Feedback is part of any service, whether that’s providing resources for a community, a fixed service deliverable or an online event, asking your customers or audience what they think is useful for several reasons:
- It helps you improve through making informed decisions
- It re-engages your customers and helps build relationships
- It can be a pat on the back to see what you’re doing well
This is different from requesting reviews or testimonials, though of course, you may end up with both of those in the process.
3 options for requesting and collating feedback
– to gather opinions or directly linked to an event or service
1. Personal email
This is great for one-off or small group feedback when you would like to give your customers the opportunity to provide in-depth or longer form information linked to a specific service or event or to even ask their opinion.
The pros of this are the level of personalisation, as it appears as a regular email. If you can initiate their feedback by asking leading questions rather than simply ‘What did you think of…?’ then you’re more likely to get useful insight from them that will help to answer any questions you have about whatever it is you have provided for them. It’s also very easy to follow up with a personal thank you or to ask if they are happy to be quoted on your website, for example.
The downside to this approach is that you then need to collate the information yourself. This means taking the information out of the email and collecting it in a useful way for future reference. Copying and pasting into a Word document or spreadsheet works well, both having search functions. But if you need to sort the data based on a specific question, then a spreadsheet (Excel or Google Sheet) would do the trick.
2. Google Form
Once you have set up one Google Form for your business, it’s very easy to copy this across to different uses – information gathering, registration forms, events bookings, surveys and feedback. But for feedback, a Google Form works well for gathering survey opinions from a large group of people or for specific feedback from an event or service. The pros of using a Google Form are the variety of uses – scenarios and question types – and the ease of collation.
On the form, you have the option of creating a branded header and then options for creating paragraphs, sub-sections, and questions and responses in various formats. This includes multiple-choice, checkboxes, drop-down lists and free-text responses, so they are well suited to feedback requests and collation.
Once you’ve created the questions, you can select a destination Google Sheet in which the responses will be collated, meaning you don’t have to manually do that. You can also view the ‘Response’ tab of the form for an at-a-glance view of replies and then dig into the replies a bit more via the spreadsheet. When the form is published and set to accept responses, you can share that via a link in any email, so it can be shared again and again until you close the form.
It may seem that using a Google Form takes away from the personal touch of the personal request that I’ve mentioned above, but as the link to the form can be added to an email, this can be freely included within a personal email too, combining the best of both. It could also be added into a Mailchimp campaign or as a link from your website. There’s also the option of personalising the ‘Thank you’ screen once the form has been submitted – so it’s worth checking those and rewriting them to your specific scenario.
3. Survey tools – Survey Monkey or Typeform
Both work in a similar way to Google Forms, but you’ll need to create accounts on either of the platforms and you can only make use of many of the features if you’re on a paid account.
On the basic/free plan they offer different question presentation options, but unlike Google Forms there are limitations. Both seem to be restricted to 10 questions per survey or form, with response limitations too. For example, Survey Monkey is limiting viewing responses on their free plan to 40 from January 2021. Typeform has some great examples and templates on their website including this one for customer feedback.