212: How to Do Customer Surveys

The Startup Chat with Steli and Hiten

In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about how to do customer surveys. Hiten put out a customer survey that was answered by one of their podcast listeners—long story short—this podcast listener was BLOWN AWAY by how Hiten designed his survey. Listen in as Hiten shares about the 6-question survey, why it was effective in getting people to answer, and how it led to 700 responses and 52 follow up interviews to inform his next product.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 00:17 – Today’s episode is about how to do customer surveys
• 00:46 – Steli was at a conference and met someone who was a podcast listener and Hiten’s Product Habits email subscriber
  • 01:04 – While answering one of Hiten’s customer surveys, he was also analyzing how the questions were sequenced and how they were asked
  • 01:27 – After the survey, Hiten sent an email explaining how he designed the questions and the man was blown away
• 02:22 – Hiten had an email list called Product Habits and he rebranded it this year
• 03:02 – Hiten would put out a survey every time he built a new product or business to find out and understand the problems people have
  • 03:51 – Hiten calls this Early Access Lift Off and this guarantees success because you are learning even before you build a product
• 04:43 – The document sharing and creation space is Hiten’s new business idea and they decided to include everyone on the email list
• 05:35 – Hiten says it’s not marketing if people love it and if you’re genuine in your intentions with it
• 05:54 – It was so valuable for people that Hiten shared their process and everything else
• 06:32 – The survey had 6 questions and it started with a call to action
• 07:04 – The most powerful thing you can say to somebody else is to ask them to “share your opinion” as opposed to “give us feedback”
  • 08:27 – People are much more likely to share their opinion when you ask them for it
• 09:11 – The title of the question and the call to action is the same: share your opinion
• 10:00 – Change the “your” to “my” and people will own it
• 10:40 – Hiten found out that in email lists, people sign up with their personal accounts, not their company accounts
• 12:14 – They asked about the tools being used for sharing documents and included big and small to medium companies
• 13:37 – Question #5 is the key question and is the only one that is open-ended
  • 13:58 – “What is your single biggest challenge when it comes to creating and sharing documents?”
  • 14:14 – In the description, they asked the responder to be as detailed as possible so they can use it to create software that can be super valuable to them
• 15:11 – Since they will share everything, Hiten thought they should make a really good survey
• 15:52 – The second most important question is – “How can you participate in helping us build this software?” and it was not a required question
  • 16:13 – They included a call to action wherein they said that if you’d like to be interviewed, you will get 5 minutes of advice about whatever you want in the end
  • 16:28 – It was a multiple choice question
• 17:02 – The survey had 700 responses
• 18:09 – The answers were thoughtful even though it was only 6 questions and it took people an average of 8 minutes to answer
• 19:25 – Steli says instead of just asking questions, Hiten explained why they care about the answers
• 20:03 – In a 17-day period, Hiten said they were able to interview 52 people
• 21:38 – Steli says Hiten is doing the work talking to the customers
• 22:05 – Steli realized he has not done a survey that has lead to a call
• 23:46 – End of today’s episode

3 Key Points:

1. When writing the script for surveys—ask for their OPINION, not for their feedback.
2. End your survey with a call to action that not only benefits you, but those who fill in your survey as well.
3. Customer relations begins with the realization that you do NOT know anything and that you need to ask your customers for help.

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