Two weeks ago I wrote about approaches and techniques to deal with typical weak spots in customer surveys. There were many comments about the poor quality of customer surveys received on behalf of all manner of organization.
Customer surveys can be powerful tools for small and medium-sized businesses trying to better understand any number of issues, from customer experience and brand association to loyalty, satisfaction and quality. However, they must be intelligently designed and well executed.
We all have experience with the poor surveys Globe comment writers discussed. It’s not that putting together a good survey is hard, it’s just that – like anything else – there is a process to it, and attention to detail really matters. Here are some ground rules for building a solid survey and driving above-average participation.
The process: Construction
The process underlying a solid survey build is straight-forward, but rarely followed.
1. Identify the target audience.
2. Select the medium of distribution.
3. Determine, specifically, the goal of the survey.
4. Sort out the three-to-five metrics – things you want to measure, or graph, or report on later.
5. Write the questions.
This is where people usually go wrong: they start by writing questions. That is like flooding your backyard before levelling it or putting up boards. You’ll get a rink but it won’t be any good. Here is an example of a good consumer survey construction process.
• A restaurant chain wants to better understand how to appeal to youth. It would first define “youth” – age 6 to 18, 14 to 21?
• Next up it would pick the medium that makes the most sense to get at that segment. If the 14- to 21-year-old set is selected, an online survey probably makes more sense than an in-restaurant deployment.
• The first meaty decision is to really understand the goal of polling customers – in this case it might be to understand what marketing tactics (not what menu items) would draw in this crowd.
• Metrics are next – determining what really needs to be measured. In this case, the chain might select TV advertising effectiveness, contest effectiveness, social media effectiveness.
• Finally, questions would be crafted to address each of the metrics. For example, for contest effectiveness, two potential questions could be: 1. If we offered free “dinners-for-two” as prizes in random draws, would you be more likely to eat here more often? Yes or no. 2. On a scale of 1 to 4, how much did our X-Box contest influence your decision to eat here? (We prefer four-point scales with a N/A option over five-point scales since a large count of “3’s” really doesn’t mean anything.)
The rules
There are 10 simple rules to building and launching a good customer survey:
1. The first rule of fight club is: do not talk about fight club. Never use the actual word “survey” or “questionnaire” in any of the communication about the survey or in the questionnaire itself – potential respondents will turn off immediately. Spam filters also object to these questions. (“Please take five minutes to provide us with your input on…” or something similar works better.)
2. Never start a survey with demographic questions – it is off-putting to some – ask these questions last.
3. Start with the most relevant questions – if customers drop out after four or five questions, at least you have data for the questions you really care about.
4. Always start a survey with a question that will likely elicit a positive response – a yes or a good news answer – this puts people in a positive frame of mind and you are less likely to have people drop out of the survey.
5. Keep questions short and punchy, ensure they are unambiguous, and that each question goes after only one thought or idea.
