It’s certainly worth your while to keep a finger on the pulse of customer opinion, something business owners have long known.
As we’ve explored throughout this series on instant customer feedback, businesses’ fates often can turn on an accurate, timely read of customer sentiment.
Don’t believe it? Check out these stats from a study conducted by Customer1.com:
- 89 percent of consumers will do business with a competitor following a negative customer-service experience.
- 13 percent of unhappy customers will tell at least 20 people about their bad experience.
- 86 percent of consumers will abandon a business after a negative experience – a nearly 30-percent increase since 2007.
And, now, consider that it’s five times more expensive to secure a new customer than to keep an existing one. A dozen competitors are out there, just waiting to take the place of a business that falls out of favor.
It’s certainly worth your while to keep a finger on the pulse of customer opinion, something business owners have long known. The trouble has been in gathering that critical information fast enough to do something with it.
There’s No Time Like the Present to Gauge Customers’ Experience
The best time to gauge customers’ experience is right now – as the meal, hotel stay, spa session or retail visit is wrapping up – and the best way is with a customizable device that people already love to use.
Customer-oriented businesses of all types have found survey tablets a superior method for providing actionable data on the customer experience. Among the reasons:
- Intriguing design: Customers are more likely to engage with a visually appealing digital survey and provide honest, anonymous feedback. That has been shown to produce a higher return rate of responses – 80 percent or more – that are truer to the consumer experience.
- Professionally designed templates and questions: The targeted survey design and questions are developed specifically to meet the needs of your establishment.
- Instant customer feedback: Answers are automatically uploaded, enabling you to look over responses immediately and make needed operational or staff changes.
- Manager notification: The survey immediately notifies managers via text message or pager about any negative reviews. This gives employees an opportunity to respond quickly to a complaint or answer questions. This ensures your guest goes away happy, or at least assured that the next visit will be better.
- Bonus promotional features: Tablets allow businesses to offer special discounts or advertise new menu items at the end of a survey to ensure repeat business and high guest satisfaction.
- Easily updated: Survey tablets can be customized in any number of ways. Restaurant managers can even run multiple surveys, by shift or time of day, to measure different aspects of service (i.e. bar versus dinning room), or questions to gauge interest in new menu items. Custom surveys create nearly limitless possibilities for feedback and insight.
- Manager control: Managers have the power to print reports as often as he or she wants. There’s no more waiting for a third-party to process the information and send it over. With a survey tablet system, the manager is in complete control.
The Best Way to Show Customers You Care
Perhaps most of all, tablet surveys are an easy way to ensure that every customer knows you care about the experience your business has provided. If they need to vent, you’ll know it immediately – before you get “Yelped!” – and you’ll have the actionable data you need to fix whatever angered them.
The end result is a business better equipped to serve up a great customer experience – and a customer who truly appreciates it.
Find Out More About Gathering Customer Feedback
Complete the form below to download the free eBook, The Power of Instant Customer Feedback, for more detail about why it matters what customers think about you.