Firstly, thank you to all that opted-in to the customer surveys, (which was almost everyone) - we literally couldn’t conduct this research without your backing.
It’s now been 7 days since the first automated emails to customer segments went out, we have had 874 completed responses so far which is beyond expectations. 🎉
A quick explainer of what we have done so far
- We grouped customers into these 6 distinct segments
1 | Repeat loyalists | Anyone with 12+ orders who is not a mono-product shopper |
2 | Mono-product shoppers | 10+ orders with 1 product per order |
3 | Lapsed customers | Placed at least 1 order in last 90 days, but whose most recent order was more than 30 days ago |
4 | First time shopper | Sent after 1 order has been placed |
5 | Card added but no orders | Account set-up completed but 0 orders placed |
6 | Signed up but no card | Account set-up started but not completed |
Notes
The first batch of emails that went out included a ‘last 30 days’ window, ensuring that we captured the largest but relevant response possible.
From day 2, the system checks for new customers qualifying for each segment on a daily basis.
Conditions were added to ensure customers could receive a maximum of 1 email in any 3 month period and to ensure they only ever receive 1 email per segment (if they qualify for more than 1 over time).
- We asked the same questions where possible (allowing us to compare the response across different segments), while tailoring part of each set to personalise the survey, hoping to increase response rate and relevance.
Example survey [Repeat loyalists]
Thank you for being a regular shopper with us. We would love to know how we can make your life easier and gather some feedback on your experience shopping online with us.
Thinking of the website shopping experience, how would you rate the following, from 0 - 5 , with 0 being the lowest and 5 being the highest:
- Ease of exploring products on the site
- Website ease of use
- Understanding delivery/collection information
- Understanding how to make changes to your order
- Email communication about your order
If the score was 3 or lower (out of 5) for any of the above we then asked for written detail, “That’s a little lower than we’re aiming for, could you tell us why?”
We then asked;
- Is there anything related to the online shopping experience that you think could be improved?
- Is there any other feedback you would like to share about your shopping experience with us?
We finished by giving the option for the customer to leave their email address, should they be willing or keen to be contacted about their feedback.
Early results
The responses having been overwhelmingly positive, which in an obvious way is fantastic news BUT… it’s actually the negative (and hopefully constructive) feedback that we’re much more interested in. To help achieve our strategic goals relating to increasing retention, conversion, and basket spend, we need to focus on opportunities for improvement.
In those 874 responses we of course have a % of critical feedback, nearly all of which I’m pleased to say has been constructive in nature.
We are still finalising how best to share the detail of these results with you. We are using software from Tally to build the forms and capture response, which I have synced to Google sheets where I can use Gemini to help analyse quickly. We have hidden fields to ID which box scheme each customer ‘belongs’ to, so I hope to be able to share with you a protected Google sheet that will sync in real time with the data coming in, accompanied by some pre-built visual analysis. If that isn’t realistic in the short term I will share your raw data with you every X number of days/weeks, via a google sheet. For clarity, the only way a customer can be individually ID’d is if they leave their email address on the form.
Despite us focusing our Q’s on the online shopping experience, there is inevitably some feedback relating to product and service - in the most part this is amazingly positive, but for customers that have left their email address attached to negative feedback (of which there is very little), I want to ensure you see this ASAP.
Summary of numerical results so far
4.5 out of 5! Where we have asked for a store experience rating (out of 5), across all questions and all customer segments, the overall average score given is 4.5.
We’re delighted about it being so high but will focus on drilling-down into the constructive criticism. Hopefully this gives you added confidence that the vast majority of your customers are very satisfied with their online experience.
Repeat loyalists (517 responses)
Mono-product shoppers (243 responses)
Answer to ‘What is the reason for only ordering a single item?’
AI Summary of free text answer for ‘Other’;
Lapsed customers (67 responses)
The majority of lapsed customer replies (at this time of year) are due to holidays or other generally ‘positive’ reasons. Unfortunately, It is likely that the majority of disgruntled customers that we would really like to hear from are less inclined to complete a survey.
First time shopper (25 responses)
Card added but no orders (5 responses)
Signed up but no card (9 responses)
Summary of key written feedback so far
We asked a number of open-ended questions such as;
“Is there anything related to the online shopping experience that you think could be improved?”
The Google Gemini summary of responses in the Repeat loyalists segment is below;
These insights above are a little crude but from manual study we can be certain that early feedback highlights opportunity to improve these areas;
- Product discovery - need to introduce a search bar and better product navigation
- Mobile experience - some instability with navigation and using drop-down menus, such as the swaps list
- Product availability - clear frustration with products (especially swaps) often being out of stock without it being more clear up-front
- Making it easier to manage regular deliveries - the vast majority of customers are complimentary about holiday booking and basket management, but some clearly still struggle with this - their individual comments around this will be valuable
- Login issues - we think (think) that this may be more concerned with box schemes that host their GG store on a subdomain of a pre-existing content site, but requires investigation to be sure
In summary we’re delighted with the early response - overall customer satisfaction is clearly high but with some clear and obvious opportunities to address, examples of which are listed above.
What’s next?
Instant customer feedback around product discovery confirmed pre-existing thinking of the need to address this area next. A search bar and improved navigation is being worked on this sprint and should be ready to deploy around the end of September - it will be a simple version to begin with but will be improved further in the coming weeks and months. This will likely result in overall improvements to content navigation and the introduction of product filters and ‘sort by’ options. The new navigation will be built mobile-first with different behaviour on mobile and desktop, optimised fully for each device. As a priority I am working on a shareable version of the raw data with you - if all goes to plan, this will happen before COB on Friday 5th Sept.
If you have any questions or comments do get in touch - either on discord or via email, steve@growing-good.co.uk.
I’ll be in touch again soon…
Steve