Real Life Online Business

Great Tips to Writing Effective Surveys

Writing surveys is easy; or is it? The truth is that creating surveys is easy but creating effective surveys is more difficult. The following twenty tips will help you write more effective surveys.

1. What is the survey’s purpose?

There are many reasons for conducting questionnaires. By correctly phrasing the questions and structuring the answers surveys can be used in a multitude of ways and for a variety of reasons. When designing a survey don’t lose sight of its purpose.

2. Title the survey

The title of the survey is an opportunity to instantly summarise a survey’s objective and encourage respondents to participate. Respondents need to invest time in completing the survey so you need to encourage them that their investment will be worthwhile.

3. Keep the survey as short as possible

Every question asked should be asked for a reason. Limit asking questions that will provide you with ‘nice to know’ information and instead concentrate on the ‘need to know’ questions.

4. Use plain English, avoid terminology and acronyms, be consistent and don’t ask questions that may result in ambiguous answers

Word the question carefully. If a question can be interpreted in more ways than one then there is a risk that any analysis of the survey results will be worthless or at the very least suspect.

5. Don’t have long questions

Try to use short sentences wherever possible. Long questions tend to cause respondents discomfort and can lead to respondents abandoning a survey.

6. Ask only one question at a time

Avoid confusing the respondent with a question like ‘Do you like football and golf?’

7. Do not influence the answer

Do not load the question. ‘Should irresponsible shop keepers who sell cigarettes to minors be prosecuted?’ is unlikely to have any value.

8. Make sure that the answer format used allows the respondent to answer the question being asked

Allow the respondent to answer how they really feel or they may be inclined to abandon the survey. As a last resort consider the benefit of including a “Can’t say”, “Don’t know” or similar response option.

9. While compiling your survey consider how you will want to analyse the results once the survey has been published

Appreciate that questions that allow for a free text open ended response, such as when asking the respondent for their comments, is likely to be difficult to score and/or summarised. Consider how the answers could be grouped. For example “Indicate your length of service?” - ‘less than 2 year’, ‘between 2 and 5 years’ and ‘more than 5′.

10. Try and ensure that the questionnaire flows

Group questions into clear categories as this will make it easier for the participants completing the survey.

11. Target your respondents carefully

In some cases you will want to target a specific group, in others a cross section. If you can’t easily control the respondents consider including questions/answers that will allow you to filter out respondents who don’t fit your target profile.

12. Provide a channel for your respondents to expand on their answers or make comments

Allowing the respondent to make additional comments will increase their satisfaction level and will also give valuable feedback on the specific questions and/or the survey as a whole. Remember that for large sample collections it may be difficult to analyse free text open ended responses.

13. If you are conducting a confidential survey ensure that your pledge for confidentiality is honoured

If you have assured respondents that the survey is to be confidential you need to ensure that the collated data is not shared with anyone or used for any other purpose. Confidentiality must be maintained at all times and any identifying information destroyed once the survey has finished.

14. Weigh up the advantages of allowing respondents to be anonymous or identifiable

If your respondents are to be anonymous then you will be unable to follow up specific complaints or match “pre” or “post” surveys. Allowing respondents to remain anonymous will however allow respondents to respond without possible peer pressure.

15. Consideration carefully the best response format

Maintaining a consistency in the format used for responses is good practice. When designing your survey keep in mind that when analyzing the data single selection radio buttons are easier to analyze than multiple selection check boxes. If a radio response format can be used do not use a check box format.

16. Provide the respondent with an estimate as to how much time the survey will take to complete

Respondent drop out can become a problem if the survey appears to be a stream of never ending questions. It is a good idea to give an indication as to how long the survey is likely to take so the respondents can choose the best time to complete the survey.

17. Provide respondents with the survey end date

Encourage your invited respondents to complete the survey as soon as possible but advise the respondents of the survey’s end date so that they have the opportunity to schedule the necessary time.

18. Test the survey

Before publishing a live survey publish a pilot survey to check for questions that are ambiguous or confusing and to confirm that the survey is aesthetically pleasing.

19. Before publishing the survey check the survey carefully

Check and then check again that a survey is grammatically correct and makes sense. If possible ask a colleague to check the survey before you publish, if you are unable to do this then take a break before checking again.

20. Remember to thank the respondent

Respondents invest their time when completing surveys and should therefore be thanked at the end of completing the survey or in a follow up letter. You may even want to consider incentives such as a prize draw or reward.

For more information please visit Survey Galaxy

Tags: advertising, customer services, employee surveys, employer, feedback, market research, marketing, Online surveys, promotion, questionnaires, satisfaction surveys

Designing Customer Satisfaction Surveys that Work

Why should you bother?

The life blood of any business is good customer service. Although new customers are important good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and repeat business. With each satisfied customer your business will secure many more customers through word of mouth and you should always keep in mind that if you are not taking proper care of your customers there is always a competitor that will.

Online customer satisfaction surveys will help you not only identify problem areas but will also demonstrate to your customers that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.

Where do you start?

Objective - As a first step decide what the main objectives of the survey are, in that way you will be able to retain focus and find it easier to decide what questions to ask.

Analysis - Consider how you will analyse the answers having completed the survey.

Bare in mind that ‘closed’ questions (where the respondents are asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are easier to analyse than questions that are ‘open’ (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).

A lot will depend on the predicted volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analysing the results.

Opportunity – As well as obtaining valuable market research data keep in mind that customer surveys are also a good way to publicise aspects of your service that your customers may not be aware of.

After you have drafted your survey read through the survey from a market research view point and check that you are asking the right questions in the right way and that with the feedback information you will be able to make informed decisions.

Next, read through the survey from a marketing view point, check that you have phrased each question so that every opportunity has been taken to promote your business?

The ideal question will perform the following three functions:-

• Market research - provide valuable feedback to help you improve your customer satisfaction levels and in turn your business
• Marketing - promote aspects of your business
• Information/Education - advertise a service that you provide that your customers may not have been unaware of

For example:- Do you find the in-store baby changing facilities useful?

By asking this question not only will the store receive good market research feedback on the facility they provide but they will also promote their facilities and advertise themselves as a family friendly store, even beyond those customers who have a specific need for the baby changing facility that has been provided.

Warts and all – be prepared to accept criticism.

A customer satisfaction survey should be designed to highlight problems so that they can be addressed; regular customer satisfaction will prevent complacency and will also give early warning on where your competitors initiatives may be losing you business.

What are the questions you should ask?

Depending on their own particular size and makeup each business is likely to have unique factors in relation to providing good customer services however there are common areas relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online store or a service industry. The following are some key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication - Do you do anything to help your customers communicate with you?

When customers telephone are their calls answered quickly; are their enquiries about products or services handled properly? A good business will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, politely, quickly and fairly.

If customers reported problems that cannot be resolvable immediately do you promise to respond in a given time period and do you deliver on your promise?

Use a customer satisfaction survey to ensure that all your staff are considered by your customers to be knowledgeable, courteous and helpful.

Location – Are you doing everything you can to ensure that your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical store, does it have good access and is it conveniently located?

Making it pleasant, making it easy - For an internet business it is important to ensure that your website is easy to use and aesthetically pleasing.

Regardless of the store being a bricks and mortar or purely online web based store, is the store properly laid out and can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient detailed information and help on hand to explain how a particular product works?

The right quality products – In addition to measuring the quality of the service that you provide you should ensure that the products and services that you provide do in fact match your customers’ requirements.

Value for money – Cheap or expensive is hardly ever a good measure, value for money is.

Do your current customers consider the products you sell or the services you provide as value for money, if not, why not?

Speed and attention – No matter what the business, the majority of customers will want to be dealt with quickly but attentively.

Are you doing everything you can to avoid any delay?

Good businesses will try to treat each customer as an individual, does yours? Attention is important but so is a quick and satisfactory resolution of the query.

Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example what is their age group and where do they live?

By understanding your customers more, the better your chances of correctly targeting your business.

Allow customers to highlight their specific problems and provide contact details so that any problems might be later addressed and their concerns followed up.

What next?

Once the survey has been completed analyse the results.

Trends – Look for common and specific areas where the customer service is found wanting.

Ask yourself if any criticism is valid and is there anything that can be done to resolve or minimise the problem?

Training – Are the staff properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?

Where staff training programmes have been implemented have they had a positive impact on the business?

Follow-up – If a customer has raised a specific issue through completing a survey ensure that they are contacted and that their complaint is properly addressed.

Do not lose a customer by squandering an opportunity to resolve a problem.

Continuously Monitor - Make changes and then measure by issuing further surveys.

If you are interested in tracking customer satisfaction and would like to see a sample survey for a store that demonstrates some of the above advice please view the following example that can be used as a customer satisfaction survey template.

Tags: customer satisfaction, customer services, marketing, Online surveys, questionnaires, satisfaction surveys