In a fast paced world, the new age customer may not have the time and bandwidth to respond to traditional online surveys anymore. This brings low response rates, respondent fatigue, and lack of personalization. In this blog, we will explore the reasons why traditional online surveys have failed to deliver effective results in gathering customer feedback. But worry not! We also have some innovative approaches that you can use for online surveys to get better results. 

The major drawbacks of traditional online surveys

Traditional online surveys are losing effectiveness as a means of collecting customer feedback. The primary reasons being long questionnaires leading to low response rates and inaccurate responses. Additionally, these surveys often fail to capture the full range of customer experiences and emotions, limiting insights into customer behavior. To combat these drawbacks, newer and more engaging methods such as social media monitoring and chatbots have emerged as alternatives to traditional surveys.

Respondent fatigue

Respondent fatigue is a common problem with traditional online surveys. This means that the respondent ceases the interest to complete a survey, sometimes sending a skewed response in the hope to finish it off quickly. This can give gross misleading data, inaccurate opinions and most often, lesser response in general.

Low response rates

Low response rates are a significant challenge with traditional online surveys. In today’s world of constant information overload, people may not have the time or mental bandwidth to fill out lengthy surveys. This leads to biased results making it challenging for businesses to gather genuine feedback from customers. Low response rate is a nightmare when you genuinely need honest survey data to upgrade your business offerings for your consumers.

Lack of personalization

Generic and irrelevant questions asked in traditional online forms often lead to low response rates. Traditional surveys might come with a set of predefined questions and survey templates that are impersonal and do not really seek open ended responses. To capture the individual experiences of customers, personalized surveys can be a valuable tool that yields more insightful feedback.

Expensive and time consuming

Designing, distributing, and analyzing traditional online surveys can be challenging if we really want to increase your survey responses. Additionally, if these surveys are shared via outdated platforms or slower browser based format, it can get time consuming. The time resource for conducting such surveys can often be prohibitive for businesses. While it may not always be feasible to chase every customer on call to make them respond to a survey. To allocate resources better, businesses can opt for a faster means of response collection via messenger based methods.

Combat Traditional Templates with Upgraded Online Surveys

Innovation is the key to unlocking valuable insights from customer feedback. Chatbot surveys, messenger app surveys, and dynamic AMP email feedback forms are some of the upcoming approaches that allow for more engaging conversations with customers. Additionally, AI-powered survey tool can generate instant templates, analyze results faster and give businesses a competitive advantage. 

Chatbot Surveys

Chatbot surveys can be compatible on the website and deployed on respective brand applications. Chatbot surveys have the ability to collect large masses of data, stay automated devoid of manual handling and keep question format conversational in tone. Chat bot surveys can work around the clock which makes it cost effective, and a feasible format of understanding your user base. It is efficient to create chatbot surveys that can easily work across any mobile device and bring actionable insights to the table.

Messenger based applications

Messenger based surveys such as Whatsapp, Facebook messenger, SMS/RCS are a game changer. Messenger platforms record billions of conversations on a daily basis. Moreover, respondents are always using these platforms multiple times a day. While targeting users to collect actionable insights, businesses can offer conversational format of feedback form on these platforms with our survey software.

Interactive AMP email surveys

Accelerated mobile pages is a feature offered by Google which is now slowly picking up pace among brands. Email marketing will not go out of vogue , so one might as well upgrade it using dynamic features of AMP email surveys and in-signature surveys. These features are most helpful when you want to deploy satisfaction metrics of net promoter score (NPS), customer satisfaction score (CSAT) and post purchase satisfaction form.

Benefits of Innovative Online Surveys for Customer Feedback

Increased response rates

Upgrading the way you collect feedback can bring high response rates. This happens when you use a modern approach to collect user insights via new age mediums. These mediums are mobile friendly, they are in-moment in terms of functionality and interactive in nature. These features also appeal to the new age audience and keep up with the latest platforms. All of this collectively brings more response rate.

Improved data accuracy

An engaged customer answering a feedback form on a faster platform will give more genuine responses. An upgraded feedback platform seeks qualitative data or open ended questions. This brings rich data, genuine responses, and improves overall data accuracy. Latest upgrades of offering multilingual surveys also improves data accuracy since it represents an audience that marketers would otherwise ignore via traditional routes of probing.

Greater insights into customer behavior

Innovative online surveys can provide businesses with a wealth of information on customer behavior that traditional surveys are unable to capture. By  opting for faster platforms, conversational nature of survey questions, curating goal oriented questions for target audiences, businesses can get a goldmine of data. Giving the freedom to respond via photos, audio, video formats, marketers can better understand customer emotions, preferences and pain points through the customer journey.

Best Practices for Designing Updated Online Surveys

1. Keep it mobile-friendly and easily accessible:

The goal is to enhance the user experience of every respondent answering customer feedback questionnaires. This can happen when templates are compatible across devices. This will enable any respondent to answer instantly without having to face browser based obstacles.

2. Use conversational language and goal-oriented questions:

The only way to get a high response rate is to ask the right questions that will help businesses fulfil a goal-oriented market research. Apart from curating specific questions, having a conversational approach will not intimidate participants.

3. Offer open-ended questions for qualitative data:

People are multidimensional. giving them the chance to express via photos, audio and video format, and pdf documents can give you clear and better insights on their emotions, needs and expectations.

4. Offer multilingual options for a wider audience

To cater to a wider audience and increase responses from non-native speakers, offer surveys in multiple languages. This increases participation rate and you can increase brand loyalty on a global platform.

Conclusion

Traditional methods of gathering consumer data come with multiple obstacles. If marketers are looking to gain a competitive advantage, it is high time they focus on the latest tools. If you want Merren to help you upgrade, try our 14 day free trial here. No credit card required.