How would you gauge a customer’s experience during a business transaction?  Using a post purchase survey. Gather insightful data and increase your store’s conversion rate- online or offline. In this blog we will understand what is a post purchase survey, its benefit, best practices and the ideal length of this survey.

What is a Post Purchase Survey?

A post-purchase survey is an ‘inmoment’ tool, businesses use to interact with a customer after they have gone through a purchase process. It contains a few questions that revolve around their entire purchase experience. It is more like a conversation where the buyer can talk about their friction points or experience as a whole. This information will help the business improve their CX.  

However, to get the most effective feedback, ask open-ended questions that allow respondents to express themselves freely. Additionally, timing is key – sending post purchase surveys too soon or too late can impact response rates and the accuracy of the feedback received.

Why Do You Need A Post Purchase Survey In Customer Experience?

Customer experience is the sum total of an experience a person has had, before being a customer to making a financial transaction. This includes brand awareness, gathering reviews about the brand and checkout experience. CX also captures the experience of customers with the customer support team. Mapping post-purchase behavior is to track how a buyer reacts after they have interacted or used the product/services.

Implementing positive moment-of-truth experiences is vital for brands. Customer feedback can indicate satisfaction levels, capture buyer testimonials, churn rates or if they would recommend the product among friends and families.

What is the ideal length of a post-purchase survey?

A quick post purchase survey can be a single question or two questions long. It will contain a rating scale to map a person’s purchase experience. One needs to focus on both qualitative and quantitative aspects of a survey.  The main goal is to be non-intrusive, yet get the genuine feedback you need.
However, bands also launch detailed post purchase surveys, a few days after the initial transaction. This is important for mapping the customer journey in the long run. This type of a process is prevalent in baking industries, automobile industries, SaaS industries or in the FMCG sector. All customer data collected can be used to improve user experience, product usage or overall post-purchase service offerings.

4 Ways How Can Businesses Benefit from Post Purchase Surveys?

Post purchase customer feedback offers insights into buyer’s satisfaction levels that can help you improve your products or services. Here are some noteworthy key pointers.

Use personalization for high customer retention

It is only via a survey you can differentiate between detractors, passives or promoters. When you get authentic responses, you can personalize the experience for the shoppers in the future. This will make every buyer feel heard and special. This in turn, will encourage them to become repeat customers.

Seek real-time feedback for business improvements

Publish well-timed post purchase questionnaires is a non-intrusive method of bringing rich insights for analysis. Customer satisfaction metrics such as net promoter score and CSAT scales are important. However, seek qualitative data as well. Ask open ended questions along with scaled metrics. This will collectively highlight the need for new features, improvements in customer service protocols or better customer experience overall.

Capture new insights from your user base

Getting feedback via post purchase surveys is a great way to show your customer base that you care about their experience and opinions. Using the new insights to implement new processes and ask follow-up questions from your respondents. This reinforces the fact that businesses actively work towards offering a seamless CX. This is a win-win situation for long term customer loyalty.

Gain competitive advantage in the market

Use a competitive analysis survey to pin-point a potential churn and assess a competitor’s offerings. Staying on top of your marketing game is to listen thoroughly. Organisations can use this post-purchase survey data to segment brand advocates and find out friction points in the customer journey. Use this information to promptly act on grievances and close feedback loops.

5 Best Practices for Implementing Post Purchase Surveys

Here are some best practices to note.

1. Keep it short and focused with simple language

Keep questions direct and simple for a high response rate. Use simple language that does not contain jargon or abbreviations. This will encourage a greater completion rate.

2. Use a mix of survey questions for more insights

Incorporate a variety of question types to capture different aspects of the customer experience. Use multiple-choice questions, rating scales such as net promoter score scale (NPS), CSAT or a customer effort score in addition to open-ended questions. A mix of quantitative and qualitative feedback can gauge the true essence of a shopper’s experience.

3. Offer relevant incentives for greater survey responses

Even a small incentive or a reward can encourage people to offer feedback. Rewards can be of multiple types depending on the target audience. It could be a discount code, cashback offer, free samples with the current purchase, extra points to redeem, or even offering special pricing for the next purchase. Make sure the intent of the reward is mentioned upfront to manage buyer expectation.

4. Consider sending feedback form at the right time

Share the post purchase survey during checkout or after a financial transaction. It can also be deployed at certain touchpoints when the buyer has had a good deal of exposure with your product or service. For example: sharing a feedback form after completing a certain mileage for an automobile. The timing factor is applicable to most types of customer surveys.

5. Respond to feedback and attend to complaints

Buyer feedback is not merely for collecting analytics. Businesses can look at bad reviews or unhappy customers as an opportunity to make amends and gain a loyal customer. Analyze the survey data to identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement. Use the feedback to enhance the customer experience, make necessary changes to your products or services, and address any specific issues raised by customers.

How To Build A Successful Post Purchase Survey? 

Determine your goals and what specific information you want to gather from your customers. Here are some important pointers to note.

Choose a right survey tool

Merren has customized survey templates that are conversational in nature. You can choose the number of questions and customize them according to the target audience. Analyze every data with our filters, all visible on the customer feedback dashboard.

Choose automation for a seamless process

Avoid manual or paper based handling of data for an error-free experience. Integrate Merren with your CRM tool and automate your way to rich data collection methods. Our robust platform can be used across industries of ecommerce, media industries, health and beauty and B2C markets etc.

Choose interactive apps like WhatsApp and Facebook messenger

Use the messenger based platform of WhatsApp survey, Meta messenger, SMS/RCS to collect the fastest insights ever. You can 10x your response rate and gain competitive advantage.Merren offers AMP interactive email surveys that are dynamic in nature. Customers can respond inside the email without going to a browser based platform.

Collect real time analytics on the CX dashboard

Using the Merren platform, collect super fast and rich insights all real time. All the data is available on the Merren CX dashboard. Segregated by filters based on age-groups, demographics and timelines. You can also collect customer feedback in rich media and view this data such as audio clips, video and photos on the dashboard.

Deploy chatbot surveys in websites

It is time to upgrade CX using artificial intelligence. Bring chatbot surveys to the equation and collect faster insights directly from your audience. You can deploy chatbots to take customer feedback at different touch-points. This technology is fast, efficient, cost effective and fully automated.

Upgrade Your Post Purchase Survey Strategy with Merren CX

Share post-purchase surveys at the right time after a financial transaction. This gives you real-time feedback and you can assess various satisfaction metrics. Launch surveys via WhatsApp messenger, Facebook messenger and chatbots. Get high response rate, greater than the market standard response rate with Merren.

While collecting post purchase surveys, it is also recommended that organisations start looking at deploying AI in their marketing processes. Check out our AI Survey Builder that lets you build a survey at super fast speed. You can also sign in to make changes to a generated survey. These feedback forms are ready to go.