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C’mon, admit it – you’ve blown off a customer service survey request before. (I know I have.)

Everywhere you look – your Inbox, your sales receipts, even the websites you visit – you’re inundated with requests to “share your feedback” or tell a company how they did.

Sure, you’d like to respond, but if you took the time to fill out every single one of those surveys, you’d probably get fired for ignoring your job. So you pick and you choose – completing feedback surveys for only those experiences that are exceptionally great or terrible.

Therein lies the problem with feedback surveys: low response rates and polarized feedback create highly biased samples that are great for anecdotal purposes, but useless for understanding the general level of satisfaction within a client base.

Response rates for customer satisfaction surveys are declining. In fact, the American Customer Satisfaction Index shows that response rates for e-surveys (e.g., web and e-mail based) are now similar that of the dreaded paper survey – a dismal 10%.

So if your staffing firm wants meaningful feedback, how can you increase response rates from a truly representative sample?

Here are a few ideas:

  • Don’t waste respondents’ time. In other words, don’t ask dumb questions like, “What staffing services do you use?” Show your valued clients that you respect their time by getting to your point quickly. Keeping the survey short. And always test questions internally to be sure they’re clear and reflect positively on your staffing firm.
  • Do something with the feedback you receive. If customers go to the trouble of completing feedback surveys, you should share the results with them. Once the survey closes, tabulate the results and send an honest interpretation of what you find. Explain what you’re doing well and what you’re committed to improving. Sharing results will go a long way toward building stronger business relationships, and your clients will know that their feedback is truly valuable.
  • Experiment with incentives. True, incentives do skew results. But if your participation rates are extremely low, you may actually get better results (in terms of both quantity and quality) if you send your survey to a group of participants chosen at random and offer them a nominal incentive.
  • Thank participants. Whether their feedback is positive, negative or indifferent, thanking clients is the right thing to do. Plus, it increases the likelihood that clients will provide honest feedback in the future – setting the stage for more accurate survey results down the road.

So, what do your customers really think of your staffing firm?

And what are they saying about you online? Haley Marketing offers comprehensive reputation management services to help you:

  • Build more positive testimonials and online reviews.
  • Catch negative feedback – before it goes viral.
  • Benchmark your service, so you can see how it stacks up to staffing industry leaders.

Want more positive reviews – and fewer negative comments online? Learn more about our reputation management services for staffing agencies here. Then let’s talk!

 

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