A big part of conducting B2B market research is surveying customers to gather valuable feedback. However, the frequency with which you survey your B2B customers depends on multiple different factors.
So while no one answer applies to every organization, factors such as your industry, the products/services you sell, and your customer profiles can help determine how often you should survey customers.
Taking these into account will simplify the process as you're navigating when to touch base again with your customers.
Our customer satisfaction survey company does have one definite answer, though: surveys should never just be done once! Keep reading to learn how often you should run B2B customer surveys.
Best Survey Sending Practices
B2B customer surveys are most often sent out online. Before we get into online surveys, below are a few other ways that these surveys can be sent out:
- Mail surveys
- Email surveys
- Phone surveys
As we mentioned, customer satisfaction data is best gathered through online surveys.
First off, we recommend partnering with a third-party research firm to create the surveys. This is arguably the best practice when running surveys, as an experienced team will be able to handle all aspects of the research process.
Additional best practices include:
- Setting clear goals
- Testing the survey prior to full launch
- Offering incentives
- Personalized questions
- Reminder emails to take survey
How To Base Your Customer Survey Frequency
When planning your survey, it's important to consider who your audience is. Based on their traits, how often do you think they'd be willing to take a survey?
It's important to not send out too many surveys in a short amount of time, as this may backfire and end up annoying customers.
- How often do they shop with you?
- Are there more new customers versus established ones?
- Monitor engagement rates: how often would customers be willing to take surveys?
In fact, you can take that last question and work it into a survey to gather your customers' honest opinion.
All this said quarterly surveys are often a good option if you're unsure.
This ensures you'll be staying updated enough to pick up trends without pestering customers!
Remember to Use Targeting and Segmentation
Using targeting and segmentation techniques will allow you to understand customers on a deeper level.
These tools help break down B2B customers into different groups based on shared characteristics.
By studying these differences, this will help you learn more about how often customers may prefer giving feedback.
For example, by using these techniques you'd be able to segment customers based on how long they'd been shopping with your company. Newer customers may be okay with answering surveys more than older ones, depending on the industry.
Additionally, you can use these techniques to monitor other details like:
- Seasonal shopping habits
- Customer behavior
- Customer lifecycle stage
The more you know about your customers, the more you'll be able to determine how often to send out those surveys.
Recommended Reading: How to Segment Your B2B Customers
Different Survey Types Can Affect Your Frequency
There are surveys for many different situations in the customer journey, affecting the frequency of how often you send them.
For example, a post-transaction survey can be sent out more frequently. These would take less time and are easier to create than surveys measuring other customer metrics.
Other examples of these metrics include measuring net promoter score (NPS) and customer effort score.
It's key to assess which types of these surveys are necessary to your business and how they will help gather customer data.
Create Engaging Surveys To Help Send More
How does creating a great, engaging survey allow you to send more in the future?
Because the more engaging your surveys are, the more customers will want to take them. But there are many factors that go into creating an engaging--even fun--survey.
Here's what we suggest:
- Use relatable language
- Make questions relevant
- Change up question style
- Interactive questions
Creating fun, engaging surveys that include these elements will make customers be more inclined to take them.
Contact Our Customer Survey Company
Ready to elevate your B2B customer satisfaction? Contact our customer survey company today to unlock tailored solutions that drive meaningful insights and strengthen your business relationships.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
Lark Allen
As a Content Marketing Specialist, Lark has a strong background and passion for creative, professional, and journalistic writing. She is also a self-proclaimed music freak and 90s enthusiast.
Learn more about Lark, here.
