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Today's competitive national and international marketplace compels every company to listen to its customers voices and to understand what they think about its organization and its products and services. Most every organization leader will agree that it is vitally important to highly satisfy customers on many, if not all levels. But how many take the extra step to learn whether they are, let alone take concrete actions to ensure they are doing so?
That's where a customer survey online comes in. This survey tool, compiled through survey software, is the single most powerful mechanism to grow sales and turn one-time customers into repeat buyers. Here are just a few of the ways an online customer survey can be used to an organizations' betterment.
Retaining Customers
The importance of retaining customers cannot be overstated. A mere five percent increase in customer retention can increase an organization's bottom line profits by 25 percent to 95 percent, according to analytics from Frederick Reichheld, a consultant from Bain & Co.
New Product or Service Concepts
But there are other reasons to implement a customer survey online. For one, it can help you gauge customer interest in a new product or service concept before investing thousands of dollars into it, and then finding out that it's not filling a huge need for your customers.
Minor Grievances
In addition, most company have small issues that annoy customers. While these minor annoyances may not be enough to drive customers away, over time they can escalate into something bigger that can cause a customer to jump over to your competitors side. A survey tool helps to identify those issues before they become magnify.
Competitive Advantage
Learning about your competitors strengths and weaknesses vis-a-vis yours is an exceptional way to develop competitive advantage in your market. Competitive advantage helps differentiate a company among its competitors in terms of products, services, price, technology and more. It's a critical component of business success because it helps companies maintain market share and provides a basis for long-term sustainability and profitability. Moreover, for public companies, a healthy market share helps to attract more capital to fuel more growth -- both of which shareholders and investors sorely value.
Avert Misreading Companies
A pricing strategy change made by a well-known department store provides an example of misreading what customers want. Back in 2012, JC Penney changed its pricing and marketing to a more "fair and square" pricing model, all the while doing away with discounts and coupons. As the strategy unfolded, customers missed the coupons and discounts, and as a result, many customers abandoned JC Penney. Now, about a year later, company leaders have decided to go back to discounted prices in hopes to gain back their customers. JC Penney wasn't the only company to misread what its customers wanted; Netflix had its own story a couple years back as well. Long story short: companies can avert misreading customers by conducting a customer survey well-thought out and designed by online survey software.
When it is all said and done, organizations who play an active role in customer satisfaction through a customer survey online better meet their needs and expectations.
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