How SurveyMonkey Helps 99% of Fortune 500 Companies Improve Products, Bolster Marketing Efforts, and Increase Customer Satisfaction

How Surveymonkey Improves Product Direction And Satisfies Customers

TL; DR: Customer surveys play a crucial role in a company’s decision-making, helping them reach out to target audiences for information that affects product roadmaps. SaaS provider SurveyMonkey lets companies create custom surveys, choosing from more than 15 question types, to extract invaluable customer insights. The platform provides analysis tools to help businesses realize current approval ratings and extrapolate solutions for improvement based on responses from customers and employees. The resulting decisions lead to product innovation, marketing and interface upgrades, and, ultimately, greater user satisfaction.

Surveys are a convenient, powerful way for companies to get inside the minds of consumers.

LoungeBuddy, founded in 2013, sought to revolutionize the airport experience by giving travelers the ability to discover, book, and access premium airport lounges worldwide. To fulfill that mission, LoungeBuddy needed to learn about airports, lounges, and, most importantly, travelers’ habits and preferences. SurveyMonkey helped LoungeBuddy get the right questions to travelers, and to collect that data quickly and efficiently.

SurveyMonkey logo

This data-based decision-making is particularly direct when it comes to web-based companies. A lack of physical products makes adaption to data insights easier to implement. User interface-centric surveys are especially easy to act on. After data is gathered and analyzed, addressing consumer complaints and preferences is often as simple as changing a single graphic or line of code.

When the survey revealed most people were unwilling to walk more than 10 minutes from their departing gates, LoungeBuddy added a feature to help users find amenities within the closest proximity. Armed with insights provided by SurveyMonkey-collected data, LoungeBuddy refined its service and the UX of its mobile app to make rapid access to nearby lounges with desired amenities nearly as stress-free and relaxing as the lounges themselves. That translated into LoungeBuddy rapidly dominating its market.

A Collaborative Survey Platform That’s a True Leader in the Market

How surveys are created with SurveyMonkey depends on business needs. Trusted by 99% of Fortune 500 companies, SurveyMonkey provides users with numerous templates, including basic formats like customer satisfaction surveys, as well as advanced, professional formats pertaining to job satisfaction with open-ended questions. Advanced branching allows survey designers to customize a survey based on specific conditions.

Questions can be skipped or hidden based on conditions being met or unmet. Advanced piping allows for custom variables and data fields to make surveys more personal to users. This makes analysis easier because results can be filtered according to specific responses.

Web-based businesses such as LoungeBuddy greatly benefit from online surveys because they share the same medium. Results are gathered and stored quickly and can be put to use immediately. SurveyMonkey provides security for sensitive data, unlike paper surveys that can get lost, stolen, or even accidentally duplicated, with their data counted more than once.

Simple electronic formats for surveys allow customers to give their opinions without hassle. Users are more likely to spend just a few minutes on a quick survey as opposed to a long, tedious one. For such occasions, SurveyMonkey provides 15 question types, including multiple choice. Sometimes, more detailed input may be necessary, and SurveyMonkey provides support for open-ended questions.

An optimal survey in such a case might include a number of multiple choice questions followed by a few open-ended ones. Luckily, SurveyMonkey makes it easy to implement any of the question formats into a single survey to mix and match benefits. Such advanced customization makes SurveyMonkey a leader in survey creation.

Keeping a Pulse on Customers Ensures Their Satisfaction

SurveyMonkey CX is an NPS (Net Promoter Score) solution that offers survey analysis in a clear and well-timed format. CXM stands for customer experience management and is a direct way to listen to customer feedback based on satisfaction scores.

Loyalty retention is easier when survey takers can directly comment on aspects of a business they either love or hate. It takes the guesswork out of analysis and adds a personal touch to the survey-taking experience, demonstrating that a business displays special interest in consumer concerns.

Companies increase customer satisfaction and retention by asking customers directly for product improvement suggestions. Businesses can eliminate or modify features that are not well received, and enhance or add features that have positive ratings.

SurveyMonkey provides support for open-ended survey questions, enabling customers to provide original feature requests as well as elucidate on multiple choice and true/false responses. LoungeBuddy was able to improve its user experience by analyzing travelers’ habits. Its entire app is made with travelers’ needs in mind, creating a loyal user base for LoungeBuddy.

Customer satisfaction is important because repeat customers will continue to drive the industry. Unlike the typical one-time purchase, many web-based products are subscription- and license-based. This is why understanding what subscription customers think is essential to keeping them in the fold. Moreover, surveys help companies — especially web-based companies — understand and adapt to the constantly shifting landscape of the web.

TechValidate Adds Third-Party Feedback to a Marketer’s Arsenal

TechValidate, purchased by SurveyMonkey in 2015, is marketing automation software that turns customer feedback into suggestions and content. TechValidate works by collecting customer data through questionnaires and validating this data without violating privacy. The resulting content assets — charts, graphs, ROI metrics, reviews, and case studies — can then be published to make a business case.

SurveyMonkey integrates TechValidate’s technology to make marketing and customer satisfaction even easier. TechValidate’s analysis tools cut out the middleman by providing useful metrics on data collected through SurveyMonkey forms.

Photo of the TechValidate team

SurveyMonkey bought TechValidate in 2015 to help customers get more out of survey data.

There’s no need to spend extra time analyzing data and compiling charts and infographics on one’s own. Relevant charts quantifying customer data and feedback metrics are generated by TechValidate and can be downloaded and added to a PowerPoint for presentations as well as Word, Excel, and InDesign for reports and marketing materials.

TechValidate updates charts and graphs online with up-to-the-minute accuracy that reflects the latest customer questionnaire responses. A user needs only to download and replace outdated imagery, presentations, reports, and marketing materials for revised content. TechValidate content is even indexed by Google, streamlining it for SEO while increasing business visibility.

Using Surveys to Make Data-Driven Business Decisions

Survey questions come in many forms to collect as much customer data as possible. Customers prefer quick, short surveys but also a platform that makes them feel their voices are heard. SurveyMonkey offers the best of both worlds with tools that allow companies to craft concise queries using many different types of questions so they receive complete and accurate answers without wasting respondents’ time.

For many customers, the motivation to complete a survey is to affect change for the better. They want companies to hear their voices. Enabling that motivation through forms that let customers express themselves fully in a minimum amount of time and effort strengthens the bond between businesses and end users to mutual benefit. Businesses make more money when customer needs are met.

LoungeBuddy was created specifically to help mobile users have more enjoyable traveling experiences. It achieved this by listening to survey takers and anticipating their needs. Without a platform like SurveyMonkey, LoungeBuddy would be missing out on information like how many airport dwellers have access to lounges or how motivated those travelers are to find them. The data LoungeBuddy collected with SurveyMonkey helped the company understand fliers and determine the most suitable lounges and rest areas for them. In turn, LoungeBuddy became the number one app in its space.

SurveyMonkey offers many positives for businesses seeking growth. It is a great addition to any marketing arsenal, especially web-based businesses. SurveyMonkey makes it easy to create unique surveys with a variety of question types and flow logic, and then, with the help of TechValidate, makes it easy to analyze and act on the resulting data. Companies, like LoungeBuddy, depend on user input to improve their products and understand their markets.

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