How can you increase your B2B Survey Response Rate?

I am writing an article on "How to achieve an 80% response rate on your B2B surveys?" Please share some strategies and tips that worked for you.

The blog will be published in the next 3 days and your responses will be included (post-approval) linked to your profile.

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Comments

Chris Rosa

80% response rate would be incredible!

I work on the NPS for our company, and we do email surveys only because that's how we primarily communicate with customers.

Some of the things that I've learned

-Sending the email survey on a Monday or Tuesday morning (5am PST for us) has gotten the highest responses.
-If your business is already texting customers and communicating that way, you'll get the highest response rate
-Communicating how long the survey will take seems to increase response rates (please take 30 seconds to fill out our survey)

Anita Toth

Thanks! ?

James Stuart

Hi @Manisha Khandelwal

For me, when sending out any feedback surveys you have to ask yourself "What is in it for the customer" If the customer sees the value they will respond. A fundamental part of feedback management is closing the feedback loop. I recommend you always share your findings and the subsequent actions with your customer (especially in a B2B setting)so they can see how you actioned their feedback and that also their feedback is valued.

Thanks
James

Manisha Khandelwal

Hi @Anita Toth, Here's the link to the blog - https://www.surveysensum.com/blog/how-to-achieve-an-80-survey-response-rate-for-your-b2b-saas/

Manisha Khandelwal

These are great points. Thank you.

Anita Toth

@Manisha Khandelwal Can you share where the blog was published?

David Ellin

One of the critical issues I've seen in B2B surveys is companies sending surveys from their survey platform (Medallia, Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, etc.). When that happens, customer sites often block those email addresses or they go to spam. If your survey emails are not delivered, they can't be responded to.

Here are a few tips to improve delivery:
1) Send the surveys from your company email account
2) If you can't send surveys from your company email account, inform your customers of the originating email address for surveys and have them get their IT department to "white list" the address so they don't get rejected. You can also ask your customers to put the address in their contact list.
3) Send a pre-survey email notifying customers that they will receive a survey on XX/XX/XX date from the address: xxxxxx@XXXXX.com and stress the importance [and value] of having their timely feedback.
4) Post-response, thank customers for providing feedback, sharing ideas, how you will use the information.
5) Make sure you TAKE ACTION
6) Reach out to non-respondents as well. They'll telling you something by not responding!

Anita Toth

@Steve Bernstein @Manisha Khandelwal We've found that 'closing the loop' is often the best way to get people to submit survey responses. We included data from the last survey like:

top 3 responses
% of respondents with X demographic or firmagraphic info
verbatim quotes

What we found is that by including this info at the top of the new survey, people were more likely to answer questions because they were curious.

It also trained them to know that they would get a summary of the responses at a later time.

Using this method, my partner managed to get survey completion rates around 80%.

Kimberly Ross

My experience in the past was to include call to actions during our webinar to get and keep the audience engaged, as well in any survey's we sent. On occasion I've seen companies offer a gift card in return for participation on information. Not an approach I am fond of, as I don't feel you get the what you're truly seeking. I find it better to tie a sales related incentive to it if you are going this route, meaning signed agreement in hand and discount applied at time of sale, no cost training, etc. or whatever the incentive is.

Manisha Khandelwal

I agree with you except on one point. Don't incentives work better for B2C rather B2B? What do you think?

Manisha Khandelwal

I have read different opinions and experiences on the in-line email surveys. However, @Steve Bernstein and @Tanuj Diwan insights clarify a lot of things. Thanks.

Steve Bernstein

Terrific, @Will Pagden , and congratulations on the launch! Now the hard part begins, putting "insights into action." If you want to see your results "visualized" analytically, we provide a free service to import the data into TopBox, our platform engineered specifically for B2B customer feedback, and can provide some out-of-the-box insights to make your process faster and more effective.

Will Pagden

Always love your input on this topic @Steve Bernstein! Our survey program has just gone live, interested to see what results it yields.

Will Pagden

Would agree with all your points there @Tanuj Diwan. ironically I had an email go out this morning advising customers of our new program, we’re still relatively small but had a 20% response rate saying how fantastic and they will get involved. interesting to see the survey response rates!

Tanuj Diwan

One new thing we recently added in the process like informing them about we will be sending surveys, it is something that I picked up from one of your conversations @Steve Bernstein You always gives one of the best ideas when we speak about NPS, VOC

Steve Bernstein

@Tanuj Diwan I wish I could "like" your reply at least 10 times!! Sometimes I feel like I'm in my own bubble so it's great to hear other people talking about the RESULTS from demonstrating the customer engagement as you describe.

/Steve

Tanuj Diwan

I completely agree with you @Steve Bernstein

This is one of the roles that CSM should lead, and some of the tasks can be talked about in different meetings that we already have with the customer.

Also we have found out once we explain them how seriously we take feedbacks at the time of Onboarding the response rate jumps 8-12% .And even more when we respond/act on that feedback.

Steve Bernstein

Great outline of your process, @Tanuj Diwan ! Although it seems like a lot of work for a CSM to manage, they should be doing this anyway if the objective is to strengthen relationships. For those thinking that CSMs don't have time for this, consider

Can't many of these items be worked into existing conversations? Don't necessarily need to invest a whole new series of interactions...
How much value-add comes back to the CSMs from actionable insight? Most certainly this process should help them optimize their work to focus on the areas driving the biggest-bang-for-buck, including retention and expansion opportunities that are uncovered in the process.
Much of this can be automated, although ensure the process matches the touch-model...
Where are they spending their time, and does that investment actually result in financial improvement?

Thanks again!

/Steve

Steve Bernstein

We've seen in-app work well for end-users, just know that end-user feedback isn't usually representative of the stakeholder/buying-committee team (for large accounts)... Also, be careful to not interrupt user workflow with annoying survey pop-ups...

Steve Bernstein

Hi @Will Pagden -- While we support asking the question in the email itself ("inline surveys"), we built the feature because we thought we'd get better response rates. Now after doing tons of A/B testing we've found that, much to our surprise, you only get ~1% improvement from that tactic. We've learned that customers are reluctant to expose themselves without a clear "what's in it for me" to do so. That is, the biggest driver of response (participation) rates is ensuring that the customer perceives a WIIFM to participate, taking on some risk by exposing sentiment with a commitment from the "vendor" to ensure the feedback doesn't go into a black hole... The stronger and more evident that commitment is to the customer, the more likely they will participate, and our customers that do this well do in fact obtain 80%+ participation from all the right contacts at the right time, ensuring the feedback is actionable to both the account and cohort/segment levels.
/Steve

April Hannah Olsen

Agree with the above on in-app @Alex Tran @Will Pagden . Additional considerations for the survey itself: keep it short (3-5 questions max), let respondents know estimated time to complete upfront (e.g. 90 seconds), and design questions using a Likert scale or give them options to choose from (no one wants to fill in the blank on every question). For longer surveys consider an incentive (e.g. enter to win). I’ve found all of these can increase response.

Tanuj Diwan

Yes this definitely works when we speak about Product Adoption, Feature Adoption from Product users. But to get feedback from decision makers we still need to use another channels.

Tanuj Diwan

@Will Pagden I agree that sending in-lime emails might give a better response rate in terms of the first Question, but most of the times people do not leave comments after that and will just a score drive value to the organization?

I believe few of these can help us avoid in-line, whats your thought?

1. We inform the stakeholders at the time of Onboarding that we will send regular feedbacks and assure them them we will take actions.

2. We ask CSMs to make list of all stakeholders, Decision Makers and Actual Users of the product before sending the surveys.

3. Inform them in advance we would be sharing the surveys shortly.

4. Send surveys from the names of CSMs who are regularly in touch with specific clients rather than a company wide survey.

5. We explain how long will be the feedback, how would we use them and when the survey is going to end

6. Set a couple of reminders.

7. If still users don't respond, speak with them personally on how we can get feedback from them.

8. Always take actions & respond to their feedback by thanking them.

Alex Tran

If you have the tool, in-app surveys generally have higher response rates than emails.

Regarding the messaging itself, I would personalize it (e.g. "Hi John...).

In app is the key. We have a customer achieve an outcome that have almost 5x their response rates by using in app vs. email.

Will Pagden

So one thing I am a fan of, and you have to have software that can do this is in-line survey questions. Now some people will have differing opinions on this. But by having a in-line survey question the first (and it should be the most important question) is displayed in the email with the option to choose an answer from the email. Clicking on the answer then prompts the survey to open but also saves that first answer.

So if you have a meaningful question you want high response rates on this is a good idea. However, its important to note this wont necessarily mean high full response rates, you would need to decide if you're happy to accept partial responses if its a more than 1 question survey.

Steve Bernstein

We've been doing this work with our customers for years, so our blog is loaded with best-practice articles on several key "customer engagement and feedback" topics, including several on how to boost response rates at https://waypointgroup.org/resources/?search_phrase=participation

More targeted articles, depending on how deep you want to go: