How the biggest companies in the world use customer surveying to gain an advantage

If you've gone to a major retail store such as Target or Wal-Mart or fast food chain such as Taco Bell, you might have noticed a survey phone number or website at the bottom of the receipt. Major corporations are performing customer surveying on a massive scale, and understanding how the biggest companies in the world use customer surveying to gain an advantage can help you perfect your surveying strategy.Rewarding ParticipationBig companies usually offer incentives for taking surveys. Some provide a coupon or discount on the customer's next purchase within a reasonable amount of time. Others enter customers who take the survey into a monthly drawing for a reward such as cash, store credit, or other big rewards. These incentives help to boost survey participation. You probably are not able to afford to do large cash drawings, but a small coupon for taking a survey can promote customer retention as well as improve your overall surveying rates.Up-to-Date Information For major corporations, the window for feedback via customer surveying is always open; the constant gathering of feedback is one of the major ways in which the biggest companies in the world use customer surveying to gain an advantage. By giving customers the opportunity to take a survey with each purchase, the data never gets out of date. In addition, it allows for companies to effortlessly gather benchmark data after major changes to their products or business.On the other hand, more carefully targeted surveys should be - and often are - given via other means such as email and social media. Such surveys are useful in the development of new products and services, for example.Linking Data to Customers Surveys are often anonymous, but they can still be used to find valuable information about the demographics of customers and what they usually purchase, thus helping companies boost their databases.Feedback on EmployeesMajor companies often use customer surveying to get feedback on how employees were providing customer service during certain shifts or in certain departments. While a single piece of negative feedback should never be treated as an indictment, survey feedback on customer service helps major companies mediate between two extremes - only responding to rare customers who complain in person after an especially bad experience, and only using internal company reviews to evaluate performance. In addition, linking data to specific shifts or departments can reveal systemic shortcomings in certain area.