Effective ways to get Customer Feedback using SMS Surveys

Frost & Sullivan on a white-paper about the state of the messaging industry revealed estimates that text communications, through SMS, have an ‘open rate’ of over 90%, which is higher than both email and OTT (over-the-top) applications like WhatsApp and WeChat. Doesn’t that make SMS surveys a great way to take customer feedback?

SMS Surveys are surveys administered to collect the data or get feedback from customers through Small Messaging Service (SMS).

Although, there are several channels to collect customer feedback. E-mail surveys, kiosk surveys, telephonic surveys or a face to face surveys;

SMS surveys have proven to be an extremely effective and efficient method to get customer feedback, simply because of the open rate statistics. They’re hard to beat, really!

Through SMS Surveys, you can send Net Promoter Score Surveys and Customer Satisfaction Surveys to gauge customer feedback about loyalty and satisfaction. Here are some useful types of SMS surveys which can help you fetch useful customer feedback.

• Periodic SMS Survey
• Event-based SMS Surveys
• SMS Surveys for Churned Customers
• Campaign-based SMS Surveys

Send SMS Surveys to get Customer Feedback to post their visit, appointment or order

SMS Surveys sent the right way, using some of these mentioned points, can help you get a very high SMS Survey response rate.

1. Periodic SMS Survey

For collecting customer feedback through CSAT surveys and NPS, text messages are the best medium to go for. Surveys like NPS and CSAT are something that is done periodically.

It is the tendency of the people to read every message and with its cost-effectiveness and more access power, periodic SMS surveys are a great source to know the customer insights on a timely basis.

2. Event-Based SMS Surveys

Event-based messages are those which are triggered through an event or transaction. For example, bank customers receive messages regarding their banking transactions whenever any transaction occurs in their bank account.

You can utilize these messages further for taking an SMS survey by adding a one-liner like “Rate your experience by clicking on the link” followed by a survey link. In this way, event-based SMS surveys can be conducted.

3. SMS Surveys for Churned Customers

SMS should be used to reach the old customers who purchased some products or services from a brand but since a long have not purchased or enquired about any product/service

It is an effective source to perform a churn analysis of such customers and ask them what went wrong. It will help to get their feedback and appropriate actions can be taken to change their perception about the brand and convert negative feedback (if any) into a positive one.

For instance, you are running a pizza outlet and there is a customer who usually places an order every weekend or fortnight. But for three months, you haven’t received any order from that customer.

You can approach such customers through texts like “We noticed that you didn’t order pizzas for a long time. Would you like to let us know how can we serve you better?” followed by a survey link enabling the customer to write his comments.

4. Campaign-based SMS Surveys

Campaign-basses SMS surveys can be used for promotion of a new product, a new service, a newly launched range of products, and an ongoing or upcoming event and simultaneously asking the customer what he feels about the same and providing a survey link which enables him to write his perspective.

For instance – A customer bought a pair of shoes. Now for that shoes, SMS can be sent to ask for his feedback and at the same time promoting a new product like a new upcoming range of t-shirts or any discount concession on other products. This will serve as a very good marketing strategy and will also help to receive a better response.

Moreover, you need to follow some best practices while sending SMS surveys so that you can utilize them to the maximum extent for obtaining rich customer insights.

Biggest Customer Feedback Myths That Need to Be Busted

Best Practices while sending SMS Surveys

1. Automate your SMSes
2. Compose a short and effective message
3. Don’t over send messages
4. Keep the surveys short
5. Send Surveys at the right time
6. Use your company branding

1) Automate your SMSes

Automated SMS surveys like a monthly survey text on a particular date of every month can be scheduled to ensure consistency. This will not only help you to get customer feedback on a regular basis but will also help you save a good time which would have spent on manually doing such tasks.

2) Compose a short and effective message

SMS is meant to be short as its name(Short Message Service) suggests. So the right and effective way to send an SMS Survey is to make it as short as possible otherwise the chances are high that the customer leaves it in between without completing the survey. It is advised to give a clear and brief explanation of the survey followed by the survey link.

3) Don’t send repetitive survey texts

Take care to ensure you are not sending any repetitive SMS surveys. If a customer has made a purchase today through your store and an automated SMS survey has been sent to him, and at the same time or coming days, he is also scheduled for another periodic message, avoid sending that periodic message.

4) Keep the surveys short

Always keep the surveys short and simple so that it does not consume much time of the customer. When surveys become lengthy and time-consuming, people tend to leave them in between which thus results in a lower response rate.

5) Send Surveys at the right time

In order to effectively utilize SMS Surveys, it is very important to send the survey messages at the right time. When the customer has purchased a product or a service recently or has gone through an issue which is resolved, it is the best time to send a survey SMS to receive the feedback regarding your products, services and the customer’s experience.

6) Use your company branding

You should mention the name of the business in order to remind the customer about the brand and to inform him of which brand the feedback is being obtained and thus receive genuine feedback. Simply displaying the brand on the place of the phone number visible to the customer will serve the purpose.

In this way, you can make the SMS surveys work effectively to have a good response from the customers. All you need to remember is to use good feedback management software for sending SMS surveys.

You can use Zonka Feedback which is one of the best Customer Feedback Management software whose SMS surveys are really simple to use, convenient, easy to administer and lead to a high response rate.

Along with this, you need to remember certain things that you need to avoid to make the survey truly effective.

Things to Avoid while sending SMS Surveys to get Customer Feedback

Here are some top things you can avoid while sending SMS surveys that could be very helpful in improving your SMS Survey Response Rate.

1. Avoid sending SMS at awkward timings like early morning or around midnight when most of the people are in a sleepy mode and even if they read the text, they would keep this task for the other day and still there would be a strong probability of this action to be turned into a forgotten task which will ultimately reduce the response rate. Moreover, it’s just very intrusive.
2. Avoid sending lengthy and time-consuming feedback forms as everyone is busy nowadays and people tend to leave lengthy and time-consuming forms in between due to paucity of time. This will save you from the survey dropouts.
3. Don’t send an SMS survey anonymously, rather, always mention your brand name to enable the customer to recognize you.
4. Never try to refrain your customers from opting out to receive your survey texts. This creates a bad image of the brand.
5. Avoid using slang or wrong spellings to fit your text in the word limit. Rather, make it simple, short and clear.