Sometimes there are questions we can’t answer from our website analytics or sales data – questions that affect our bottom line, like why a product has a 40% return rate.
You need feedback. You need it fast. You need it specific. You need it EASY.
I’ve got you.
Why you should survey customer groups
Even if you have a niche product, there are subgroups within your audience that can give you very valuable information.
It’s never a good idea to go too granular because you’ll end up making changes based on edge cases, but you certainly want to break down your audience by at least product or service purchased.
Within that specific survey, you’d then want to be able to send people through numerous follow-up questions related to their answers. That makes the survey provider and sending method very important.
Three ways to survey customer groups
1. Intercom chat with Typeform app
Intercom is my favourite chat provider and Typeform is my favourite survey provider. Put the Typeform app in your Intercom chat and you’ve got a marriage made in heaven. Both scale very well in terms of business size and budget, too.
If you’re using Intercom, you may have put apps like article feature or article search into your chat launcher. This is exactly the same, but the app is supplied by Typeform.
You build the survey in Typeform (up to 10 responses is free, then subscription is from £25 per month) and then you add the app to your Intercom account. The survey is delivered to your customer in a chat, the communication method they’re used to, and they fill in the survey within the chat window.
The Typeform UI is super slick, so it fits well with the Intercom experience. If you don’t need to filter by anything beyond the customer data points Intercom gives you (OS, phone, first seen, location and so on), you’re ready to start sending surveys. If you need something more specific, you can upload a data extract spreadsheet into Intercom to create your new customer group or tag existing customers within Intercom so they enter the survey chat campaign.
Even without Intercom, Typeform is a great survey builder, so perfectly usable with another form of communication, like SMS or email.
2. Facebook ads
You can target Facebook ads to just your followers and then key demographics within that group – but you’ll sweep up a few people who aren’t actual customers.
Using an extract from your customer database or CRM can answer that problem. Upload a list of customers to target by email address.
You can then build a poll within Facebook or a more in-depth questionnaire with a survey provider like Typeform or SurveyMonkey.
3. CRM plus MailChimp
MailChimp lets you build a survey to send to your email list or to a specific group of contacts you upload from your CRM or database. This can be a single question or simple poll within your email, or a full survey.
MailChimp also has integration with other tools, including SurveyMonkey and Typeform, so if you wanted to use another survey provider, they should slot together nicely.
Surveying customer groups more manually
For best results with surveying customer groups, you need a CRM or database that you can use to filter to your group and even initiate the contact.
However, if you’re working on a smaller scale or your customer groups are less niche, you can either select the specific customer emails you want to target or filter by a simpler shared trait, like purchase date, in whatever report you have of sales. Then, simply upload that extract to MailChimp, Intercom or whatever other comms tool you use.
Your customer has the answers – you only have to ask.
Find out how to go a step further in your insight research and run a focus group.
