A key part of any business is keeping a finger on the pulse of its customers and how they feel about you and what you do for them. It's something that we've done somewhat sporadically throughout our nearly 5 years in business, but I've implemented a more measurable and repeatable survey this year and I'm happy to share with everyone what our customers think about us. Hint: It's very positive.
We're in a fun business: We source awesome coffees, roast our orders fresh, and get that stuff out to our dear customers as fast as we can. We've worked hard to develop a fun, approachable Specialty Coffee brand that "turns coffee drinkers into coffee lovers." We've been doing it for almost 5 years, and it appears we're doing a pretty good job.
For our survey, we asked a simple question: On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to refer RSR to a friend, family member, or colleague? - We sent this question to our active email newsletter subscribers (most of whom are active customers), and we got about a 12% response rate. Here are the results:
We consider anyone that gave us a 9 or 10 response to be active promoters of the RSR brand, and well...93.3% of the people that responded to the survey are in that category. That's amazing, people!
(For any marketing pros out there, you'll recognize this survey and the scoring system as the NPS / Net Promoter Score. A score of 92 is epic.)
We also asked 2 optional qualitative questions on the survey:
- What do you like about RSR?
- What do you think we can do better?
Responses to #1 were a blast to read. A number of people mentioned me, specifically. *blush* Gosh, thanks y'all! It's true that I've made myself a fairly integral part of the overall RSR brand. We did, after all, start in my garage on Ross Street in Toledo, Iowa, so our story of me going from a hobby roaster in a small rural community to a business that's continued to grow for our first 5 years, adding one job (so far) to our local economy, and helping raise the bar for Specialty Coffee in the state of Iowa (and beyond!) is something that connects with a number of our customers on a personal & emotional level. It's inspiring to me to have you along on that journey with me, folks!
In the area of things we can do better, a lot of responses here were more praise. Some folks asked for free shipping all the time, which all e-commerce businesses are used to seeing thanks to You Know Who.
(It's funny 'cos it's true)
We received some good feedback on ways that we can make our coffee subscription system a bit more easy to use, which I'll be acting on. Somebody even suggested it would be cool if we offered sample packs and good news, my dude: We have two!
The survey was offered anonymously, but each person was given the choice of providing their email address for me to follow up with them. We've always taken feedback very seriously and usually act on it in some way. We always at least respond to folks, which I take to be a must-do for quality customer service.
Well, that's it for the survey results for this year! We'll continue to issue this instrument annually, so we can start tracking our performance historically. It's this kind of commitment that we believe will give us another 5 years of success and growth in this awesome little business.
If you're a customer or social fan that didn't get a chance to complete the survey but would still like to give us some feedback, hop on over to the Contact Us page and send us your thoughts!
Thanks, coffee friends!
(Feature photo by Lidya Nada on Unsplash)