Filed under: Running a better business
Feedback from current loyal customers should be treated just as importantly as feedback from new visitors. Make it easy for customers to take your surveys and connect with you on social media, remedy problems in a timely manner, and track improvements with ongoing surveys.
Make it easy
Customers can share their experiences with any given business through multiple mediums and in a quick and convenient manner. Using a mobile survey system allows customers to give real-time feedback in a medium which they are comfortable with. Here you can also encourage customers to connect with you on social media or sign up for your email marketing list.
Encourage customers to connect
Companies should encourage new and regular customers who had positive experiences to join an email list, become a Facebook and Twitter fan, write a review on Yelp, and tell their friends about their experiences. One of the most effective ways your company can encourage these acts is by offering incentives such as discounts, freebies, coupons, and/or sweepstakes entries.
One good example of how businesses can get surveys responses from current customers is by asking for feedback from their Facebook fans and Twitter followers. These groups of consumers have already shown interest in the company, which indicates that they have had several experiences with the company.
Make sure they are happy – in a timely manner
Customers are much more likely to share a negative experience as opposed to a positive one, and it is crucial that business owners rectify negative experiences as quickly and as effectively as possible. Since many survey systems rely on service evaluation cards left behind or surveys completed at home on the web, it can be difficult for businesses to compensate for a negative experience in an effective and timely manner. If you use these methods, make sure you ask your customers the best way to contact them for followup. With the use of mobile surveys, businesses can enjoy faster organization of customer feedback and quicker responses to any issues that arise.
Encourage your regular customers to take your surveys with relative frequency
By consistently encouraging members of these groups to fill out mobile surveys after a popular sale or promotion, your business can have a better understanding of which business practices are effective and which are not by basing the information off of people who are already interested. By encouraging customers to take your surveys regularly, you can track improvements and help maintain your loyal following.
Filed under: Events
When choosing a venue for your conference, trade show, or other event, there are several key factors that you should keep in mind to ensure that the venue meets your needs and that your event runs smoothly. Get to know your target audience and what they want from the event, then evaluate your potential locations from the below essential criteria.
Location
Make sure the venue is conveniently located for your attendees. If many will be flying in, choose a venue close to the airport and hotels. You might also want to choose a location based on whether or not the event will be appealing to those working close by. In that case, you will want the venue to be easily accessible by public transportation and with plenty of parking available.
Appearance
The venue you choose will project the image of your company, aim to find a venue that will be aesthetically appealing to attendees and will leave a favorable impression. It must be clean and in good condition, free of distractions, and with plenty of accessible restrooms. The size is also important; estimate the number of attendees and make sure you have just enough space, as a venue too small will feel cramped and a venue too large will make your event appear underwhelming.
Staff Service
Pay close attention to the venue staff when you visit to evaluate a potential venue. How is the staff’s performance? Are they attentive, diligent, receptive, and experienced? Much of the success of your event depends on the venue staff and their ability to provide quality arrangements and speedy problem solving when needed. An ipad survey app can help you gain more feedback on the service and guest satisfaction.
Food
Keeping your attendees’ appetites satisfied is essential to ensuring a positive experience. Provide quality food and beverages that fit the mood of the event and accommodate potential dietary restrictions. If the venue itself does not provide on-site catering, make sure that they will allow external caterers and that they have appropriate facilities for food preparation, storage, and serving.
Equipment
The best venues are well prepared with the equipment you will need to run your event: tables, chairs, and other furniture; advanced audio visual equipment, complimented by good acoustics; and wireless internet and other technology.
Keep a running checklist as you visit potential venues, and the one that best matches the above criteria will likely be your best bet. Once the conference is underway, you can collect feedback from attendees on your choice of venue and other aspects of the event by asking them to complete a real-time survey. Attendees can access the survey on their iPhones or on iPad kiosks set up in designated areas. Results are recorded instantly, and management is immediately notified of any negative responses or red flags in order for the issues to be promptly addressed. You can also use a variety of analysis tools to conduct an in-depth review of attendees’ responses after the event has ended, using their feedback to improve your future events.
Filed under: News | Tags: funding, investment, press release, venture capital
We have some very exciting news to announce! Survey on the Spot has just closed a round of seed investment funding for $750,000 shared by Kepha Partners, a Waltham venture capital firm; Angel Street Capital of Providence; and Mike Sheehan, a strategic investor. While, of course, this is very exciting for us, you probably want to know what this means for the future of Survey on the Spot.
The funding will enable us to not only expand Survey on the Spot’s market presence in food service, but also to address emerging opportunities for mobile data collection in industries ranging from retail to healthcare and service organizations. We’re very excited to continue to explore and expand the different and meaningful ways that our technology can be used.
In addition, we’re also thrilled to announce that we’ve added Scott Savitz, founder and former CEO of footwear retailer ShoeBuy, as an advisor to our leadership team. With the funding, we hope to grow our team even more, by investing in engineering and sales and marketing and enhancing customer support.
Of course, we’ll keep you updated as Survey on the Spot continues to expand!
For more, check out the full press release.
Filed under: Healthcare | Tags: Healthcare surveys, Hospital survey app, hospital surveys, patient satisfaction, Surveys
Last month, we wrote a blog post about an upcoming rule mandated by the Affordable Care Act that will result in hospitals with the highest patient satisfaction ratings receiving the largest reimbursements from Medicare. In essence, the hospitals with the happiest patients will become the most profitable hospitals. Of course, we recommended that hospitals use Survey on the Spot’s real time surveys to gain insight into what their patients are thinking, so they can be proactive in improving patient service. Now, we’re thrilled to report in a recent press release that Survey on the Spot is receiving record-high responses from surveys in the healthcare sector.
One hospital has reported that 15% of patients surveyed give feedback when hospital administrators use Survey on the Spot, versus the less than 1% of patients who give feedback using the traditional survey methods. And in some cases, since hospitals using Survey on the Spot are receiving more data, they can stop making time-consuming follow-up phone calls.
According to Survey on the Spot President Ken Kimmel, “Although we originally created Survey On The Spot with restaurants in mind, we’re finding that healthcare has been an easy, natural fit… Doctors and nurses are valuing the real-time results and we’re embracing the growth in the sector. We’re excited to see what insights hospitals will be able to gain from using the survey and how it will continue to help doctors deliver the best care possible.”
To read more about how hospitals are using Survey on the Spot to improve patient care, check out the latest press release on Survey on the Spot and the healthcare industry.
Filed under: Survey Feedback | Tags: instant review alerts, mobiel survey results, Mobile review alerts
Customers notice problems with your service or restaurant environment much more intimately than your staff, especially with problems arising from sub-par service or issues with the environment, such as bathroom cleanliness. If a customer is bothered by something which may have gone overlooked by staff and management they may log on to a review website to vent and leave a negative review or fill out a complaint form. Once you catch the review you can respond by taking certain measures to improve the situation in order to prevent future issues, but the damage has already been done: the negative review has been posted, potential future customers may be discouraged from visiting your restaurant, and the customer has already left without giving you a chance to hear their concerns in person.
Rather than waiting to respond until after the incident has occurred, how can you catch the problem before it’s too late and resolve the issue with the customer in person? Using a feedback system, you can provide them the opportunity to give feedback about their dining experience before they leave the restaurant. Results can be delivered to management instantly, allowing you to take immediate action to recover from service problems if necessary. Giving customers the opportunity to provide feedback quickly and easily also demonstrates your commitment to providing quality customer service, therefore building loyalty and trust.
With instant alerts in a mobile survey system, you are able to send a management representative to speak with the displeased customer and make amends for the poor service. You need to be careful about how to approach the customer as it can be intimidating if you make them feel that the survey isn’t anonymous. Best practices are to simply stop by the table and ask how their experience has been, without referencing the survey at all. Frequently, a customer that has had an issue effectively resolved will leave with a positive impression based on the personal efforts you made to improve their experience. The end result is increased customer loyalty, trust in your business, and gives you the power to remediate problems before they escalate.
Using a real-time survey also allows you to gather results and spot positive or negative trends over a period of time. If you notice that one of your locations experiences a sudden uptick in customer complaints on a given day, you can investigate and respond to any regularly-occurring issues accordingly, before they grow into larger problems. You can also view reports over a longer period of time for a higher-level view of your business.
A customizable survey allows you to analyze certain aspects of the customer’s experience depending on your needs. For example, you can use the survey to test the success of new menu items and get specific customer feedback. You can also track the performance of individual employees, using the results to adjust training methods as necessary and to provide employee rewards as incentives for positive performance.
Using a real-time survey with instant alerts will allow you to more quickly and effectively respond to customer service issues, improve restaurant operations, and boost customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Filed under: Email Marketing | Tags: Constant Contact, CustCon, Email Marketing, MailChimp
You have successfully attracted a prospect to your website or a customer to your restaurant. How do you retain their interest and keep them coming back? Your best bet to develop a long term relationship with your customers is to obtain their email address and include them in your electronic marketing campaigns. Here are a few reasons why email marketing works:
Email marketing is cost effective.
Email marketing software, email template design, and the time to create the content is far less than many other marketing methods. Not only are they cheap, but they are worthwhile: the Direct Marketing Association reported that, for this year, every $1 invested in email marketing earned back $40.56 in revenue. While this is a broad figure applied to a variety of small businesses, with a few measurement initiatives in place you can determine what that number is for your business.
You will create more sales opportunities.
Every email you send is another chance to make a sale. If someone briefly visits your website, you may never hear from them again; but, if you were able to collect their email address, you could then continue to contact them and thus remain on their radar. Emails are a great way to generate new or repeat business by drawing people to your business with announcements of new items and special promotions or coupons.
Emails can be targeted to a specific audience.
Once you’ve built up a substantial email list, you’ll have enough information about your customers to segment the list and customize the message accordingly. Targeted emails make your message more relevant to your particular audience, which means that they will be more likely to pay attention and your marketing will be more effective.
You will build relationships with your customers.
One of the best ways to keep a customer returning is to earn their loyalty and trust. Using your email list to contact customers on a regular basis will keep your brand top of mind, and customizing content to be relevant to their interests will inspire their trust. Further, when you request customers’ email addresses, you can offer them the option to opt in or out of your communications. This ensures that you’ll be contacting only those who are genuinely interested, making them more likely to pay attention and respond positively. In short: you’ll have a whole list of loyal customers at your fingertips.
You can easily track results.
There is a wide variety of software available that allows you to instantly track the results of your email marketing campaigns. Unlike other marketing methods, you can analyze in real-time the effectiveness of your efforts by viewing open rates, and what links were the most or least popular in the email. You can then use these results to determine the impact on your business and continue to update your marketing campaigns accordingly.
Survey on the Spot integrates seamlessly and adds opt-in email addresses to several email marketing systems including Constant Contact, Fishbowl and The Customer Connection.
Here are a few easy to use email marketing systems:
Constant Contact
Fishbowl
MailChimp
The Customer Connection
Filed under: Restaurants | Tags: instant surveys, mobile surveys, survey app
When was the last time you heard a friend or colleague complain about service at a business? How often do you find yourself listing off what you disliked about your last hotel stay or lunch meeting? What many businesses don’t realize is that an unhappy customer is more than just one bad experience. Statistics show that 91% of dissatisfied customers will never again purchase goods or services from your business.
According to studies, news travels fast and far. The average unhappy customer will tell between 8 and 16 people about his or her negative experience at your business. Your existing customers may forgive a little bad news about your business, but don’t expect to attract new customers with complaints flying around town. Even the smallest customer can impact your bottom line when he or she starts talking.
Sharing negative experiences is quick and painless in the online age, where language travels beyond your personal social circle. From message boards to review sites, Twitter accounts to facebook pages, anyone with an Internet connection and an opinion can bring your business to its knees before millions of readers. While unhappy customers are likely to tell their story to friends and family, they may never mention it to you unless there is an easy way to do it. This puts an added burden on you to maintain the highest level of service and also to continue to encourage customer feedback.
So think about it. If your average customer visits your business once a month and spends $40, you lose $480/year in revenue. If you have a loyal customer base where you keep customers for several years – say 5 years on average, this has now cost you $2400 in revenue. And finally, if they tell 10 friends who never have a chance to become loyal customers, it has cost you and additional $24,000 in revenue. That’s a lot to pay for a single bad experience that you might have been able to avoid.
The Bottom Line: Each customer you lose or fail to attract will take a toll on your business’s success. Each unhappy customer may mean a domino effect of failed potential new customers. With each person who hears a bad review, you risk losing one sale – or more. With businesses spending considerable money on advertising and marketing, it would be a waste to allow negative word-of-mouth to undercut all paid efforts.
There are dozens of ways to lose business – don’t allow dissatisfaction to be a cause for lost customers, both existing and potential.
Filed under: Healthcare, Survey Feedback | Tags: Healthcare surveys, Hospital survey app, mobile survey apps, mobile surveys
Beginning in October 2012, patient satisfaction will reach a new level of importance to hospitals. Medicare, the largest single payer for hospital services, will give patient satisfaction more weight in determining hospital reimbursements based on quality of care.
In accordance with a new rule mandated by the Affordable Care Act, hospitals will soon compete against each other to best satisfy patients, receive the highest scores, and ultimately see higher reimbursements for services. Medicare plans to reserve 1 percent of its regular hospital reimbursements for a bonus fund, to be distributed to hospitals based on performance rankings and yearly score improvement.
Patient satisfaction ratings will be used to determine 30 percent of the total bonus payments.
To determine the ratings, patients will be asked to fill out Medicare-approved surveys once they are discharged. The surveys will ask a variety of questions regarding the patient’s level of satisfaction with their overall experience, including staff communication, the hospital environment, and the level of care. Medicare intends to set the bar very high, giving hospitals credit for only the highest possible responses.
Unhappy patients will now mean less revenue, an unpleasant thought for hospitals already struggling with increased pressure from 
insurers. Hospitals will have to put more thought and greater effort into delivering superior service and ensuring positive patient experiences. Service providers should ask patients directly about their performance in order to fully understand patient expectations and to determine how best to make improvements.
Hospitals can be proactive in improving patient service by implementing their own patient satisfaction surveys. Survey On the Spot’s real-time surveys can be customized to ask specific questions about their patient’s experience, allowing hospitals to spot weak areas that might negatively influence their ratings and to identify and solve potential problems before the patient checks out.
Through survey results, service providers are able to analyze their own performance and make the appropriate changes for their next patient, and any issues can be quickly addressed before subsequent patients are negatively affected. Results are recorded in real time and service providers are immediately notified of any negative feedback, allowing staff to quickly act to solve the problem before the patient leaves. Simply administering the survey on-site demonstrates genuine concern for the patient’s experience.
With Medicare’s new ratings system, it is of the utmost importance for hospitals to take extra steps to understand patient expectations, target weak areas, and identify and respond to immediate issues. What better way to ensure all of the above by asking patients directly? Real-time surveys will set the foundation for patient satisfaction, higher ratings, and better reimbursements.
Filed under: Restaurants, Running a better business | Tags: customer feedback, online restaurant marketing, restaurant social media, Restaurants
You have a venue and a menu, waiters and waitresses, customers and critic’s approval, but do you have an online presence? Putting your restaurant on the map is no longer just about good food and ambiance; it is crucial to build a relationship with your customers after they have paid their bills and gone home.
Make it easy for your clients to find you online. Customers want to know if you have reservations available, what your hours are, what is on your current menu, if you deliver, if orders can be placed online, and what tonight’s specials are. Having the right terms on your website may make it easier for this information to be found quickly through a search engine. This can include search-engine optimized (SEO) site content as well as paid ads through products like Google AdWords. Beyond your restaurant name, make sure your menu, promotions, and specialties are easily searchable online as well, to ensure that diners seeking something particular find you first.
Ever find yourself miles from home and craving good pizza? If you’re not in your own neighborhood, you might not know where the nearest or tastiest pizzeria can be found. These days, your first move is probably to whip out your smartphone and start searching for the area’s best pizza shop. But what if the area’s best pizzeria has a website that you can’t open on your mobile device? You are left without store hours, delivery options, or menu access. Instead of taking a risk, you might decide to check out another nearby shop, and the first pizzeria loses a customer.
Why let your own business suffer the same fate? Your next client is very likely to be a mobile device user and may be looking up your restaurant right now on a smartphone. Optimizing your website to satisfy your mobile users may require changes from your regular site, but it can make a world of difference to your business when they can easily search your location, menu, and hours on their smartphone.
What about customers right in your neighborhood? Many mobile searches target a particular geographic location; specifically, a one mile radius. Allowing customers to use their mobile devices as a GPS tool makes it easier for your diners to find you quickly.
Trying to get closer to your customers? You can be right in their phone every day. Social media isn’t new to most restaurant owners, but it is often an underutilized tool in the quest for building a stronger relationship with your customers. You don’t have to force your way into a customer’s home via email to let them know the story behind your brand.
Reviews and Feedback Your reputation lies in the hands of your reviewers online. Why not show your customers that you care by giving them the opportunity to give you feedback? Using mobile surveys, you can easily create a positive experience by allowing customers to comment on their experience and share a good experience with their friends. Giving mobile surveys is also a great way to easily collect email addresses and build your email marketing list of opt-in customers.
Tools like Facebook let you share what’s special about your brand on a daily basis, not just the special you’re offering this weekend. Whether it is the fact that you’ve been family-run for three generations, your world-class macaroni and cheese, or your Friday night jazz ensemble, social media tools share information, not simply ‘news.’ It is also easy for your customers to express their love of your business and share it with friends!
If you’re sharing links and information over email or social media or even if you are relying on search terms to direct customers to your site, you will want to know what works. Trend-spotting is key for developing a successful online marketing strategy.
This doesn’t mean that you need to start crunching numbers at the end of a hard workday; tools like link shrinkers and Google Analytics allow you to measure activity and see how your customers choose to interact with your brand online. Are you appearing in searches but not connecting with customers? Do most of your online orders happen after you send your weekly email? Check the trends to see where your visits increase and decrease and what online activity is associated with those changes.
Filed under: Email Marketing, Running a better business | Tags: email list building, email lists, restaurant email marketing
When customers provide their names and contact information to your business, they do so with certain expectations. While some of these expectations are simply classified as social etiquette, others fall more cleanly under federal laws such as the CAN-SPAM act. As a client-centric business, you would be wise to meet both your customers’ social standards and the legal requirements associated with customer sign-ups.
There are certain key elements to your customer signup marketing policy:
Privacy policy. As you collect customers’ personal information online or in person, you need to have a plan established to let customers know who will see this information. Meet the legal requirements by having and publishing a privacy policy. Guarantee your customers’ peace of mind: ensure that you will keep that information as protected as possible.
Collect only what you need. Remember that it is safer for your business if you collect the least personal information necessary. This is especially true when dealing with children. The Federal Trade Commission’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act sets guidelines for companies marketing products or services to children under thirteen. As a result, your site registration may require parental consent or may be prohibited from collecting information if the user is below thirteen years old.
Protect your brand. Keep your intellectual property safe by developing and requiring acceptance of terms of use before using your site. This can assure your business arbitration in disputes with customers.
Don’t abuse your users. You treat your clients with utmost respect, why not treat your online audience the same? Don’t hassle them by asking for all their information upfront: layer registration requirements to collect more information as they go deeper into your website. While the FTC regulates email marketing, it doesn’t ban unsolicited emails. Meet the requirements of disclosure and unsubscribe, but remember not to harass your users via email.
Take no for an answer. Legally, you must! To comply with federal regulations, you must maintain a suppression list, tracking every request to no longer receive emails or texts. If you outsource your email or textmarketing, make sure your vendor knows not to violate a user’s unsubscribe request.
Text Safely. Text marketing must include a ‘standard text rates’ apply disclosure as well as opt-in and unsubscribe tools. The legal intricacies of text marketing are constantly evolving.
Consistency counts. Keep your emails, websites, and coupons consistent, especially expiration dates and other stipulations.
Full disclosure. With social media growing bigger every day, it’s only natural to want to tap into that market by encouraging brand ambassadors to promote your product on their site. Remember that laws require disclosure if your business pays anyone to endorse or discuss the product on a blog, Facebook, or Twitter.
While you do not necessarily need to obtain legal counsel before developing your marketing plan, it may be a good idea to further research best practices and any laws which affect how you capture email signups.
