Combining the excellent open rates (98% within 10 minutes), and concise content, SMS is the best channel to elicit customer feedback.
Asking members what they think is a great retention tool. A survey turns a one-way message into an interaction. If you can use the feedback to improve your service, right a wrong, or give a staff member a bonus, then even better!
Short sharp surveys or questionnaires work best, with 2 or 3 questions, and an optional free format comments field. Tell the member in the invitation that it will only take 30-60 seconds, and that you value their opinion. In addition to good uptake, you’ll also engage more members because you need to keep the message brief.
With email (or heaven forbid, poster) survey campaigns, you need to work really hard to get a member to click through, and just won’t get as many responses as SMS. We see response rates up to 10% on SMS surveys, which eclipses other channels (see below). And many SMS platforms’ survey tools allow you to easily track responses back to the individual member if needed, which is vital if you need to respond to a comment.
Great examples of quick triggered SMS surveys are just after joining (how was the process?), after the induction, after a programme review (general appointment feedback), before you change the fitness class timetable (this always gets a massive response), or quizzes and competitions. Telling the member in the induction or in a class that they’ll be receiving an SMS survey is a great way to improve response rates. The annual customer survey is still run as a one-off, once a year at many clubs, but it should really be an ongoing survey with results and feedback analysed continuously. SMS is ideal for this.
Ex-member surveys are another great engagement tool via SMS. For more responses, offer a ‘deal’ or code for survey completion, and you can easily measure ROI through re-joiners. This mechanism of something in return (feedback for a deal) often works better than just sending a deal by SMS – there’s more value if you’ve worked for it, and you get useful information from ex-members too!
So, don’t send your next member survey via email, or post on social media for all to see. Give SMS a try, segment and target your members, and prepare to be amazed by the volume of responses!
A word on QR codes and email surveys…
A 4,000-member club once insisted on putting a survey link onto a QR code to display on a poster in reception. There was one click on that link over 2 weeks… and that one click was us testing that the link worked!
We also sent the survey by email to circa 3,000 active members, with an open rate of 37%, and click through of 3%, i.e. 33 clicks… which resulted in 26 surveys completed (less than 1% of those ‘polled’).
For another club, sending a similar survey by SMS, we achieved a 6% response rate, which for 3,000 members would be 180 completed surveys.
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