Learning to accept and implement feedback is an important skill for anyone. And it's a critical one for businesses looking to stay competitive. Your customers are your best resource for feedback on your product and processes. 

The better equipped your team is to receive this feedback and turn it into actionable changes, the better you’ll be able to adapt and beat the market. 

Not sure how to identify where you’re winning and where you’re losing? Customer feedback surveys are the best way to show you what’s important to customers.

Why send customer feedback surveys?

Customer feedback surveys are an easy and cost-effective way to gauge the satisfaction of your customers or potential customers. They're non-intrusive and, ideally, quick to fill out, making customers more likely to engage.

These surveys can help you identify where your business is succeeding and where it could use more work. It also helps you get in front of problems — 63% of consumers lose trust in businesses with mostly negative reviews, so it’s important to get ahead of any customer concerns.

Rather than waiting for negative reviews to accumulate, use surveys to spot problems or potential problems before they impact your bottom line. Surveys also allow customers to feel heard and to express their thoughts freely in a private, productive fashion.

What does a successful survey look like?

Accepting sometimes difficult feedback is a skill. But giving good feedback is a skill too — and you can’t guarantee that all of your potential customers are equipped to give you clear and constructive criticism. 

The best thing you can do to ensure your customer feedback surveys yield useful responses is to set your customers up to succeed. 

If you’re sharing your survey via email, there are a few simple steps you can take to get the most out of it:

• Clear and attention-getting subject lines make the difference between an automatic delete and at least a quick courtesy read. It should be on-brand, succinct, and have a clear call to action.
• Keep things positive. Research also shows that positive framing encourages positive responses. It’s the difference between "How was your visit to our store?" and "What went well during your visit to our store?"
• Feature the link in a prominent place. Ideally, design your email to include a graphic button or click-through image. It should be visibly prominent and extremely obvious that the user is meant to click it. Don’t bury your lede in a too-subtle link.
• Stay on brand. While you may not be able to contact every customer personally, keeping your email messaging on-brand helps to build an impression of your company and promotes a more personal connection between you and your customers. 

Of course, crafting the right email is only half the battle. You also have to design the perfect customer feedback survey. But don’t stress — we’ll help you with that, too. Let’s go over the main survey types you’d send, with some examples.

Pro tip: With Superhuman, you can use Snippets to save different survey types as templates. Snippets let you insert phrases, paragraphs, or whole emails to push past the limit. 

1. General survey invitation

If your survey is about getting broad, overall feedback, your questions should reflect back. This kind of survey often comes automatically after a customer has completed a transaction or closed a deal.

In this survey, you’ll ask questions like:

• How would you describe your overall experience?
• Are you happy with the quality of our service or product?
• Are you happy with the speed of your transaction?
• What was the highlight of dealing with our company?
• Did you experience any challenges in making your purchase?
• How likely are you to recommend our product or service?

You can let customers rank their answers on a scale of 1-10 or allow them the chance to give open-ended responses. You’re more likely to get responses if your survey is brief and low effort, so in this case, allowing customers to rank their answers may be your best bet.

2. Request based on a recent purchase

After a customer purchases a product or service, instead of sharing a broad survey, you can zero in on their experience. Ideally, you’ll send this survey a few days to a week after your customer receives your product so they have a chance to use it.

Some example questions are:

• How often do you use our product?
• Did you purchase our product for a specific use? If so, what?
• How satisfied are you with our product?
• Are there any improvements you’d recommend to our product?
• What is your favorite feature of our product?
• How likely are you to recommend this product to a friend?

3. Request based on recent activity

This is similar to a product feedback survey, but it’s more about actions than purchases. This survey could be sent to users who add items to their cart but don’t complete the checkout process. It could also be used for products or services that require customers to register after purchase. 

Essentially, this survey is all about identifying pressure points. Some questions to this end include:

• Did you find our website or store user-friendly and inviting?
• What features would you want upon registering your product?
• Did you choose or consider a competitor’s product? If so, why?
• How satisfied are you with the value of our product? 
• If you stopped mid-checkout, what was the reason? Price, found a better option, lack of need, or timing?

4. Ask a specific question

While traditional customer feedback surveys ask multiple questions, if there’s a specific insight you’re after, asking fewer questions but requesting more in-depth answers are key. But as we’ve pointed out, people are less likely to complete your survey if it’s complex or time-consuming.

The solution is to find a way to get the answers you’re after by asking a question people want to answer. "How often do you use our product?" is a necessary and appropriate survey question, but it doesn’t exactly make people lean forward.

For example, let’s say you’re heading into the new year. You think your product will do well as part of people’s New Year’s resolutions, but you want to be sure before you pour money into a marketing push come January 1st. 

You’ll have other metrics, of course. But asking your customers a single, fun-to-answer open-ended question like "What are your New Year’s resolutions?" can spark conversation and help give you an indication of interest. People like to talk about things they’re excited about, so use that to build your relationship with your customers, spark genuine conversation, and get the answers you need.

The bottom line

Customer feedback surveys are straightforward to implement, and the insights they offer are seriously high-value. In an increasingly competitive landscape — the 2024 American Customer Satisfaction Index measured overall satisfaction at a surprising high after years of decline — collecting and using these insights make your business stand out from the crowd.

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