As part of our discussion on how to improve the customer journey, we talk about automating certain tasks, making them easier for you, and in some cases even making them easier your customer. One perfect example is the use of an online questionnaire to collect information. Of course, if it is only a couple of pieces of information that you want or need, it is fine to collect that information on an initial contact form, or through e-mail, or even by asking when you are talking to the customer in person or on the phone. However, if you need to collect multiple pieces of information, potentially in multiple formats, we recommend that you use an online questionnaire.
Online questionnaires make it easy for you to collect information by allowing you to create the questionnaire once and then you just send a link to each customer you want to fill it out. In addition, you can collect the information in the format you want. For instance, do you need just a yes or no answer, need the customer to pick from a set of pre-determined options, want the customer to type in an answer but want the answer to be limited to 250 words…? All are possible when using a questionnaire. Questionnaires are also great from the customer’s perspective in that they guide the customer through, and make answering the questions easier, rather than just answering a list of questions sent in an e-mail. And, most questionnaires allow you to set it up so that the person answering the questions can answer some, stop and get out of the system as needed, and then come back to answer others, giving your customers flexibility and ease of use when it comes to longer questionnaires.
In my Officiant business, I use questionnaires to collect vendor and wedding details from my couples, as well as to have them answer their relationship questions that help me build their ceremony. I know DJs that use questionnaires to get song preferences (and no-play-list) information from their couples, musicians who use questionnaires to find out about procession details and song preferences, and planners who use questionnaires to gather wedding party details and other key timeline inputs. Most business systems have some level of questionnaire functionality, and if yours doesn’t, don’t just give up on using questionnaires, instead check out Typeform or Google Forms to get your questions answered (pun intended).
