Your customer arrived on your site, browsed a few pages, and made a purchase. Sales are always a good thing, but as a business owner, you want to know more than simply a Google Analytics description of your customer’s browsing and buying habits. You want to know if that customer was satisfied, and whether or not their purchase will lead to more purchases in the future.

Customer satisfaction surveys are an underutilized measuring stick that not only builds affinity with customers, but also helps brands improve their user experience. Asking key questions can help you gauge the overall experience as seen through your customer’s eyes.

Using an online texting service to pose the survey means using a channel with a 98% open rate, and a response rate that is 8 times as effective as email.

6 Rules for Effective SMS Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Keep it short – Your customers are in the middle of their lives when your survey arrives. Be mindful of their time and limit your survey to 5 questions or fewer. Some surveys, like asking if a customer was satisfied with a recent purchase, can be completed with just a single question.

Be Targeted with Your Questions – If you want to understand if your customers were satisfied with their search results on the site, don’t ask if they were satisfied with their purchase. Limit your questions to the area you are focusing on.

Provide Options… – Limiting the response to Yes and No; True or False; or Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, and Strongly Disagree makes it easy for your customers to quickly answer the questions with the type of answers you can easily categorize and react upon.

…But Leave Room for Free Text – Some customer comments provide fantastic feedback on their experience. By leaving a space for free text, you can pick up some great customer insights.

Avoid Questions with “And” – If you ask “The product descriptions were clear and the images were accurate – Yes or No,” you’ll never know if their answer refers to descriptions or images. Instead, you’ll want to turn that into two different questions.

Take Another Leap – If your survey is dynamic, direct satisfied customers to review sites like Google, Yelp or Facebook, and ask them to leave a review. Ask an open-ended question to unsatisfied customers to learn the reason for their disappointing experience.

Sending SMS Surveys

Before sending surveys to your customers, it’s always best to ask them during the checkout process to opt in to agree to receive messages from you. You’ll find that they are much more likely to participate in your survey if they know it’s coming.

Talk to our team about other best practices for surveying your customers with SMS.