With a brick-and-mortar enterprise, there are two ways you can receive customer feedback.  You could create a paper-version of a customer feedback form.  This form would contain ask the customer their opinion of various elements of your business.  When the customer feedback form is finished, it would be placed in a special box to be collected later.  The other option is to try to initiate a survey after the customer has placed their order.  The problems with these methods is that despite being pretty quick, they are ‘then-and-there’ types of things.  Then and there means that the customer has to answer the questions immediately.  Of course, in the case of a paper-version of a customer feedback form, they could take it with them and fill it out later, but very rarely do customers do this.  And, in terms of a phone survey if customers aren’t interested, that’s pretty much it… they won’t necessarily respond to a follow-up call because they may consider that telemarketing.  So, what’s the solution?  Being able to issue these things through a website, where a person can complete an online customer feedback form or an online survey.  This article will discuss these things in more detail, along with how you can begin using them.

First, there are online customer feedback forms.  These are no different than paper-versions of customer feedback forms.  They usually consist of text boxes, (also known as ‘fields’), that ask the customer various questions.  These questions could consist of general personal information such as their name, address and telephone number along with a questionnaire requiring them to rate various aspects of their experience with your company.  And, just like offline customer feedback forms, online customer feedback forms can offer a sweepstakes as an incentive for people filling them out.

Secondly, there are online surveys.  In essence this could be a considered an online customer feedback form, though most online surveys are much more detailed.  Like an online customer feedback form, online surveys would ask for general personal information, but begins to differ from a customer feedback form when it comes to the nature of questions asked.  In fact, a typical online survey could have so many questions that it may take up to 5 minutes to be filled out completely.  So, since online surveys are a bit more work than online customer feedback forms, it’s best to offer more of an incentive than just a sweepstakes.  When an online survey is completed a customer should receive a discount on their next purchase, an free e-book containing useful, specific information they didn’t know before or an email newsletter doing the same thing. 

What can you do to put online customer feedback forms or online surveys on your site?  Online customer feedback forms can be achieved by simply putting various textboxes and labels on your site, while online surveys will require more advanced manipulation of forms, depending on how elaborate you want the online survey to be.  If you know nothing on how to create an online survey, consider using an email marketing service to help you.