A really good survey can give you feedback – good and bad – about what your clients really want from you. You can also use this to help move your business in the right direction.
Salons and spas don’t always tend to use this valuable way of getting feedback as much as they could – maybe because there’s a perception that they are a waste of time, or hard to organise?
My Nailing Online Surveys post shows you just how simple it can be to create a survey – but what do you put in it? And how can you get people to reply rather than just consigning your carefully worded survey to the spam folder?
The three steps to fabulous feedback are:
- Decide what you need to know
- Ask the right questions
- Ask the right people
Let client feedback help your salon business
Decide what the purpose of the survey is right at the start. Are you evaluating your customer service? Deciding where to take your business? A well-worded survey can help you get insight into your clients’ wants and needs, giving you all sorts of delicious information about trends in your area you might not have picked up on, and key areas in which you might be able to add value or services.
If you want to know whether a service or product range that you’re thinking of introducing is likely to be a hit with your existing salon client base, don’t ask around it or try to make up numbers with irrelevant questions. Get right to the point and ask about the product. Ideas could be:
- Have you heard of ESPA? Yes/No
- Do you like ESPA products?
- Which product/treatment is your favourite?
- What product/treatment would you like to see in the salon?
- Would you be interested in an organic product range?
- Would you be likely to try a Hopi Ear Candling?
Direct, succinct and to the point is the best way to ask questions because if you get too wordy or ask things that are irrelevant, people won’t bother answering. We are all easily distracted so the faster people can rattle through your questions, the more likely you are to get a response.
Give people an option to add their own opinion – add expanding questions like ‘how’ or ‘why’ or ‘please give details’ to a few of them. Not all of them though, because this just makes the survey more time consuming for the reader and means they might not bother.
Getting Personal?
Do you give your respondents an option to be anonymous? There’s some evidence that if you do, you might get more replies. This is especially true if you’re asking what clients think about a recent experience or treatment they’ve had with you,they might want to have a vent about your prices or the fact they had to wait longer than they thought for your therapist to see them. It doesn’t really matter either way if you use online survey software to collate your results. The software will make it simple for you to look at all of your responses and sort them in a way that makes them useful to your business.
Getting your survey seen
You might have all the best ideas for survey questions but if you don’t have a way of getting them to the people that matter, they are next to useless. Using online software like SurveyMonkey takes the stress away from the techie part, and if you want tips on setting one up for yourself, well here’s one I made earlier – nailing online surveys.
Did you find this blog post useful? Yes/No
(See what I did there? Sorry…)