Merren ran 300+ surveys and received more than 30,000 responses on their WhatsApp survey campaign. The Merren team had also collected a massive number of responses via Facebook messenger surveys across cities. Every online survey has touched various demographics, target audiences and different categories.
In this blog post, we will give you a gist on how to run your own WhatsApp survey on Merren for free. We will also share the 8 strategies that got our campaign successful.
What is a WhatsApp Survey?
A customer satisfaction survey collected via WhatsApp messenger is a WhatsApp survey. Brands can use WhatsApp for Business to collect customer feedback on this popular messaging app. You can create WhatsApp polls, multimedia such as images, videos and pdf attachments.
You can make a survey on WhatsApp using Merren CX tools. There are ready made templates that you can customize for your market research goals.
How To Make A Free Survey On Whatsapp?
Follow the step by step guide on creating a WhatsApp survey using Merren CX platform.
- Sign up for a 14 day free trial with Merren. You can get instant access to all our pre-designed survey templates on the dashboard.
- Name and label your survey according to your market research goals.
- You can either create a survey template from scratch or use our AI survey builder to make instant templates.
- Within the dashboard, customize your questions as per your research goals. You can also translate the questions automatically using the multilingual feature.
- Head to the ‘logic’ section. Adjust the survey logic to make the templates less confusing for respondents. Customize the templates with poll options to gather feedback concisely.
- Keep a fair bit of both qualitative data and quantitative questions.
- Click on ‘preview & test’ to demo test your question template across devices and mobile phones.
- Click on ‘deploy’ and use any of the survey platforms available to you- AMP emails, chatbots, Meta messenger or WhatsApp messenger.
- All responses will be saved over the ‘report’ section. You can view customer data in real time or over the Merren CX dashboard.
8 Tips That Got Us High Survey Response Rate
Using WhatsApp for surveys offers several advantages. We discovered some recurring patterns that got us a high response rate with every campaign. After analyzing those patterns, we will share 8 lessons here that gave us high response rate on customer feedback surveys:
1. People easily respond to conversational surveys:
WhatsApp is a user friendly brand that comes with multiple features for a fast conversation. Keeping your survey questions less intimidating will get more responses from people. Respondents generally might not prefer the formal business tone. This solicits more responses from the total number of people who could be sitting anywhere- at a park or a boardroom meeting.
Consider the following two versions of a segment from an ad test survey:
Version 1:
“How was your experience at the store?”
Version 2:
“Hi <name>, nice to meet you.
How was your experience at the store today?”
Version 2 is clearly more conversational. It personally addresses the respondent (addressing someone by their name is an undervalued hack!). This validates the response and makes them comfortable sharing their opinion. The survey response rate from a version 2 survey technique increased by 15%.
2. Use multilingual surveys to target respondents in different regions.
Offering feedback surveys in English can cost you many response rates. As a marketer, we must acknowledge language differences to accommodate our respondents. This makes the process easier and relatable for your customers.
Messenger apps have a big advantage. It comes with built-in language support. WhatsApp supports over 40 languages on Android and 60 languages on iPhone. WhatsApp also supports 11 local Indian languages. So take advantage of this feature and customize your survey for your customers. This pulls in better and higher completion rates along with authentic quality of responses.
Merren conducted a WhatsApp survey in a rural part of India for a major consumer product. We added audio support along with each question i.e. the respondent could also hear the audio version of the question for clarity.
3. Post-purchase surveys will get a high response rate :
A customer’s involvement with a brand is the highest during or immediately after the purchase process. The memory of customers, on the service they receive, is the best after a recent interaction. This keeps the customer feedback inmoment with the business transaction.At this moment, the customer will readily respond to your questions about their experiences with the brand. Additionally, this memory is still fresh and the quality of response will be better. You won’t get the same quality of responses if you ask the same questions, a few days later.. By then, the customer experience will have fizzled out.
4. A shorter WhatsApp survey format is easier to understand:
When brands interact with their customers once a year, they can get tempted to bombard them with questions out of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). Long format questionnaires, anywhere from 40-50 minutes will tire out the respondents. A tired respondent will not provide genuine feedback. We try to avoid this practice for any survey channels- offline and online surveys.
WhatsApp messenger and Facebook messenger are not built for long surveys. It enables you to conduct several short and focused surveys throughout the year. Shorter surveys have higher completion rates, high number of responses and improves data quality.
Additionally, it avoids the blind spots that are usually created by inconsistent customer contact.
5. Brands must offer transparent information exchange with customers:
Most respondents are in a hurry to finish questions and wonder how long it would take. It is important to be transparent and give out this information clearly and frequently. Additionally, when the survey creator is generous with their information, the users feel obligated to share more information. Sometimes, it is about creating trust with the consumers, even via messenger surveys.
6. If surveys assure chat privacy, you can aim for a higher survey completion rate:
There is an increased awareness and concerns around privacy. Customers are constantly nagged by unsolicited marketers, most of which are unethical. This discourages users from easily sharing their information online. The priority of a CX professional is to assure the respondents of data privacy. This means that the data they collect would only be used ethically and only for research purposes. If you are collecting personally identifiable information, make sure you take their consent on how this data can be used.
7. Offer relevant survey rewards to your customer base :
Most users participate in surveys as they expect or receive some form of rewards or payback on completion. Stating the incentive upfront on survey participation will bring in more authentic respondents. Incentives work only if they are relevant, accessible, and valuable to the survey respondents.
Example: Starbuck coupons for rural research in India are neither relevant nor accessible to the audience. Similarly, if you are researching users of high-end cars, a meagre voucher of INR 50 is not valuable enough for the target audience.
8. Messenger surveys capture more information in a short time span
People are not interested in questionnaires or customer research surveys. Blame the traditional methods of seeking customer feedback. Messenger applications of Facebook , WhatsApp, including chatbots are smarter and faster. People want to respond on-the-go. They don’t want cognitive burden. Now you can easily share customer surveys across messenger apps.
Ready to start collecting customer feedback? Use Merren CX dashboard today
Merren’s generation of successful messenger surveys have helped brands discover what their audience is looking for. Use every omnichannel to your advantage. Supercharge your data collection process and use AI for a seamless workflow. Use our 14 day free trial to capture critical customer moments. We offer extensive templates, real time data analysis and smart integrations for the modern day marketer.