How to Gather Feedback from Your Subscribers

Here’s something that may not come as a huge surprise: your customers can be your best source of feedback.

And we don’t just mean over social media, email, or other traditional forms of communication that take place during the customer-business relationship. Rather, we mean dedicated, solicited feedback that provides actionable results for your subscription business.

Surprisingly though, the majority of business owners never take the time to gather that feedback, instead relying on anecdotal comments and messages received sporadically throughout the month. It can feel like you’re gathering feedback from customers, but it’s done so in a reactive way: where you gather that data only when a customer proactively gives it to you.

No matter what stage your business is in, no matter what level of churn you’re experiencing, and no matter what your niche may be, you ought to be surveying customers, every month.

Here’s how:

How to Create a Survey for Customers

First, you need to choose a service for creating your survey. There are a handful of solid options, including Wufoo, Survey Monkey, Google Surveys, and Typeform. Personally, I really enjoy the user experience behind Typeform, which moves the survey taker along in a more digestable manner than simply leaving a long list to complete.

Because you might have a different taste, I’ve gone ahead and created two sample surveys, one using Typeform and the other using Wufoo (which looks very similar to the output you’d get from Survey Money or Google Surveys as well):

Both surveys serve the same function and ask the same questions. For the purpose of this guide, we’ll show you the step-by-step of how to create this survey using Typeform.

How to Gather Feedback and Create a Typeform Survey

First, create an account with Typeform and log in. Once in your Typeform dashboard, click ‘Create a New Typeform’

You’ll then be prompted to to Start from Scratch and name your Typeform. Use a title that will make it easy for you to keep track of your results, like Subscriber Survey – March.

Once you’ve named your survey, you’ll enter the dashboard where you can create a survey.

Below, we’ve highlighted the 4 main questions/prompts we suggest using, as well as the Welcome and Thank You screen options. We suggest using Long Text, Question Group, Yes/No and Rating options. To add these to your survey, simply CLICK and DRAG into your form. (Of course, you can use as many fields as you’d like and make sense!

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Notice the option ‘Question Group‘. You can use this feature to group specific questions around specific products. In this option, you can also toggle a ‘Picture or Video‘, and you can upload a picture of your product to ensure your reviewers remember which product they’re reviewing.

Once you’ve added the Question Group to your survey, drag Rating and Yes/No options UNDER the question group (see below). As you add them, fill in the descriptions to make sure the purpose of the question clear to your reviewers.

1. With the Rating option, set it to 5-stars and include the description “On a scale of 1 to 5 (with 5 being best), how would you rate this item?”
2. With the Yes/No option, ask subscribers “Would you like to see this type of item again?”
3. [Optional] You can also add a Short Text or Long Text option to solicit more qualitative feedback from your subscribers.

After you’ve completed your first Question Group, you can then hover your mouse over the top right of the Question Group and use the Duplicate button to immediately duplicate your Question Group. Remember to update your picture as needed.

Check it out – your survey is taking shape!

After you added your needed number of Question Groups, add another Rating question, but be sure to make it it’s own question field, and not under a question group (see #3 in the above screenshot). Here, you can ask subscribers about the overall box experience.

Below this, add another Short Text or Long Text option, and prompt subscriber to provide any additional feedback they might want to include. Review your Typeform and preview it to make sure everything is looking great. You’re almost there!

If You Add an Incentive, Track it!

As you may have noticed at the top of the survey, you can incentive subscribers by offering a percentage off their next box (like 5%), or perhaps a bonus gift or some other unique incentive. However, to do this, you’ll need to capture and track their email addresses when they complete the survey.

(Note: in the Wufoo survey, the first question asks them what email is associated with their subscription).

To do this in Typeform, you’ll need to toggle the Hidden Fields option at the bottom of the survey:

Once you toggle the field ON, you’ll see the following screen. Add the word “email” at the top of the screen, then hit save:

When sending out the survey to subscribers, copy the link provided but replace the XXXXXX with {{ email | fallback:”_REPLACE_THIS_” }}

The link will look like: http://ift.tt/1LJxmyx{{ email | fallback:”_REPLACE_THIS_” }}

Now, when subscribers click through from your email, you’ll capture their email address and see it in your results field in Typeform.

And that’s it – you’ve setup a survey with tracking!

Making Your Results Actionable

Whether you use Typeform, Wufoo, or some other survey tool, use the recommended questions and add any of your own to make the feedback as actionable as possible. This means you should ensure the feedback you gather provides you with advice and suggestions you can truly act on, ie. you can use it to truly make improvements on in the next month of your box.

Questions, comments, or suggestions? Let us know in the comment section below!

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How to Gather Feedback from Your Subscribers