When it comes to gaining insight into the customer experience, a customer intercept survey can prove to be quite useful indeed. Mystery shopping is something that can be considered a customer intercept survey of sorts, as a shopper of this type is explicitly asked to go into a given shop for more information on how a casual customer is treated on an everyday basis. This type of feedback provides an excellent base for the parent company to go on when it comes to evaluating customer service and customer satisfaction in general.
For a casual customer that is not paid to mystery shop, customer intercept surveys can be given out at the end of their shopping experience, be it at the doors of a brick and mortar venue or at the end of an online shopping experience once their purchase has been completed. There are plenty of ways to offer these customer intercept services accordingly, but it should be noted that there are some ways that work better than others. As far as brick and mortar customer intercept surveys go, it should be noted that having someone friendly, albeit not too pushy, offer these surveys as the customer exits. For online transactions, go with a short, sweet, and simple survey that a customer is likely to finish due to its brevity and usefulness. Long, involved customer intercept surveys of this type are more likely to simply annoy people than anything else.
As you create these customer intercept surveys, make sure that you emphasize aspects of the customer experience that were most loved and could stand to be most improved alike. Make sure to phrase the questions in such a way as to make the customer believe that their input and time alike are valued, and the quality and quantity of feedback that you receive from customer intercept surveys should be excellent.