Customer insight survey: Top eight ways to gain insight from your customers

A customer insight survey helps meet one of the biggest challenges businesses face—finding out how customers feel about products and services.

Every customer is different. From their backgrounds to interests to beliefs, they have diverse wants and needs that affect their opinions. Market research and consumer insights enable the creation of better buyer personas, sounder business decisions, and increased revenue.

Better buyer personas lead to more effective marketing strategies. Once the factors that lead a customer to choose your company over a competitor are discovered, they can be used advantageously for growing your business.

Discover such advantages with our top eight ways to gain insight from customers.

What is customer insight research and how does it help a business?

The phrase customer insights refers to interpretations of quantitative and qualitative data, gathered mainly from customer feedback and other sources. After data is gathered and analyzed, it should be used to navigate business decision-making and marketing strategies.

Customer insight research is a systematic process of gathering and analyzing data to gain a deep understanding of customers, including their behaviors, needs, preferences, and motivations. It involves collecting qualitative and quantitative data through various research methods to uncover valuable insights that inform marketing strategies, product development, and overall business decisions.

Market research and customer insights are the perfect combination for business growth. Gaining data on customer insights provides the opportunity to get a deeper understanding of consumers’ personal preferences, while market research furnishes data about current market trends.

Collecting this kind of data is not easy, but it is highly valuable. Feedback about the customer experience, new products, or overall service delivery will help improve your business in many ways.

Business insight surveys

Business insight surveys are conducted within an organization to gather feedback, opinions, and insights from employees or stakeholders. These surveys aim to collect information about various aspects of the business, such as operations, strategy, processes, culture, and employee experiences. The primary goal of business insight surveys is to gain a deeper understanding of the organization from an internal perspective and make informed decisions to drive improvements and achieve business goals.

How to gain customer insights?

Gaining customer insights is crucial for businesses to understand their customers’ needs, preferences, and behaviors. Here are some effective strategies for gaining customer insights:

1. Conduct a customer insight survey

One of the best ways to gain customer insight is to simply ask for it. Online surveys or questionnaires are one of the easiest ways to do so. Don’t waste trees printing paper surveys. Instead, research the market and gather data by sending an email with the consumer insight survey embedded in it. The digital age is here and it’s not going anywhere.

To get started on consumer insights market research, brainstorm questions that you want to be answered. Some consumer insight survey questions might include:

  1. Which product/service do you like the most?
  2. What can we do to improve our services/products?
  3. What makes our product/service better than competitors?
  4. What do our competitors offer that you like?
  5. How did you hear about us?
  6. What do you like least about our products/services?
  7. Would you recommend us to someone you know?
  8. How did you first hear about our company/product/service?
  9. What influenced your decision to choose our company/product/service over competitors?
  10. How satisfied are you with your overall experience with our company/product/service?
  11. What specific features or aspects of our product/service do you find most valuable?
  12. What improvements or enhancements would you like to see in our product/service?
  13. How likely are you to recommend our company/product/service to others?
  14. What challenges or pain points do you encounter when using our product/service?
  15. How well does our product/service meet your specific needs and requirements?
  16. How would you rate the quality of our customer support and assistance?
  17. How would you describe the overall value for money of our product/service?
  18. Are there any additional products or services you would like to see us offer in the future?
  19. What are your preferred channels of communication for receiving updates or promotions?
  20. How satisfied are you with the ease of navigating and using our website or mobile app?

Although you might have dozens of questions in mind, it’s unlikely customers will have the desire or time to answer them all. Try to keep questions brief and to the point. Also, try to limit open-ended questions to fewer than five to avoid a lack of responses.

Easily write customer insight survey questions with SurveyPlanet’s assistance

SurveyPlanet is here to help you create an easy online survey to carry out research and gather data effortlessly. Create an account to start building a customer insight questionnaire. You will also gain access to dozens of features and over 90 pre-written surveys (in case you prefer not to write questions). SurveyPlanet makes it easy to embed, share, or send a questionnaire to customers.

For even more features, SurveyPlanet Pro is an affordable way to access custom themes, white-label options, and upload images. If working with multiple markets, duplicate a consumer insights survey and tailor questions for specific segments. If a business has a worldwide presence, build surveys in multiple languages. The possibilities to customize a questionnaire are endless with SurveyPlanet.

Once a survey has been created, share a link to it on social media, embed it on your website, and send it out in emails with push notifications. If you have specific surveys for different segments, then creating separate email campaigns is the easiest way to ensure subscribers receive the correct questionnaire. After the survey goes out, sit back and relax while the customer insights pour in.

2. Use Google Analytics to gain consumer insights

Conducting a consumer insights survey is not the only way to gain knowledge. If your website isn’t already connected to Google Analytics, now is the time to do it. It tracks all website activity and provides a wealth of data that is of great use in research. Gain knowledge about everything from who consumers are to their behavior on your website.

Review Google Analytics data to find out what the top exit page is, which will tell you where customers are dropping off. If the top drop-off page is their cart, they might feel alarmed by final prices or shipping costs.

Google Analytics also provides customer insight based on which pages have the highest bounce rates. A bounce rate is the percentage of viewers who exit a website after only viewing one page. If the bounce rate is high, you may want to implement a better website strategy to encourage viewers to visit other pages. Google Analytics also has a helpful feature that shows the click-through rates for conversion actions such as product views, add-to-carts, and chat usage.

If unsure about how to use Google Analytics advantageously, ask someone who does or takes Google’s free certification course. Google Analytics provides customer insight without the need to talk to them.

3. Use social media analytics to get customers to take your survey

Learning more about your website is not the only way to use analytics. You should also track the analytics of social media tools. There’s a good chance that the people who follow a company’s social media pages are either past or potential consumers. Their reactions—or lack thereof—to content can help provide insight.

Take a look at Facebook or Instagram analytics. How many impressions did each post make? How many reactions (or likes) did it achieve? Did anyone save the post or share it? Take note of the posts that perform well and those that don’t.

For posts that don’t perform well, compare and contrast with the better-performing ones. Figuring out what the difference is, which will help in better understanding customers.

A lot can be discovered from a target audience’s preferences and habits, including small details like determining the best time to send a survey email. However, one of the most important aspects of customer experience is how to address your audience.

This is important both in effective marketing strategies and in creating engaging surveys. If good communication with consumers is absent, start focusing on making engaging surveys. But don’t stop there—be consistent in marketing as well. Use the same tone when posting on social media or in emails and interviews.

4. Conduct interviews as an alternative to a standard consumer insight survey

If a company is a little old-fashioned, or there is a more personal relationship with clients, consider as an alternative to a typical consumer insights survey conducting interviews to gain customer insights. If on the phone with clients or customers, ask them to take a moment to answer a few questions about their experience. If a customer frequently visits a place of business, even conduct interviews in person. Speaking to a customer directly will result in more genuine answers, as there’s no filter or editing involved. An interview doesn’t even need to be formal. Try having a casual conversation with customers to get more candid answers.

5. Don’t have time to create customer insight survey questions? Do a poll instead.

If designing specific customer insight survey questions is not the best course, then a simple yes or no poll is an easy way to gain customer insight. Polls are ideal for asking simple questions and getting instant feedback. Polls can ask customers if they like a new product or are happy with a service. Use them to learn more about customer preferences. To create such a poll, an online survey creator like SurveyPlanet can help gather all the answers in one place.

Facebook and Instagram also have options to create polls with social media posts. It might even be a good idea to put polls on different platforms to gauge differences in audiences.

6. Don’t underestimate the power of social media

Social media isn’t just for posting new products. It’s also the ideal place to start a conversation. If you’re not using social media to gain information about customer insights, you’re missing a big opportunity. Brainstorm post ideas that will encourage followers to share their insights. A simple call to action like “Let us know what you think in the comments” is an easy way to get customer feedback. Not only does this help with gathering market research and consumer insights, but it will drive your social media engagement through the roof.

7. Communicate everywhere for ongoing insights surveys

Ongoing insights surveys—also known as continuous or pulse surveys—are conducted on a regular and frequent basis to gather feedback and insights from employees or stakeholders. Unlike traditional annual or biannual surveys, ongoing insights surveys are designed to provide real-time or near real-time data on various aspects of the organization. They allow for continuous monitoring and analysis of employee or stakeholder sentiment, engagement levels, and other key metrics.

In the digital age, customers are everywhere. They visit websites, talk to chatbots, read emails, follow companies on social media, and subscribe to videos on YouTube. With opportunities for communication everywhere, are you taking advantage of it all?

When a customer sends a message via social media or a website, make sure a response continues the conversation. If someone is complaining about a product or service, ask them for specific information about their experience. Gaining extra insight into certain situations will help implement improvements down the line. To encourage customers to reach out more, make them feel welcome. Communication is the key to gaining powerful customer insight.

8. Ask for feedback after checkout

An additional place to gain information from a customer is by asking for their feedback after they make a purchase. When the checkout button is clicked, redirect the customer to a survey asking about their experience. Try to keep the customer insight survey short—under five questions—to encourage more users to participate. A checkout survey can help determine how processes and a business can improve. To manage surveys in one place, consider embedding a SurveyPlanet survey on your website.

Ready to gain customer insight and improve your business? SurveyPlanet has 90+ pre-written surveys that will help you get started. Sign up for a free account and learn more about your customers today.