Good evening everyone and welcome to tonight's webinar. My name is Amelia Sherwood and I'm the key account manager here at the webinar vet. I'd like to welcome you to this evening's session, a quick and easy guide to how customer surveys can help you grow your business, which has kindly been sponsored by the veterinary Management Group.

If you have any questions for our speaker during the session, then please pop them in the Q&A box, and provided we have time towards the end, we can run through them then. So we're very pleased to welcome Ola Dempsey as our speaker tonight. Ola has 20 years' experience in business management, a degree in equine business and management was followed by 15 years in various agricultural and rural business management and marketing roles.

Gaining her MBA from the Royal Agricultural University in 2008. In June 2017, she became a regional marketing manager for CBS. Responsible for strategic marketing support for over 500 practises, as well as product marketing and training for practise teams across the UK and Ireland.

She's now a business coach with Entrepreneurs Circle, an organisation with over 3000 members dedicated to helping business owners grow great businesses through a wealth of resources, coaching, mentoring, and practical advice. Orla also owns and runs her own equestrian business and has done for over 20 years. So Orla, over to you.

Thank you, Amelia, for that lovely introduction. Thank you so much. And thank you everybody for joining our webinar.

I'm going to take you through for the next 20 minutes or so, a few slides I have put together. And we're going to cover off how best we can use customer service surveys to help us grow our business. And this session is going to look at, firstly, the importance of customer satisfaction, how to ask for customer feedback, how to ensure that we get the right information.

Ideas for a user friendly survey. How to create a follow up to that survey and how best to use the data that we have gathered from the survey we have put together. So I'm gonna share my expertise and my own personal experience with you during this webinar, and hopefully it will give you an idea of how best to approach putting something like a survey together to help you and your team and your practise, achieve growth, retain your current client, clients, and also maybe even look to attract some new team members for your practise as well.

Now customers are paramount to our business, and this is very much the tone for our webinar because no business can stay in business without customers. It's as simple as that, and how we treat or mistreat them determines on how long our doors stay open, essentially, so. A fairly loud message there that we must look after our customers because if we don't look after them, somebody else will sadly.

And that's a real focus for us because for me, customers are very much stakeholders in our business. Those along with our team are really how we can grow and expand and make our business even more successful. So the one thing we really need to do is ask our customers for some feedback.

As we know, customer expectations and needs change and evolve with time. And our business needs to adapt to those trends and changes for us to remain competitive. Now we know the veterinary world is a highly competitive one.

You know, there are practises popping up on every high street. We've had an awful time through COVID. We have been under tremendous stress and pressure.

And really and truly, it's now down to us and how we look after our customers that are going to help us keep going in business. And customer feedback is a great way to investigate whether or not we're doing a good job, whether or not our products and services are meeting our customer expectations, and not only that, but also fulfilling their requirements. Asking our customers for feedback is something we ought to be doing regularly, and the more we do it, the more we get used to it, and the better we become at it as well.

Now the first step in this journey really is looking to at least meet our customer's expectations. And of course, going above and beyond and exceeding those expectations is really next level stuff, and it can really set us apart from our competitors. But of course, the first step to exceeding those expectations is to know what those expectations are.

And that's very much where asking our clients for feedback helps to keep us real, helps us to keep our finger on the pulse of what's going on in their world, and how we are faring at providing them with a service or a product. Because, believe it or not, unhappy customers are our greatest source of learning. How else can we get better at what we do, unless our customers are telling us what they think of us?

Now, it is a mindset that we need to adapt, and it is something we need to have our whole practise on board with. Yes, it is challenging receiving feedback because of course there is possibly negative feedback that we need to deal with in practise. And for some members of the team, it can be really hard to take negative feedback on board.

But what we can do is take our team on our journey with us. And the culture that we carve in our practise. Must really see that our customers are really important to our growth and prosperity as a business.

So all in all, we've got to look at improving that customer experience. Now I've shared this slide, this graphic with you, because I think, you know, there are some really good stats in here and it looks really at, you know, three main areas that we know, but actually once presented in a graphic, it's actually, you know, really, you know, important to take on board. Why must we improve the customer experience and CX means customer experience, so X is representative of the word experience.

And the top three reasons there why businesses proactively manage and invest in customer experience is, is quite rightly because They know that if we look after our customers, They're going to stay our customers. So 4 42% realise that it improves customer attention. 33% improves customer satisfaction and closely coming up behind on 32%.

It actually increases our ability to cross-sell and upsell to our customers if they are experiencing a positive service from us. And addressing each of these points can positively impact the revenue and the success of our business. So it really, really is important, and sharing this information with our team also helps to take them along that journey of persuasion with us and taking them with us to understand that actually the customer is really important along our journey.

And as I've mentioned, how can we get better at what we do if we don't yet understand where we are going wrong? And asking our customers for feedback. Is really the number one way to do this.

And why, why ask for feedback? Well, there's quite a few reasons here which I'll go through with you. It helps us to understand our customers better, plain and simply.

The questions we ask will let us know a lot more about our customers that we may ever get a chance to ask face to face in practise or whilst they're in the consult room. And it actually makes them feel more involved in our business, because if they're giving us, if we're asking them for feedback, first of all, it lets them know that we value their input, and secondly, taking on board their feedback and actioning it makes them feel more involved and actually turns around the loyalty element. It improves our customer satisfaction, because we're enhancing the customer experience for them, because they've told us what it is they like to see, how they want us to make them feel.

They let us know perhaps how we can improve on our product and service, our opening hours, our client waiting area. It helps us to boost loyalty, gain new customers, because a happy customer is going to tell other people about us. And not only that, but new team members to our team and to our practise are impressed by perhaps the positive reviews that they read on Google My Business or our Facebook page or on Trustpilot.

So our happy customers are not only helping us be busier in practise, but they're helping us attract new customers and new team members as well. And that feedback helps us to make more informed decisions. In our business.

That contribute to our sales and to our success as a practise. Now we've talked a lot about the customer, but it's this customer centric approach that really helps us to differentiate our practise, possibly amongst other practises in our village, in our town, and in our area. If people feel valued, they will return for more.

If they feel that we go out of our way to look after them, they will come back and they will tell more people. So the role of the customer is hugely important to our business. And it's cheaper for us to retain our existing clients than it is to attract new ones.

So to simplify it, We need to give customers what they want, not what we think they want. And if you do this, people will keep coming back. And how better to understand what we can provide our customers with than to ask them.

The key stakeholders here for us, and particularly and in particular for our webinar, is looking at our key sta stakeholders as our customers and our team. Now Simon Sinek is a a major key marketeer in the world, you may have heard of him. But I really loved his quote here because it resonated and it still resonates with me quite a bit because our customers will never love our practise, our business until actually our employees love it first.

So we have to ask ourselves, what is it we're doing to get our team on board here? In terms of being happy about asking people for feedback, driving, surveys, the response to our surveys, reminding clients to fill it in, talking positively about asking for feedback and filling in surveys. So we need Our team on our page.

We need to check in every so often. To see that our team are on page. Now if you have any questions during this evening's webinar, please do pop them in the chat and I will come back to them at the end.

So what I'm gonna share with you now, and you, you can share this with your team, and it's called a customer feedback loop. And if we have this up in our team room or in our kitchen, it helps carve out that all important culture of openness, of positivity, of accepting that feedback is great, good or bad, feedback is gonna help us do a better job. That our customers have a positive experience, attract new team members, and overall a sense of great positivity.

So the feedback loop, quite rightly, is a loop, it's a continuum where we ask for the feedback. We segment that feedback into different areas that are meaningful for our business. We act appropriately, sharing it with our team, with our stakeholders, with our wider practise, and with our customers, and we follow up.

We let our clients know how thankful we are for the feedback received. And not only that, but what we're going to do with it, and the results of that feedback, as again, it helps our clients feel more involved in the success of our practise, creating a sense of loyalty and also making sure that everybody is on board, and this graphic really helps to bring people together in our team. Have a great sense of a growth mindset in our practise and getting everybody on board.

So how best to do that feedback? Well, as we know, we're going to look at surveys. So why a survey and all the feedback?

Yes, we can talk to clients when they come in and ask them a question. But if we're launching a particular product or perhaps we really need to take stock now post COVID of what's going on in our practise, and perhaps we've seen a lot of clients leave or they're not engaging with us as much or perhaps, you know, times have changed, which they have done. So let's look at how a survey can help us understand what's going on in the mindset.

In the lives of our clients with regards to their pet healthcare. Customer feedback service surveys allow us to better understand, firstly, how a customer discovered us in the first place, which is great for our marketing efforts, how our customers think we could improve on our customer products or services. And how satisfactory our customer support experience is when they engage with our business, because they could, there's many areas where they engage with our business.

For instance, another client that they may know, when they come into the practise, when they engage with us through social media, when they call us on the phone, when they email us, or when they go to visit our website. So all of those ways, they're touch points of where our client, clients are engaging with us. And we've got to wholeheartedly put across a great positive effort to our clients and support this great customer experience.

And not only that, But it also helps us to gather this information historically and understand how we are performing and using it to set benchmarks in our business. What does good really look like? When did we have a really, really positive time in our business when feedback was phenomenal, our clients were happy, our team were on board.

And really promoting best practise, best in class in terms of veterinary health and providing the community with a first class service because that's ultimately what we want to do. We want to stand out. We want to retain our clients.

We don't want to lose them to anybody else. We want them to be happy. Now there are 5 key rules that we must look to implement when we're looking and thinking of surveys as a team first of all.

And they really start with understanding how a survey can best help us. So really defining the goal of our survey and understanding what is it a survey can help us achieve to do. Now you can come at this in different ways.

Perhaps you're looking to launch something new, a new product, a new service, and you want to understand how well it may be received once you've launched it, so you could use a survey to do that. Or perhaps you've noticed a dip in the amount or maybe you're losing clients. So you want to survey your existing clients to see if there's anything untoward going on, something that you're just not quite aware of.

So a survey can help us do that. But we must define the goal, the aim, the objective that the survey represents for us. Now, keep it simple.

Keep it short and keep it simple. Because we have more chance of people filling it in for us if it's presented in a way that's easy to read, easy to fill in, and it's quite short. Let's not use open-ended questions because that's a free reign for our clients to give us a whole a 4 page perhaps of a story, and really that's not really useful in this instance.

Yes, it's great to get feedback and endorsement and, you know, maybe we can. You know, condense it a little, but for the point point of a survey, we want short and snappy questions. Now, let's also align the questions to our audience.

Let's create questions that they're comfortable to answer. Let's understand the demographics of our client base. So for instance, if we are in a busy city, we have people on the go, and they're definitely looking for something that's quick and snappy, and, you know, they may well give us some, .

You know, more strategic perhaps, answers, and then compare it to. A more sedate paced rural village, and our audience maybe perhaps are retired, so they definitely might like to give us a little bit more. So we could, we could give them some more options on our server, but we've got to align it to the audience and understand, you know, something that's easy to fill in, easy to read, using familiar language.

And then of course, our number 5 rule is share how their input benefits not only them, but the others, and the others we mean our team. Other clients, people in our community, and also the ability that it has for us to attract. New team members.

So designing that user-friendly survey, we're setting our goal. It's got a clear directive and it's gonna help us focus because if we keep coming back to the goal, we won't waffle on too much and ask questions that are maybe not on track. This goal helps us to create a clear roadmap and also the creation, distribution and collection process because if we keep focused and we keep on track.

It's going to be ready quicker. It'll be less complicated for people to fill in. We'll have a better return rate as well.

And just going on back to keeping it short and simple, don't ask for too much cause we have some stats here from SurveyMonkey and SurveyMonkey are probably one of the biggest online survey entities that you can avail of, and I will chat about them later. But it's got some important stats here and the main one for me really is just under half, so 45%. Of people aren't willing to spend more than 5 minutes filling out a feedback survey.

So you've really got to bear that in mind. 5 minutes of someone's time, and if we can keep it less than that, all the better. 34% take surveys, primarily for an incentive, so that's about a third.

So I know in the different businesses that I work in, and have worked in before, we've provided an incentive. Now it really depends on your type of audience and what the survey is about. If it's a little bit more tricky or quite niched, you may well need a carrot to wave at your clients to fill it in.

And then of course, 87% prefer answering multi-choice over open-ended questions and just going back to that open-ended questions, really we ought to prompt people with multiple choice. Let's not make them think, have to think too much about what to answer. I know myself personally, and we are all consumers, we are all customers, you know yourself, you're filling in a survey.

It's a lot easier to fill in one if they've got a couple of options to take the box. We don't have to do too much thinking, and again, it will help us keep it under the 5 minute mark. And 40% think companies pay only a moderate amount of attention to their feedback, which is quite sad because actually we could really turn this around.

And really harp home to people that how serious we take feedback, how serious we take understanding how to enhance our customer experience when they come and visit us in practise or even visit our website that really their experience is key to us. So I think we could really turn around that stat. 0.3 again, just going back to the open-ended questions, you can tailor your questions to get the answers you need, OK, so really think about the questions you're asking.

Is it going to give you the answers you need to think back to the goal. Ask for one thing at a time because then you're most likely to get accurate pointed answers. And also, as I said, you're not going to lose the respondents focus, you're going to keep them on track.

Aligning our questions to the audience, that they feel comfortable to answer the questions. OK. Again, just look at your audience, look at the client base you're sending it to, think about the demographics.

Avoid using technical language, OK? And possibly internal jargon. Layman's terms make it very easy.

You have more chance of them filling in the survey and returning it to you. If it's, not full of even big words, you know, really, really, sense check it, keep it simple. Now, most important, you've got to test it, OK?

So I would always maybe, on a particular demographic or an audience client base, I may select a couple of clients and ask them to fill in the survey first and how you're going to take their feedback to make the survey even better. And I think that's again another brownie point for you is practise. Again, using the different methods for different clients, so understanding, perhaps, certain clients might like to do this coming in whilst they're waiting, maybe they've got a very well behaved cat and the cat is in his holder and they've got some time to fill in your, your survey form.

Or perhaps, you know, you've got a client with a very boisterous puppy, they're not gonna have the time or the concentration levels to fill in a survey with you in practise. So we can follow that up with an email post visit. They can come to the website and fill it in, or I can sit next to some clients and ask them to fill in my survey.

Now, I will probably do that on a more easygoing survey, a more rounded survey, and then, you know, you need to choose the outlet, so not only for the type of survey, but also the type of client. That you're asking to fill it in. Direct mail, certain, maybe retired demographic and older generation, demographic might like to fill in something that they receive in the post, and they can bring it along with them the next time they come in the practise, or you send them a self-addressed envelope perhaps.

An email, you can include it, perhaps a link to the survey on your website through your monthly newsletter or your weekly email to your client, or your reminder email. Or your post visit follow up as well. So use different methods for your different type of clients and again you have more chance of them filling it in for you then.

And we've really got to say thank you, OK? Because again, feedback matters. You show people that you're grateful for the feedback.

Again, go beyond the thank you page, go beyond the incentive, and publish a report of your findings. Share it in your newsletter with your clients. Don't be afraid to share it either.

Be proud of the fact that you've undertaken. This initiative, you're proud of the fact that your clients got on board and your team got on board, and people responded to the survey and they gave you that all important feedback because you really care about what people think because you want to use that thinking and that feedback to improve. You know, ask them for their their contact details in the survey so they follow up.

So if you are sending it by direct mail, you can say, you know, please leave us some details, or if you think people would be reluctant to fill in their details, there are means and ways that you can have certain serial numbers that you know. Might go to a certain client that when it comes back, you can cross check it against their name and their serial number on the form. The website tracking as well might track people from an email through to filling it in online.

But obviously what we really have to do in the whole thank you process is, showcase how best you have used their input to make positive change, and really hark on with the fact that you're grateful for having them on board and now look at these amazing changes that you have made, and thankful for their, for their understanding. So a quick recap there is to keep your survey simple. Sell the survey idea to both your customers and your team and the benefits of why we're we're running one.

Speak their language, yeah, use words that are familiar, questions that are comfortable to answer. Test your survey internally first with your team, and I would maybe then just maybe pick a couple of key clients that could help me refine my survey before I send it out to the masses, sense checking it as well because what we do in practise and how we speak in practise and what we think in practise might be a whole different ballgame to our audience out there. So sense checking it with a client is always really good thing to do.

And then making sure your survey is viewable on, you know, multiple devices, so making sure if we are sending one online that people can fill it in on the mobile as well as a desktop or a laptop as well or an iPad too. So really some quick and easy solutions to get you started. Now I mentioned SurveyMonkey, and it is something a lot of my existing clients are using in business at the moment because it's free for 9 questions, that you can devise yourself.

SurveyMonkey, you can send the link to your clients to fill it in, and SurveyMonkey sends you back a report. And as I say, it's free if you use 9 questions or less. So that's a really, really easy win for you there.

Another great way of sending out surveys or, you know, we, we talk about a survey. I'm not talking about 1020 questions. You could have a survey that maybe has 3 questions, and that's a really easy thing to do in an email and particularly with Gmail, you can insert a Google sheet into your, your, your Gmail, and sending it if you want to send it to a certain amount of clients.

That you can, and they simply answer the survey in the email and it comes back and pop populates your Google sheet for you. So if there was a, a, a, a certain segment or a certain amount of clients that you wanted specific questions to go to, I possibly would use the email and the Google sheet for that. WhatsApp for business, that's a really key thing that a lot of businesses are using now.

So, separate to WhatsApp for you personally, you can set up WhatsApp for your business, for your practise. It's a great way of keeping in touch because, Clients respond a lot more now to a text message. Your open rates are closer to 80-90% on a text message, and you as a consumer have probably met this yourself as well.

Maybe not through WhatsApp, but certainly through text. And you could send them a link in WhatsApp. You could send them a question in WhatsApp, and you could just get them to send back, OK, tell me on a scale of 1 to 5, how was your visit today in practise?

And you know, 1 meaning poor and 5 meaning, you know, you could, you could send them back that scale of happy faces 12345. And they send you back the happy face or the sad face or just the rather blah face. Again, it's quick, it's easy, and it would give you some really quick answers if you wanted to be quite reactive about a certain product or service or something maybe that had happened in practise that day or just for some general quick feedback.

And of course, quick and easy are the in practise forms that you can give to people to take home or that you can indeed ask people to fill in while they're waiting. Obviously you need to choose who gets to fill that in because we certainly don't want to appear cumbersome when people have those puppies or maybe just quite stressed animals with them in practise, we don't want to stress them out even more with their owner filling in a form. So again, they are quick and easy solutions that a lot of my clients are currently using as a means to ascertain the current climate with their existing customers, what's going on, how they're feeling.

Perhaps, you know, you've, you've got a new team started or, you know, new team members or new and you just want to gauge how they were settling in, were people finding it easy to book, or maybe even you've recently done up your your waiting room and you'd like some feedback from people about it, and that's they are really, really easy, easy ways to to do that. And then really just as I'm closing off our survey presentation. There are no traffic jams along the extra mile, and this is very much going back to the culture you're carving within your practise that you really are going the extra mile by even asking people to provide you with feedback, because as a consumer, we know not every business we visit even cares.

What we think about their business, they're not even asking us. So any business that we are meeting, the fact that they've gone out of their way, that they've made it a priority, that they absolutely understand the role we have as customers or clients in their business, really makes you stand out and really makes your customers feel important. And part of your business.

So there are no traffic jams along that extra mile, and really this can help position you next level, stand out amongst those other practises that you compete against, and also make you look more attractive, as a place to come and work and attract some, some new people to your team. As ever, customer feedback is an ongoing test and measure exercise because not one size fits all. You will see that with your different demographics, different audience, you know, different feel where you are as well, different parts of the country.

You will need to test and measure the approach you take, the channels you use, the questions you ask, even getting people on board to fill in, you may need to give them an a prize or some sort of . Feel good factor for filling in your survey, and you know if that's what we have to do, that is what we have to do. So testing and measuring is ongoing.

And you know, that really, really is summarising what we do in our roles as thriving businesses, growing businesses, and looking to see how we can improve that all important customer journey, customer experience, and also how we can get our team on board to make us the best practise we can be. OK? So thank you for your time.

I hope you have enjoyed our webinar today and if indeed you have any questions, I will address them now at the end, but again, you can contact me. You can find me on LinkedIn. I am under at Orla Dempsey 24.

And I am based with Entrepreneurs Circle, and we're based in the Midlands, and, it is very much, a great organisation if you are of a growth mindset, in your business. Now it's not. For business owners, it's also for people who work in organisations like practise directors, marketing managers, you know, practise managers, because we support people in those roles and helps them grow their business.

So now we'll have a little Q and A time. And we do have some questions in the chat. I'm very excited.

We do, so thank you for that great presentation, Ola. So, as Ola has mentioned, we are going to open the floor for any questions that haven't already been added to the Q&A box, and we do have some there to go through. So please take this opportunity to ask any questions that you might have in the Q&A box now.

Alternatively, Ola has advised that you can connect with her on LinkedIn. And she will be happy to answer any questions. So Greg has said that he always tries to create team bonding by sending his team on spa days or to see a show.

Where do you work, Greg? Can I sign up? Are you taking off?

It makes them feel valued and that shows when they meet and greet the clients as they make them feel more at home. And he also tries to make the clients feel like they are part of the team as it will give better outcomes, which I think is a really great way to think within the team. So we've also had a question then from Jackie, and she has said that she has done surveys in the past and has found it difficult to get people to complete them.

So she's asked if you have any hints and tips to encourage uptake. Yeah, so I would really look at the demographic of my audience and I maybe need to get them more on board with the idea of how important their feedback is to the experience that they will meet when they come to the practise. So it's a journey of persuasion with customers in terms of Letting them know how valued their opinion is to us.

And we can never get better at what we do without them feeding back to us how we're doing. So that's one thing, it's a mindset, so we get them more on board. Secondly, I would start with very easy surveys so that we ease them into answering surveys for us.

So keep it as simple as possible. Use questions, with multiple answers, so they don't have to think too much and keep it under the 5 minutes. And if you need to, I really would offer them a bit of a prize at the end, because really, lots of my clients do that and they notice a big difference.

So I hope that helps. I think that's a really good hint. I know myself, if I'm completing any surveys, then you want to see an incentive, the other side of it.

So we've also had a question through, is there not a danger of your questions asking for the answers you want rather than the answers you need? Well, I mean, look, we've we've, we're using the survey as a means to find out some, some important information, whether it's about a survey, or whether it's about a service or a product. So sometimes people aren't necessarily understanding a service for what it is, and we need to sow the seed in our answers because sometimes a survey actually educates the client.

So is there, is there a case of, well, we might be answering it for ourselves? Not necessarily. We shouldn't use it as a means to create answers that we want back, more that they are prompts to get the client thinking more into the detail of why we've come up with the service or the product or even why we have created the survey.

And you know what, at the end, sometimes surveys like that can benefit from, if you would like to add in anything else, let us know because if, if, if they do have another opinion or something they, they think, OK, well, your survey didn't quite, you know, ask me what I want to tell you, sometimes it is nice to leave that space at the end. Great, thank you Ola. And then finally we have a question asking, what do you think about Google reviews?

Well, I love Google reviews and we rave about them at Entrepreneur Circle. In fact, a couple of my clients ran a Share the love, campaign over the month of February, and, one client in particular, she actually has a beauty salon, and her and her whole team got on board with running this Share the love campaign where anyone who left a review, got a voucher to come and use in her beauty clinic. And what she is noticing post that successful campaign and initiative is a host of new clients coming on board because they've been so impressed by the reviews they've been reading online about the business, that it has actually swayed their purchasing power.

To actually choose that business over any other beauty salon in the area. So Google reviews is absolutely 100% so important to your business. If you don't have a Google My Business channel, you really ought to set one up soon.

Again, we really champion it at Entrepreneurs Circle. You need to be as visible as possible, and reviews certainly help convince people to do business with you. So I'm wholeheartedly.

All behind Google reviews and if somebody leaves a review, good or bad, please respond. Thank them for their feedback. Let them understand that, you know, again, going over, it's going to help you get better at what you do and you'll certainly take it on board, and help you ultimately do it, you know, a bigger, better service for the future.

Great. So I think that's the end of our questions. So, on behalf of all of us here at the webinar vet, I would like to thank our speaker, Ola, for a wonderful presentation this evening.

And this session will be available on demand from tomorrow. And once again, a big thank you to the Veterinary Management Group for sponsoring our practise management programme that is running on a monthly basis throughout this year. Thanks all.

Have a good evening. Thank you. You too.

Bye bye, bye.