Part 3: Plan and execute follow up actions to strengthen customer relationships and have a significant impact on your organization’s success. 

You've uncovered your baseline numbers, and you have discovered where your strengths and weaknesses are. Now it's time to begin the cycle of change so you can reap the rewards of getting and analyzing your customers' opinions. Here's how:

1. Create an action plan from your findings. Use this knowledge of your customers to improve your services, events, programs, products, email marketing campaign or website. From your analysis, you identified strengths and weaknesses. What should you make sure you continue to do? Did you identify unmet needs? If so, can you fill those needs? Can you add a new product to fulfill those needs? Can you acquire a partner to fulfill those needs? Did you identify concerns? What can you do to eliminate those dissatisfiers so you have extremely happy customers?  Are there up-sell and cross-sell opportunities that make sense?
   
   You can feel confident making these changes because they are things that you heard right from your customers. They are changes you know customers want and will be well received. By getting these suggestions from your online surveys and making changes, you will have delighted customers who will keep coming back, who will refer new customers, and who will ultimately help grow your business.


2. Share your insights and actions with the people who matter most. The real key to getting the most out of your surveys is to follow-up with your audience to let them know what you learned from their opinions and also what actions you're going to take as a result. You don’t have to give them all of the information you learned, but it’s really nice to hear back after a survey that the business or organization has learned X and is taking Y action to address it. It validates the customer's relationship with you, and lets them know their opinion is being heard, that you do listen, and that their time filling it out was worthwhile. That is what really lets them know their opinions do matter and you are listening to what they have to say. That's powerful for people and it makes them much more likely to complete your future surveys as well.


3. Create lists for future target marketing. As long as you didn't offer an anonymous survey, then right from your results you can easily separate respondents who answered certain questions in particular ways into segmented lists and follow up. You might want to follow up with the group that said they are "Extremely likely to recommend" you or "Already have recommend" to get some great testimonials. Save those respondents to a list you can refer to later. Or take the people who said "Price is really important" and offer them discounts.


4. Extract and use powerful text responses. Look in the text results and pull out any good quotes or testimonials. Use those testimonials on your website and emails as a really powerful way to attract new business. They help prospects decide to do business with you or to donate to you rather than your competition because they have read these great things that your customers had to say about you. (Note: If you want to associate a name to any quotes or testimonials then out of courteously you should ask permission first.)


5. Survey again. So, you've made changes in response to what you learned. How do you know they worked? Surveys are part of a cycle that continues and yields strategic benefits. How do you continue it? Survey again to track the effects of your actions and pick up on new trends. Remember: your survey results are just a snapshot of what your audience is saying at one moment in time. Take what you learned, make some changes, and then survey the audience again as time goes by to find out if your action plan for improvement is working. You can do this by comparing the results of your next survey against your baseline numbers. See if satisfaction, for example, is growing, stagnant, or diminishing. (Note: You will want to use the same exact questions to accurately measure your results over time, and see how they compare to your baseline.)

Now you should be comfortable knowing what to do with the results of your online surveys to truly get the most out of them. Have questions on understanding or using the results of your online surveys? Just use the comment link below.

Until next time, happy growing!

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