Using Automation to Uncover What Shoppers Really Think

Using Automation to Uncover What Shoppers Really Think

Want to know what's inside your customer's head?

Brands everywhere are trying to listen closely to what shoppers really have to say. Not the fluffy responses to multi choice questions they know you'll only skim over… Actual opinions, gathered directly from your customers.

Problem is, regular surveys just aren't working like they used to.

Response rates are abysmal. People rush through tedious surveys. Then brands are left with stale insights they can't act on.

But what if you could hire an endless team of interviewers that will ask each customer thousands of follow up questions?

Using AI + intelligent interview flow, brands can now literally talk to thousands of shoppers at once. An automated survey interview allows you to ask open-ended questions, grab the juicy goods on WHY they answered that way, then ask even more custom questions based on their responses.

Checkout how an AI survey tool can automate this interview process for you and deliver deeper insights than any static survey could gather.

Table of Contents

  • Old Fashioned Surveys Suck

  • Automated Survey Interviews Explained

  • Pulling Real Insights Using Automation

  • Ask Open Ended Questions

  • Automate The Follow-Up Questions

  • Look For Themes In The Responses

  • 3 Common Mistakes You Should Avoid

  • Conclusion

Old Fashioned Surveys Suck

Old-school surveys are having a bit of an identity crisis.

Who wants to sit down and fill out a survey these days? Nobody. According to Pew Research Center, average telephone survey response rates have dropped to just 6%. That's right. For every 100 shoppers you contact about your survey, only about 6 will bother responding.

And the insights you do get aren't super helpful either. Internet shoppers are forced to pick between pre-determined options that may not fully encompass their answer. Long surveys make people rush through them. Boring surveys get abandoned halfway through.

Even when you get "good" responses the insights can be misleading. When people respond to surveys and claim they'll "definitely buy" something, only 20-30% mean it. There's such a large gap between what people say and what they actually do.

Automated Survey Interviews Explained

So how do you combat this? Simple. Make your surveys feel more like a friendly conversation and less like homework.

An automated survey interview does exactly that. Instead of presenting your customers with dozens of forced multiple choice questions, you ask them one question at a time.

Instead of saying, "this product is [circle one] Mediocre || Good || Amazing"

You ask them:

"What did you love about this product?"

…and then wait for their response.

From there you can automatically ask follow-up questions based on their answer.

An automated interview will:

  • Ask open-ended questions

  • Listen to the shopper's response

  • Ask a personalized follow-up question

  • Dig even deeper into why they answered that way.

See the difference? With an automated survey interview, customers are able to respond in their own words rather than putting checkmarks next to boring answer choices.

This method will provide you with:

  • Responses in the customer's own words

  • Better understanding of why they chose that option

  • Emotions, doubts, and pain points they experienced

  • All of the above

Since it's automated you can run these interviews with thousands of shoppers simultaneously. No more hiring big-name research companies. You won't need to wait weeks to gather responses. Simply set up your interview in the morning and boom. Instant insights by lunch time.

Customers will even enjoy taking your surveys more since they can sound off in their own words instead of answering vague questions.

Pulling Real Insights Using Automation

Got an automated survey tool yet? Now it's time to actually learn what to ask.

Ask Open Ended Questions

Automated survey interviews work best with open-ended questions. Here's why.

Open-ended questions encourage your customers to open up. Instead of asking "Did you enjoy your last shopping experience with us?" You can ask them "Walk me through your last experience shopping with us."

By typing out their response using their own words, you're allowing the shopper to go into as much or as little detail as they want. From there you can automatically…

Automate The Follow-Up Questions

While you can certainly sit there and manually write down every response your customers send in. Automating the questions will allow you to dive deeper into every response.

Let's say a customer responds with, "The product was okay."

Your automatic interview comes back with, "What would make this product great?".

Boom. You just discovered what stopped this customer from coming back and buying from you again.

Was it too expensive? Was the packaging stupid huge? Did they have a difficult time trying to assemble the product?

Find out what's keeping your customers from loving you by automatically asking your survey questions one at a time, then digging deeper with customized follow-ups.

Look For Themes In The Responses

Say you ask 100 customers how their last shopping experience went with you. 35 of them mention that shipping took longer than expected.

Whether it's packaging, customer service, or website navigation. You'll begin to notice trends with each response you gather.

And the best part? AI technology can do the grunt work for you. Using automated tools you can pull common keywords, sentiment, and even spit out direct quotes so you don't have to read through every single response yourself.

Not only will this save you and your team hours of work each week. But it'll also allow you to actually use the insights you gather instead of letting them collect dust on someone's desktop.

3 Common Mistakes You Should Avoid

Sounds great, right? Before jumping in, there are a few common mistakes to avoid when automating your interviews.

  • DON'T bombard your customers with too many questions. You want to ask enough questions to gain meaningful insights but keep the interview around 5-8 questions at max. Long surveys are a snooze-fest and will be skipped.

  • DON'T ask leading questions. Asking "Why do you love our product?" is bias. Instead, try "How did you feel about our product?" and let the shopper decide whether they want to rant or not.

  • DON'T forget to dig for the why. One word answers aren't worth anything. Ask your AI to dig deeper on interesting responses.

Lastly and probably most important of all…

  • DO spend time reviewing the results yourself. It can be easy to run-off hundreds of these interviews then forget about them. Don't let this happen to you! Take 5 minutes and actually review the automated responses yourself.

Conclusion

Shoppers have more options than ever these days. While old fashioned surveys are still useful, they can't provide you with the quality or quantity of responses you need these days.

By utilizing automated survey interviews, you can ask questions in your own words, grab important info on WHY they gave you that answer, then automatically ask more detailed questions based on their response.

Automate your surveys with these 3 simple steps:

  1. Replace boring multiple choice questions with open-ended questions.

  2. Setup your AI tool to ask each customer detailed follow-up questions.

  3. Use their responses to better yourself!