making. This should be enough reason to ensure that your response rates are as high as possible. And if you follow the tips in this article, I’m sure you’ll see a positive change in your response rates and, therefore, the quality of the information your surveys provide.