How to Ask for Customer Feedback by Email: 3 Tips for Success

Wondering how to ask for customer feedback by email? Take a cue from the way you communicate with your friends. You would probably try your best to listen and share.

But consider this scenario: supposing a friend called and left a voicemail saying they hoped to hear how you’re doing. Then they added,

“By the way, don’t call me back because I won’t answer. Just fill out the questionnaire I sent!”

This would be bizarre in our personal lives, but it’s a situation that’s all too familiar in our interactions with companies who want us to complete their surveys.

Company XYZ sends an email inviting us to share our thoughts on a recent customer experience. “Your feedback is invaluable!” the email insists.

Often, companies’ surveys are painfully long or irrelevant, making many customers reluctant to take surveys — yet they may still want to send a comment.

They hit “reply” to your email and start writing their thoughts before noticing the fine print at the bottom: “Please do not reply to this unmonitored email address.”

Apparently, customer feedback is not so valuable to Company XYZ, after all.

How to Ask for Customer Feedback by Email: Advice for Companies

Sending surveys from no-reply email addresses is the industry norm. But it tells customers their voices don’t really matter.

If you invite someone to interact, whether it’s a friend or a customer, basic etiquette requires that you let them respond to you in the same way that you reached out to them.

This point is so important it bears repeating. If you email a customer, let them email you in response. It’s that simple.

Joseph L. Badaracco, a professor of business ethics at Harvard Business School, captures the importance of customer listening.

“Communication can’t always follow the top-down model,” he says. “With the fluidity of information in business today, leaders need to be masterful listeners; they need to be able to receive as well as send.”

There are two main reasons why you want to send surveys from an email address that accepts replies:

• It’s friendly and genuine
• A few customers (and they could be key customers) don’t have time to take your survey but still want to ask a question or share feedback. Email is the perfect channel to hear their thoughts.

You will likely only receive a handful of email replies; however, allowing customers to reply to your survey emails signals that your commitment to customer listening is genuine.

Tip 1: No-Reply Email Addresses: What’s the Use?

So, what’s the point of a no-reply email address? Companies use them to prevent customers from responding to automated emails and clogging up the company’s inbox. However, companies seem to be all too happy to clog customers’ inboxes with their newsletters, promotions, and more.

And while no-reply email addresses may be useful when sending an automated update like a shipping notification, they have no place in customer satisfaction surveys.

Why? The entire point of a survey is to interact with customers and invite them to share their thoughts. Sending a survey from a no-reply email address undermines that invitation to connect.

Customers are already bombarded with satisfaction surveys, and response rates are dropping. Why further disincentivize customers from taking your survey with a no-reply email?

If you’re wondering how to ask for customer feedback by email, the first step is simple: let your customers reply to your survey emails.

The best practice is to send clients’ surveys from an email account that accepts responses. And guess what? We always receive a handful of email replies, which we compile into a report for our clients.

These replies are a small fraction of the overall feedback we receive through the survey, but they provide valuable insights.

If you don’t want your email inbox to fill up with customers’ responses, then set up an alias address and route all replies to a designated inbox just for receiving customers’ responses.

Of course, be sure to monitor that inbox and reply to customers’ emails when they have questions or complaints, or simply signal that they want to be heard.

Tip 2: Email Subject Lines: Open the Conversation

Of course, it won’t matter that customers can reply to your survey email if they don’t bother to open it in the first place.

Genuine customer listening means paying attention to every detail that your customers see. That’s especially true for the email subject line, which sets your customers’ first impressions.

If you want to get your customers’ thoughts, avoid using the word “survey” in your email subject lines. Surveys have become ubiquitous in every customer experience, and customers receive survey requests after every meal, online purchase, and trip to the hardware store. The New York Times estimates that tens of millions of surveys are sent each year.

When your customers read yet another email subject line containing the “survey” word, they will likely hit the delete button.

Also consider that a bland, generic email subject line signals the entire feedback experience will be inauthentic.

That’s why companies must consider their email subject lines.

What are some ways to tell customers you genuinely care? Well, certainly we all appreciate gratitude and authenticity, so convey those sentiments upfront:

• Begin by thanking customers; a well-placed “thank you” might even belong in your email subject line.
  
  
• Don’t order; ask. Acknowledge that your customers are busy. Gracefully asking for five minutes of your customer’s time earns more goodwill than bluntly writing, “Take our survey.”
  
  
• Use listening words that convey you are invested in hearing your customer’s thoughts.

Tip 3: Invite and Engage in the Body of the Email

Like your subject line, keep the text of your email invites warm and genuine. Here are a few pointers:

• Let your readers know how long the survey will take, and make sure it doesn’t exceed that. Also, tell them what to expect. For example, if your survey consists of a few demographic questions, followed by a couple of open-ended text questions, and then concludes with five rating questions, let your customers know this upfront.
  
  
• Provide two to three links to the survey and use visual cues to direct readers’ attention to the links.
  
  
• Include a P.S. at the end of your email: it’s a direct marketing technique that’s proven to raise response rates.
  
  
• Make sure customers know you welcome their feedback, both positive and negative.
  
  
• And, of course, let customers know they can reply directly to your survey email instead of taking the survey.

Surveys are not just measurements of the customer experience. They are an important part of the customer experience.

If a customer is willing to take the time to give their honest thoughts, then you should make all communication channels available for them to do so.

After all, customers’ feedback really is invaluable. Make sure they know it.