If you are expecting to get lots of responses from your customers the instant you begin canvassing them, we have some bad news for you – most of the people who see your feedback link will not give you feedback.

The good news is that there are some simple steps you can take to maximise your response rate; these include:

• Use a prize draw as an incentive: research shows your survey is far more likely (50% more likely) to get a response if there is the chance of winning a prize. If you can’t justify giving away a prize, use the takesense.com prize draw question and we’ll provide the prize draw on your behalf.
• Tell people there’s a prize draw when you tell them about your feedback survey; it’s no good offering a fantastic incentive to complete your survey if your responders don’t know about it! So next to your internet address put something like “complete our short survey for a chance to win $xxx’s”
• Keep your survey short! The fewer questions there are the more likely someone will complete your survey.
• Tell people it’s a short survey when you tell them about your feedback survey; so next to your internet address put something like “complete our short survey for a chance to win $xxx’s”
• Make sure people can see your feedback link; if you’re sending out a feedback link with your invoices / sign off paper work, it needs to be noticeable.

Remember: you don’t just want to use a professional feedback system as a selling tool; if you monitor customer feedback you will also have the joy that is knowing what they want, what they don’t want and when and how to provide it.