Ideas for small business: Surveying your customers

Two weeks ago, I wrote about some online tools for small business, one of which was Wufoo.com which allows users to design and host simple online surveys. They are quick to set up and Wufoo uses a freemium model, which lets a small business find a plan within their own budget. For small business it is of critical importance to understand your audience and how they interact with your product or service, how they view your business, and how they define themselves.

We sent out the survey request to 1,800 buyers from 2009, and approximately 550 responded by completing the online questionnaire! This is a response rate of over 30%, which by industry standards, is very strong. Here’s a sampling of the questions and some results:

Demographics:

• Buyer’s gender: 70% male, 30% female
• Top industries: InfoTech, Advertising & Marketing, Consulting
• Company size: under 20 employees: 81%; over 2o employees: 19%
• Company revenue: under $100k: 40%; $100-500k: 28%; $1-5mm: 12%

Customer satisfaction:

• Overall experience: 81% rated 8 or higher (on scale of 10)
• 86% said that they will “come back with their next project”
• 96% said they would recommend to a friend or colleague

Customer service:

• 45% used our online help and of those 60% rated it 8 or higher (on scale of 10)
• 61% contacted customer service and of those 79% rated it 8 or higher (on scale of 10)
• Given a choice of how they prefer to contact us, 70% chose email, 10% chose phone, and 18% chose online chat

Purchase behavior:

• 73% of respondents told us that they posted their [project for themselves or for their company; 7% posted for a client
• When asked what types of creative projects they plan to do in the coming year, 33% indicated Graphic design; 29% said Web design; 15% said Copywriting; and 13% chose video

We of course have a great deal of work to do addressing the insights and information presented by these results. This is the hard part, but the digging itself will be valuable.