Voice of the Customer: 5 Keys to Capturing More Retail Customer Survey Responses

Post-purchase retail customer surveys can offer a treasure trove of valuable consumer insights for retailers. They indicate how customers really feel about the in-store experience, customer service, and the products they purchased. Unfortunately, getting in-store customers to take a survey can be challenging.

After many years of helping retailers successfully implement customer surveys that lead to repeat purchases and long-term loyalty, flexReceipts has learned a good deal about what works and what doesn’t.  Here are our top five keys to success:

KEY #1: Be Timely

When it comes to post-purchase retail customer surveys, it’s important to strike while the iron is hot. The sooner a customer is prompted for feedback following their purchase, the more likely it is that they’ll respond. An ideal way to deliver a survey immediately after purchase is through a mobile-optimized callout located at the top of their eReceipt. This enables shoppers to quickly and conveniently respond to survey requests on their smartphone, sometimes even before leaving the store!

KEY #2: Make Responding Easy

To increase the completion rates for surveys, retailers should make it easy for customers to respond. On average, eReceipt response rates are ten times higher than response rates for flat .PDF emails or printed receipts. At flexReceipts, we’ve tested a lot of different methods and find that the best way to encourage responses is to start with a simple question – How was your experience? The shopper can choose to respond by clicking on a happy face icon (indicating a good experience) or a sad face icon (indicating a bad experience). Once they have clicked on an icon, they are led into the full survey.

KEY #3: Keep Your Customer Surveys Short

Retailers working with flexReceipts have had the most success with surveys containing only 2 or 3 questions beyond the initial happy face/sad face question.  Compare this to the average survey length of 23 questions reported by Interaction Metrics, which more often results in survey abandonment. According to SurveyMonkey, up to 45% of people are willing to spend 5 minutes, at most, on your feedback survey. Keep your surveys short and impactful.  Should you need to collect additional feedback about your stores, you can build two separate simple surveys, splitting the number of shoppers who receive each version.

KEY #4: Offer Customers An Incentive

To really boost survey completion rates, consider offering incentives. Some retailers boost response rates by offering a discount to customers who complete their surveys. Statistics show that 34% of the people who respond to surveys based on an incentive do so primarily because they want the incentive being offered. Recently, flexReceipts client, Destination XL Group provided a coupon in return for completing its digital receipt survey. Today, DXL is on track to receive more than 15,000 additional in-store surveys directly from its eReceipts with 54% of survey respondents redeeming their survey coupons within a week.

KEY #5: Follow Up

With a focus on completion rates, it can be easy to forget the central reason why customers complete surveys. Beyond incentives, customers want to know that their opinions matter. Follow up with customers who complete surveys to let them know that you appreciate their feedback. Direct emails are a great way to do this. Another way is to aggregate the survey results and present them, either publicly or privately, to those who completed the survey. Let guests know that you care about their experience and that you’re serious about making changes based upon their input.

Surveys are a powerful way of keeping a finger on the pulse of shopper sentiment and allow retailers to address concerns and be proactive should consumer sentiment start trending in the wrong direction. Applying these five best practices will help you reap the full benefits of post-purchase shopper surveys.

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CONTACT US to find out how flexEngage can help you increase survey capture rates and drive a more personalized and engaging post-purchase experience.