Apple's Customer Surveys

I recent­ly pur­chased the new Apple iPad to test out and see if this is a good busi­ness tool for con­trac­tors. After the pur­chased, I received an email from Apple ask­ing if I would take part in a 15 minute sur­vey about my recent and past Mac pur­chas­es. I thought the email was writ­ten well and it was a great mar­ket­ing idea. How­ev­er, I was con­cerned about the 15 min­utes. But, being a huge fan of Apple, I clicked on the link and began the sur­vey. To be quite hon­est, I hat­ed the sur­vey. I was real­ly sur­prised at the lev­el of detail Apple went into in each ques­tion. 15 min­utes seemed like an hour, and I had to think real­ly hard to answer the ques­tions. I could not skip the ques­tions either. They asked me tech­ni­cal ques­tions like, ​“How long did you spend research­ing an Apple prod­uct before you pur­chased it?” and ​“How many sites did you vis­it dur­ing your research?” This was just a sam­pling. The ques­tions were more advanced than that. When I fin­ished I was almost upset. I kept say­ing, ​“This is not like Apple” to myself. They make every­thing so sim­ple and easy, but this sur­vey was heavy and bor­ing. Good grief.  Mar­ket­ing Tip for Painters and Contractors My take is this: when doing a sur­vey, make it fun and keep it sim­ple. Bet­ter yet, con­sid­er doing it by phone. If you have a very hap­py cus­tomer, they’d be more than hap­py to spend 5, 10 even 15 min­utes on a phone call with you. I’ve done this a num­ber of times when I was work­ing for my dad’s paint­ing com­pa­ny. In fact, I even drove out to a clien­t’s home or busi­ness to talk to them. They’d talk for over 30 min­utes! Oh, and you don’t have to give them a gift card or buy them any­thing: just ask them! Apple did­n’t say they’d give me any­thing. I was glad to help, well not as much after the long sur­vey. But you get the point. A good sur­vey helps you bet­ter your ser­vice and know how to gear up your mar­ket­ing to past and future clients. Just make sure you don’t put your cus­tomer to sleep!