While surveys and forms sound similar, they are different things with their own goals, formats, and best practices. However, they are both crucial elements of customer success because they allow you to collect a vital resource: feedback.
Any company worth its salt needs feedback. It allows you to improve your product and understand your customers at the same time. But before you start rushing out and asking the questions that matter, you need to understand the difference between forms and surveys and where to use them.
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Forms and surveys are used to gather information. However, the type of information they collect can help tell them apart.
Surveys are best for collecting opinions, feedback, and information from individuals or larger groups of people. Typically, they use multiple-choice questions. However, many surveys include options for open-ended questions.
Forms are best for collecting objective information. They are typically composed of open-ended questions and are used to gather more detailed information.
Another way to think about the differences between the two is that surveys are best for doing quantitative research, while forms are better for qualitative research.
Why you need to know the difference between surveys and forms
The main reason you need to know the difference between surveys and forms is so you can use them in the right place to achieve specific objectives. Collecting feedback has so many different benefits and use cases, including:
Improving your products and services
Enhancing customer loyalty
Generating new ideas
User segmentation and personalization
Building a culture of continuous improvement
When to use surveys
Surveys are great when you need to capture a broad range of opinions and insights. Here are a few types of surveys you need to know and where you can use them.
CSAT
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| Track customer satisfaction scores with the in-app Reaction Survey by Usetiful. |
CSAT surveys are fairly straightforward. They use a rating scale, generally of 1-5 or 1-10. However, it's also become popular to use smiley faces that go from sad to happy.
You can use CSAT surveys for a variety of reasons, such as getting customer feedback, improving your product, driving customer loyalty, and evaluating churn. They are an essential part of gaining a competitive advantage or using a data-driven approach to business decisions.
NPS survey
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| Create NPS in-app with Usetiful. |
NPS surveys ask one simple question, "On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend or colleague?" Then, depending on the answers, it splits the respondents into three categories.
Detractors (score 0-6): Users with low customer satisfaction.
Passives (score 7-8): Users who are somewhat neutral.
Promoters (score 9-10): Delighted users who could turn into loyal customers and advocates for your product or service.
Understanding where your users fit into each category can help you identify and remedy situations. For example, passives have the potential to become loyal customers with the right intervention or improvements.
Here’s how you can create an in-app NPS survey with Usetiful
Customer effort score (CES)
The customer effort score (CES) is another excellent metric for determining how difficult your users find a specific activity. That could be related to their overall onboarding experience, asking for help, or any other engagement they have with your business.
You can trigger these surveys to happen shortly after the event. Depending on the findings, you might need to ramp up your customer service efforts or make improvements to other areas of your business.
Customer onboarding satisfaction survey
Customer retention is tightly correlated to good onboarding experiences. A customer onboarding satisfaction survey can help you understand how your users feel about their early experiences with your business.
The feedback and findings of these surveys can make a massive difference to revenue, retention, and acquisition rates because they facilitate the continuous fine-tuning you need to perfect your onboarding.
Touchpoint surveys
Touchpoint surveys ask consumers questions after interactions with your company. They work much in the same way that a customer effort score. However, touchpoint surveys are broader in scope and allow you to measure different things.
Some of the areas you can cover with touchpoint surveys include:
Post-purchase surveys
Support ticket surveys
Website exit surveys
Product use surveys
Checkout process surveys
Again, while these surveys are unobtrusive and short, they are helpful for gathering the performance data you need to drive improvement.
When to use forms
Forms are generally shorter and less detailed. They're best used when you need to capture names, email addresses, registration information, and other marketing data.
Sales product demos
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| Use forms in Sales Product Demo to further customize the user experience. |
Lead generation
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| Generate leads by adding forms on your landing page with Usetiful. |
In the world of marketing, there are mixed opinions on using gated content to capture leads. However, if the content is quality, users will be prepared to swap their information.
Popup forms
You can also use popup forms on your website to get email addresses of visitors. Again, this is about providing incentives to sign up, such as access to a newsletter, offers or deals, or anything else your customers might like. Once you have their emails, you can start a drip campaign or other forms of email marketing.
Quotes
Of course, some businesses have more complex pricing options that depend on various factors. For example, company size, data usage, or even bespoke projects. When you need to give tailored information, a form is a good option because it allows your prospects to give a ballpark of what they need before a sales rep can follow up.
Read this article to learn how you can create customized in-app forms in Usetiful
Non-commercial uses of forms and surveys
This article has primarily focused on using forms and surveys to improve customer success. However, these feedback-generating tools have other non-commercial but equally essential uses, namely, for measuring employee engagement and experience.
Usetiful works as an overlay on both apps and websites. It’s a great tool for collecting employee sentiment, which is crucial in times of high employee churn and recruitment challenges.
Surveys are an excellent way to measure the employee experience. Usetiful helps your employees learn how to use their work tools. If you have the Usetiful browser extension, you can build and run onboarding content across different applications that can really help your new hires get up to speed on your software stack.
When the whole experience is over, you can use surveys to gather information about the overall onboarding experience and make the necessary adjustments. Of course, you can also use pulse surveys to learn how any employee feels about your business, whether they are new or not.
Tips for creating surveys and forms
Now that you know the benefits of surveys and forms, it’s time for a few tips to help you get the valuable data you need.
For surveys
Define your objectives well before you formulate any questions
Keep your surveys as short as you can
Tell your respondents how long the survey might take
Assure anonymity, especially if you’re asking personal questions
Thank your users for their time at the end of the survey.
For forms
Keep it as simple as possible
Provide clear instructions
Minimize mandatory or required fields to boost response rates
Ensure the questions flow in a logical manner
Use tooltips to provide additional assistance for more complex questions.
How Usetiful helps you bring forms and surveys to your application
Gathering feedback is crucial if you want to drive customer success. However, users are pushed for time, so short and snappy surveys and forms are about all they'll stomach. What's more, if you want to boost your response rates, users prefer in-app surveys compared to their email counterparts.
Usetiful helps you build in-app surveys and forms. Thanks to our easy-to-use customization options, these feedback-gathering tools can match the look and feel of your website. By providing a seamless experience, you can ensure your users will feel comfortable providing the crucial data you need to improve your product or service.
Your customers are your greatest source of information about your product. Finding ways to understand what they think you do well and what they think you don’t can help guide the direction of your product or service.
Users like products that listen to their concerns, but they love products that improve based on their feedback.