Want to maximize survey response rates? Try this strategy

Are you looking for a way to improve your customer satisfaction survey response rates? Are respondents not providing an answer to your emails? Are you asking questions with specific results in mind?

A “yes” answer to those questions could mean it’s time to try something new for better response rates, like experimenting with when to send the survey.

Why? Response rates can’t be controlled by how your audience responds to your surveys, but you can at least control when to send surveys. Zendesk can show you how to maximize response rates by adjusting the timing of when an article, questionnaire, or respondent survey goes out.

Below are the survey response rates by the day of the week that it was sent. Note the response rates based on the day they were sent.

Now take a look at the survey response rates based on the hour of day that it’s sent. The results show how specific hours can have a big impact on the number of respondents.

This is when it gets interesting.

Now take a look at the survey response rates based on the hour of day that it’s sent. The results show how specific hours can have a big impact on the number of respondents. The system automation that handles surveys in Zendesk defaults to sending a survey 24 hours after a ticket is solved.

Notice in the above graphs that the survey response rates drop dramatically when they’re are sent during working hours, and how response rates increase starting around 6pm and peak at 4am.

The hypothesis is that surveys sent during working hours get mixed in with other email and are more easily skipped and ignored. But those sent after the work day are likely to be found at the top of an email inbox the next morning (seen along the morning news articles and first sips of coffee). The chances increase that the survey could be the first thing they see.

So the question is, how do you improve your response rates and increase the number of responses?

First take a look at when the bulk of your tickets are solved. Then, choose an offset that attempts to land the survey at the top of your respondent’s inbox the next morning, say after 10 hours, or at a time when it’s less likely to get mixed in with other email.

See below how to do this and get the results you’re looking for in Zendesk:

Try going into your Request customer satisfaction rating system automation and update the Ticket: Hours since solved parameter to something like 10 or 34. Assuming your peak hours are 9-5, this will offset the time the survey is sent from the working hours of the day, so surveys are sent late at night or early in the morning when response rates are the highest.

We have more articles about maximizing response rates with customer surveys. Read our guest blog post from CustomerThermometer, “How to create a customer survey people will actually complete“

You can also learn more about the Zendesk customer satisfaction survey for better results with your response rates.