Wouldn’t it be nice to know what consumers are thinking about different points of their interaction with your brand? True, there are a lot of ways to conduct market or customer experience research, one of the most direct and fast ways is customer intercept survey.

In this article, we will explain what customer intercept surveys are, give you some examples, and talk about the advantages and disadvantages of using this popular research tool.

What is customer intercept survey

Simply put, customer intercept is talking to people while they are engaged with a service or product. It is a qualitative market research method that provides valuable insights into what’s working, current consumer pain points, and consumer emotional motivators.

Customer intercept surveys are a popular tool for gathering on-site feedback from consumers. Traditionally, these surveys were held at restaurants, conferences, and shopping malls, but have since made the transition to eCommerce platforms. 

Online intercept surveys come in varied forms, depending on your data collection goals and the survey solution you choose. 

Whichever form you choose, eCommerce consumer intercept surveys are a powerful tool – they help you understand customers’ behavior and intent, providing priceless insight into how they experience your brand. These insights can be leveraged into actionable goals for marketing, sales, product innovation and CX optimization.

Customer Intercepts Examples

Now let’s review some examples of Intercept Surveys commonly used on websites and online applications.

• Net Promoter Score – Ask consumers if they would recommend your product/site/service, aiming to measure their loyalty.
• Customer satisfaction – Ask consumers how satisfied they were with their last purchase, site layout/content, or even with support team service.
• Exit survey – Ask consumers why they’re leaving before they do so.
• Cart abandonment surveys –  Ask consumers why they’re not going through with a purchase.

Intercept Survey Questions

Ok, so what questions should you use in your intercept survey? Here are some typical intercept survey questions:

• What services/products did you purchase/use today?
• What was the main reason for your visit today?
• How likely are you to recommend this product/service to a friend/family member/colleague?
• How did you find this location/website/service?
• How often do you visit this location/website?
• How would you rate your satisfaction/experience today?
• Did you achieve your goal/found what you were looking for?

Intercept Survey Advantages and Disadvantages

Just like any other method, intercept surveys have both great advantages and annoying disadvantages.

First, the pros of using an intercept survey:

• Versatility with placement, format, and target audience.
• Relatively high response rate since you can engage consumers at different touch points.
• More accurate and detailed feedback collected in great proximity to consumer experience.
• Wider survey demographic since all site visitors can answer and provide feedback.
• Easier to conduct, since there is no need for special focus groups or personnel. 

Despite its many advantages and popularity, intercept surveys do have some cons:

• They tend to have many steps and require serious effort to answer. 
• Completing them often takes some time.
• They are often perceived as a disturbance (pop-up windows).
• For quality market research, they require a large number of participants (website visitors) or to be run for at least a few weeks.
• Since they require time and attention from the site users, visitors often share only extreme opinions.

Once you have decided to set up an intercept survey on your website or at a store location, it is time to think about what Intercept Survey Solution to use.

Intercept Survey Solutions

There are many different website intercept survey solutions that you can setup yourself or by using a service like SurveyLab. Among the popular methods of website surveys are:

• Pop-ups (or Modal Boxes) that can be configured to appear anywhere throughout the customer journey.
• On-page surveys (Widgets
) that usually appear in the corner of the website, are unobtrusive, and leave the initiative to the consumers to provide feedback.

• Website tabs (top, bottom, side)
, also less intrusive than pop-up windows but are easier to ignore.
• Exit surveys that are set as pop-ups, post purchase emails, or tabs at checkout.

You can choose whichever solution that best suits your needs and will work with your consumer audience. 

Conclusion

Customer intercept surveys are a very efficient and popular tool for gathering on-site feedback from consumers, providing you with data about your consumers and their experiences.

However, these surveys might provide you with limited and narrow market research, potentially causing you to miss valuable consumer insights found in other feedback platforms. In order to give your business a push forward you need quality granular data and actionable insight. Sure, we know collecting and analyzing customer feedback from varied sources can be quite a challenge. Find out how Revuze’s AI-powered CX analysis can help you get those quality consumer insights that’ll push you to the next level!

Simone Somekh

Simone Somekh is a New York-based writer and editor who specializes in marketing and communications for B2B SaaS companies. He teaches Communications at Touro College and he is the author of an award-winning novel published in four languages.