Send Surveys to Get Feedback from Membership Termination Requests
It is often helpful to get customer feedback in an effort to get a better idea of what members like, want, and expect from your business. For example, many climbing gyms conduct “termination” surveys to gain more information about why members choose to terminate their membership beyond what required when submitting their change request form.
Follow these steps to increase the value of your surveys and the number of respondents to help improve your business and retention of your members.
1. Provide Incentive
Provide survey participants with an incentive THEY would consider valuable in exchange for completing the survey. Same concept as a “lead magnet”, and can be in a form of a gift card. Make sure to let them know about that right upfront, as that may help increase survey participation.
2. Limit The Questions
Give potential survey participants an estimate of how long they should expect the survey will take to complete. Let participants know how many questions are contained in the survey, and you should indicate how close they are to completion on each page of the survey. For example: “Question 1 of 5”.
3. Make Questions Valuable
Do not waste their time on questions that are not really important or necessary. Ask questions that really matter, and ones that can provide insight into your product or service.
4. Mobile Optimized
It’s imperative that your feedback form is optimized for mobile devices with questions placed in a logical order. If possible, include easily-answered questions at the beginning of the survey with large buttons if they are the yes/no type.
5. Ask Neutral Questions
The way you ask a question can often influence the response. Keep questions framed in a way that is neutral and does not predispose the respondent to answer in a specific way.
For example, avoid asking things like “What did you not like about the coaching you received?”, as that predisposes a negative coaching experience.
6. Do Not Require Answers
Don’t force people to answer questions they do not want to answer, as this will often cause them to abandon the survey before they finish. Give participants a way to skip questions that they are uncomfortable answering, or that simply don’t apply to them.
7. Be Inclusive
Some survey participants may have joined for a reason other than what the primary focus of your business is. Keep survey questions basics, using simple and easy to understand terms, so that respondents with even limited experience in some amenities offered can still participate and respond.
For example, avoid asking things like “How do you feel about the accuracy of the setting of our climbs?”, as that assumes that they participated in climbing whereas they could have just used the facility for the gym and yoga studio.
8. Other Comments
Provide survey participants an opportunity to respond to an open-ended question or to comment on any aspect of your business or services. It can be frustrating to respondents if they want to elaborate on a given topic or issue, but are only provided multiple-choice options.
The final question should welcome them to comment on anything they choose regarding your products or services. This type of open-ended feedback can often be invaluable.
9. Respect Confidences
If a respondent identifies a deficiency in your operations, respect their privacy when the issue is dealt with. In many cases, survey respondents will be far more candid if they believe their identity is protected.
10. Thank Participants
Finally, always be sure to thank participants for taking the time to participate in the survey. Let them know that you appreciate them for them having been a member, and will use the information they provided to improve your products and services.
Climbing facilities can use the information provided from a surveys to improve their facility, staff, programs, and sales process. Essentially, you should be looking for trends in responses of why people choose to terminate their membership or what would have kept them there. These trends in feedback can provide crucial information that may not be apparent in other collected data.
