Thanks to modern survey tools, creating and distributing a questionnaire has never been easier.
By Alex Caffarini
As a 30-year marketing research veteran, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Craig Root’s insightful posts from November 8, 2024, and January 6, 2025, on conducting onsite polling in tasting rooms to better understand and serve patrons. Root’s recommendations lay the groundwork for wineries to go beyond surface-level feedback and unlock richer insights from their tasting room visitors.
Building on Root’s suggestion of asking patrons about their visitor experience, ideas for improving it and how they discovered your winery, consistent polling can reveal themes you may want to explore even further. As you discover new patterns, you can deepen your understanding through a semiannual or annual survey of your broader customer base, focusing on these recurring themes.
For example, suppose your polls show that many patrons want more food options during their visits. In your annual survey to your customer base, you can ask targeted questions about this, such as opinions on current food offerings (or whether they would like you to start offering food), interest in additional choices and preferences for specific types of foods.
Your survey could also measure overall customer satisfaction and loyalty by including questions such as:
- How would you rate your most recent experience in our tasting room on a scale from 1 to 10?
- How likely are you to recommend our tasting room to a friend?
- How likely are you to visit our tasting room again in the next three months?
Use your tools
Thanks to modern survey tools, creating and distributing a questionnaire has never been easier. Many tools offer free versions that are more than sufficient for occasional surveys. Use your POS or CRM system to identify recent tasting room visitors, such as those from the last three years. You can then email your survey to all these visitors, or to just a random sample of them. Most survey tools even handle data tabulation, so insights are readily accessible. As with your onsite polls, you should offer your customers an incentive to participate in your annual survey, such as a discount on either their next wine order or visit.
Designing an effective survey requires care: poorly worded or lengthy surveys can skew results and/or discourage participation. Consulting a marketing research professional to design an effective questionnaire is strongly recommended. Additionally, if you’re surveying only a subset of your patrons, your marketing research professional can help you select a sample that most closely represents your customer base.
A well-executed annual survey should take no more than five minutes of your customers’ time but can have lasting benefits. Customers who feel their opinions are valued are more likely to return and make additional purchases. By acting on their feedback, you can build stronger loyalty and a deeper connection with your patrons.
Frequency matters
One last thought: Root recommends polling your tasting room patrons two full weekends per quarter, and that’s certainly a great start. Ideally, your polling schedule should reflect your facility’s operations and goals. For example, if your tasting room is also open on weekdays, you should do some of your polling during the week, because weekday visitors and weekend visitors may differ in demographics, preferences, and buying habits.
In addition, if you are interested in seasonal factors that might affect your business, you may want to conduct some polls each month to detect any patterns in patron behavior and preferences that seem to occur at the same time each year. Any seasonal findings can be useful in informing your annual surveys, as well as your event and promotion planning.
If you’re not currently polling, you should start small, perhaps following Root’s recommended schedule. If that’s too difficult, start with one weekend per quarter — but most importantly, start. You can amp up as you get more experienced and comfortable with polling.
Root’s posts offer an excellent starting point for wineries to tighten their customer connections. By layering in more structured surveys, you can turn your tasting room into a powerful engine for actionable insights, lasting customer engagement and increased returning and referred business.
Alex Caffarini
Alex Caffarini is the founder and president of CompassDTC, a DTC strategy and analytics firm that empowers small and midsized food and beverage brands — including wineries — to compete effectively in the DTC channel. With more than 30 years of marketing analytics and data science experience, he has designed and managed more than 150 survey research projects; developed statistical models for increasing customer acquisition and retention; and authored several market analysis and forecast studies.
