As a retailer, you can only learn so much from your financial data. You know what customers are buying, but you don’t know whether these are customers who will be loyal for life or just occasional buyers. You don’t know whether new sales are coming from your own marketing efforts or whether you have happy customers out there singing your praises and referring new customers. You can only answer those questions with retail customer experience surveys.

These surveys allow you to discover how engaged your customers are and the role they are playing in your business. That information is incredibly valuable in shaping your strategies for growing your business.

3 Reasons for Using Retail Customer Feedback Surveys

Every business wants to keep costs low, but a retail customer feedback survey is an investment you can’t afford to skip. In fact, there are several reasons why you need to have an ongoing customer survey campaign.

1. Surveys are the only way to truly know if your customers are satisfied.

Buying behaviors aren’t an indicator of satisfaction. Customers may only be buying from you because there are no other feasible options, and that leaves your business vulnerable because the moment an alternative option arises, you’ll lose a hefty slice of your revenue overnight.

2. Surveys allow you to understand what aspects of your customer experience are working and which ones aren’t.

Maybe you have a large percentage of customers who are frustrated that your check-out process is too slow, so you’re in danger of losing those customers. Speeding up your check-out process alone could give you more stable revenue. You won’t know if you don’t ask.

3. Customer experience surveys are a powerful way to enhance your customer relations.

Consumers want to know that you value them, respect their input, and want to give them a better experience. Asking for their opinion shows them that you’re putting in the effort. Of course, you then need to follow through by putting their opinions into action if you don’t want your survey to be in vain.

How to Build a Retail Customer Survey Template

Developing your retail customer survey template allows you to bring in consistent, comparable data every time you conduct your survey. Each organization’s survey will vary based on your operations and your clientele. As a starting point, though, there are four types of questions to incorporate into your survey. These types of questions and our top suggested examples include:

General Satisfaction Questions

• On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend our store to your friends and others?
• How satisfied are you with your experience with our store?
• How would you rate the shopping experience you had with us today?

Service Satisfaction Questions

• How satisfied were you with our customer service?
• How would you rate the efficiency of our staff?
• Were you satisfied with the availability of our staff to offer assistance?
• How satisfied are you with our return policies?

Open-Ended Questions

• In what ways can we improve your shopping experience?
• In a few words, how would you describe your overall shopping experience with us?
• What do you enjoy most about shopping at our store?

Demographic Questions

• What is your age?
  • 18-25
  • 26-30
  • 31-35
  • 36-40
  • 41-45
  • 46-50
  • 51-55
  • 56-60
  • 61 or older
• With what gender do you identify?
  • Male
  • Female
  • Non-binary
  • Other
  • Prefer not to disclose
• What is your annual household income?
  • Less than $25,000
  • $25,000 to $34,999
  • $35,000 to $49,999
  • $50,000 to $74,999
  • $75,000 to $99,999
  • $100,000 to $149,999
  • $150,000 or more
  • Prefer not to disclose

Tips for an Effective Shopping Experience Survey

As we mentioned, an in store experience survey is an investment with substantial rewards. Get the best return on your investment with these expert tips for an effective survey.

Choose the Right Survey Tool

As you shop around for retail survey companies, be methodical about the survey tool you choose. This tool will affect the quality and reliability of your results. First of all, look for an open-ended survey tool. GroupSolver, for example, is an AI-driven survey tool that allows respondents to give open-ended answers, then uses its advanced AI to analyze those answers and give you concrete, quantifiable data. Open-ended questions like this allow you to get authentic, honest, and thorough opinions from your customers.

Second, be sure your survey tool is user-friendly for both the survey creator (you or your team) and the survey respondents. You don’t want to spend more time than necessary on building your survey, but more importantly, you don’t want customers to ditch the survey halfway through because it’s too cumbersome or confusing to use.

Establish Policies and Practices to Put Feedback Into Action

Asking for feedback is only the first step. If you don’t put that feedback to use with customer-guided retail experience solutions, you won’t be getting your money’s worth. Don’t ignore customer feedback if it isn’t telling you what you want to hear or if it’s bringing up problems that aren’t easy to fix. Appoint someone in your business to be responsible for monitoring surveys and pitching projects that address the issues your customers are raising.

Don’t Go Overboard

When you have a customer engaged with a survey, it’s tempting to want to pick their brain about every aspect of their experience. Your customers are busy people, though, and if your survey takes too long, they’ll leave it incomplete and you won’t get the information you need. Keep your in store customer feedback survey brief enough to be respectful of customers’ time.

Don’t Forget to Gather Demographic Data

As part of your survey, ask respondents for a few pieces of demographic data, like their age, gender identity, race, state or city of residence, income level, employment status, and/or living arrangement. This information allows you to see if there are some groups of customers you’re serving better than others. Keep in mind that these can be sensitive matters for some, though, so allow the option to opt out of any of these questions.

Developing a Simple Yet Effective Customer Experience Survey

The tips and template above can help you create a retail customer experience survey that gets the answers you need while enhancing your relationship with your customers. To jump in and get started, book a GroupSolver demo and learn how this unique survey tool can give your survey the boost it needs.