Whether you have purchased new jeans in a high-end retail store, athletic equipment in an sports retailer, or even food from a fast food restaurant, you have probably noticed a survey request directing you to a website that offers some sort of incentive for participation.

Enter to win $5,000, get 20% off your next in-store purchase, buy-one-get-one free coupons.  Sometimes the incentives to fill out a couple questions are steep in order to attract users who would normally not participate.

For retail stores, regardless of industry, gaining customer insight and actionable intelligence is invaluable.  How is a particular branding strategy being perceived? Is a newly rolled out product playing well with customers?  Do customers enjoy the ambience of a restaurant?  Are they enjoying the food?  How could a company attract more business or make their product more customer friendly?

These questions are of vital importance to any company, and customer retention and gaining new customers are how stores stay in business.  Getting concrete intelligence and constructive feedback about how their product or service is being received.

It is vital to get this type of information from people when it is fresh in their minds, and these customer feedback surveys can combine with interactive voice response technology to get the most relevant feedback possible.

Imagine this scenario: You have just made a purchase; your impressions of your experience are fresh in your mind.  There is a telephone number to dial in to take a survey, and a reward at the end.

Stores could simply put an IVR in place that gathered user feedback, regardless of whether users decided to text, email, submit via a web form, or call in.  An IVR system could be programmed to both collect and process this data, offering the timeliest results in a clear and concise manner possible.

By integrating with an IVR, stores would enable to provide their feedback instantaneously via mobile phone, so that they were receiving the most accurate, relevant data possible.