Retail business is all about the transactions involving sellers selling their goods directly to the customers which are usually the end users of the products. When we talk about the growing trends of shopping, it is true that online shopping channels are replacing the trend of buying and and selling at the retail stores  to a large extent. 51% of the Americans favor online shopping.

But that doesn't mean your retail business has no future! 49% of consumers noted that they like more to shop at a physical retail store and try the products before paying for them. And this is so true! Shopping at a physical retail is itself a refreshing activity that most people like, isn't it? So no matter how much trend increases for online shopping, physical retail stores have their own place in the market.

But you cannot ignore that fact that online market has greatly increased competition for you. And to be successful in a highly competitive market, all you need to ensure is to provide a great Customer Experience. 54% of brands recognize Customer Experience as the most important priority.

So how will you improve Customer Experience? To do this, you first need to know how your customers take it and how they feel about it! For this you need to gather Customer Feedback.

How to take Retail Feedback?

If you want to gather feedback from your customers about their shopping experience with you, the one and only way to conduct Customer Feedback Surveys. These surveys are extremely useful to provide the valuable information about the views and perceptions of the customers regarding their experience with a brand and its products and services.

It becomes more important to take surveys in retail industry as the customers do not take much time in switching to another brand. However, if you are able to satisfy your customers and consistently so, they become the most loyal customers. According to a Customer Loyalty Study, 37% of customers report that they prefer to consistently shop with the same retailer.

Now, one of the biggest challenges faced in carrying out a retail customer survey is to decide on the questions to be asked to the customers. Well, you can ask various types of questions from your customers depending upon your business and its requirement. You should try to collect information about all the aspects of your retails store be it their shopping experience, experience with your staff, your customer service, ambiance or anything even their parking experience.

However, you should take care that the survey must not be so long that the customers don't feel spending precious their time on that. In fact, you customer surveys must be simple and quick to fill. Nowadays, there are Retail Survey Software available in the market that can help you create effective surveys and send them to your customers via different channels.

Here are variety of questions you can ask to your customers in order to have effective feedback data for your retail business. You don't need to ask all of the questions, but you should ask only those that best suit your requirements.

Let's explore the questions you can ask under these types:

1. NPS (Net Promoter Score) Question

NPS surveys are a great way to gauge the overall satisfaction levels of your customers. It is a single question survey but that single question is an all in one question, that is why it's known as The Ultimate Question. The question is:

On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you recommend our brand to your friends and known ones, 0 being 'Not at all Likely' and 10 being 'Most Likely'?

Customers select an option from 0 to 10 and you get to know how much happy they are with the Customer Experience they have got. Based on their results, you can find out your detractors, promoters and passives.

To know more about NPS, read this: What is a Net promoter Score?

2. CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) Question

CSAT surveys are also a good method to measure Customer Satisfaction. The CSAT question asked to the customers is:

How satisfied were you with your experience with us?

5 options are given from 'Pathetic' to 'Excellent'. These options an be given in the form of self-explanatory emoticons also.

3. CES (Customer Effort Score) Question

CES is basically to know how much effort your customers have to make with your organization to get their work done. A statement is given to the customers and it is asked how much they agree with that statement.

How much do you agree with the following statement?: "The company made it easy to handle my issues and get my work done."

Option ratings are given to be chosen by the customer.

4. General Satisfaction Questions

general Satisfaction questions are very simple questions and require the simplest of answers from the customers. These questions are a type of multiple choice questions that require the customers to revert only by selecting a rating among the available options about anything they have been asked. You can ask these questions from your customers:

• How would you rate the shopping experience you had today?
• How do you rate the behavior and support of the staff at our store?
• How do you rate the ambiance and cleanliness of the store?
• How would you rate the return policies of our store/website?
• Do you feel that our exchange policies of our store/website?
• How would you rate the work of our staff at the billing counter?
• How would  you rate our store in terms of ease and quickness of shopping?

5. Demographic questions

Demographic questions are those that ask the demographic details of the customers. Demographics are basically characteristics of a population of an area or a demography. It includes the characteristics of your customers such as race, ethnicity, gender, age, education, profession, occupation, income level, and marital status.

Basically the purpose of these questions is to know more about your customer base, so that you can do proper segmentation and targeting and are able to satisfy them in a better way. Here are some demographic questions you can ask your customers.

• What is your age group? (Answer options an be given like 10-18, 19, 25, 26-35, 36-45, 46-60, 60-80, 80 & above etc.)
• Select your gender.
• Please write the city you live in.
• Please select your educational qualification. (Options like Schooling only, graduate, post graduate, others etc.)
• Are you into a business, profession or a job?

6. Product related questions

Product related questions are focused on taking the feedback regarding the products at your retail store or website. Answers to these questions help in product development, product improvement, including new products or varieties in your business and taking business decisions related to products. Here is what you can ask your customers about products:

• Are you able to find what you were looking for?
• How easy did you find searching what you wanted?
• How much satisfied you are with the information related to products on our website?
• Were the store staff supportive enough to assist you in finding the items of your choice?
• Do you feel the items are fairly priced at our store?
• How much satisfied you are with the product varieties available at our store/website?
• What type of products you like the most at our store?
• Do you feel that we should have more varieties of products?
• Have you ever tried to return or exchange a product at our store?
• How much satisfied you are with our return and exchange policies?
• How would you rate the quality of our products?
• Have you faced any issues in any of our product so far?

7. Service related questions

Service related questions focus on getting the Customer Feedback related to the customer service your retail brand provides. You can ask these questions for obtaining feedback regarding your customer service.

• How much are you satisfied with our customer service?
• How would you rate the efficiency of our staff in terms of proactiveness and assistance?
• Are you happy with the after sales services provided to you?
• Do you feel that our customer service can be made better?

8. Place, Time & Location related questions

When you are running a retail store, it may happen that customers like your products and services but the location of your store is somewhat not easily accessible or comfortable for them. At times, it can become a major factor affecting your sales. Moreover, the environment of the store also affects the purchase decision of the buyers. Here is what you should ask your customers:

• Do you find our store is conveniently located and easily accessible?
• How frequently do you visit this market?
• How appropriate do you feel the opening hours of our store are?
• How do you rate the environment and ambiance of our store?
• How do you rate the store decor and lighting of our store?
• Are you comfortable and satisfied with the parking facility?
• Have you faced any issues related to availability of car parking space so far?

9. Open-ended questions

Open-ended questions are those where you give your customers a free space to write whatever they feel about their Customer Experience. In these questions, answer choices are not given, rather, customers write everything in their own words. There are some advantages and disadvantages of open-ended questions.

The major advantage is that you get a rich data in the form of real customer insights in their own words. However, you should not use more of such questions as they make the survey time-consuming thereby provoking the customer to leave the survey in between thus resulting in a low response rate. You can include some open-ended questions like these:

• How would you describe the overall shopping experience at our store/website?
• What do you like the most about our brand?
• What change would you like to be made at our store?
• If you find the store closed for some days, which other store would you prefer for shopping?
• What did you dislike about our store?
• What product brands do you think should be present at our store but were not there?
• Do you want to suggest anything to us? If yes, please write your suggestion here.

10. Follow-up questions

Follow up questions are those which you can use after an answer, usually to know the reason behind their answer or answer choice. They are usually open-ended questions which you can use along with an NPS, CSAT or CES survey or after binary (yes/no type) questions to know the reason of the particular answer choices.

Moreover, can follow up with the customers regarding a specific feedback or an issue. Some examples of these questions are:

• Would you please let us know the reason behind such rating?
• Could you tell us the why you chose this option?
• It would be nice to know what made you feel so.
• Would you please suggest the other way round that could make you feel better?

Regarding a particular feedback or issue:

• We hope your issue is resolved. It is fair to close the complaint now?

To Sum Up

These are the 50 most suitable questions you can ask your customers in your Retail Feedback Survey. Remember that you don't need to use all of these questions otherwise the survey would go too long for the customers to continue and they will tend to leave it in between.

So you just need to ask your customers those questions which suits the most as per your business requirement.

Learn more about the Retail Surveys

• Advantages of Customer Feedback Software for Retail Industry

• Best Retail Feedback App for 2021