7 Habits of Highly Successful Surveys

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1 Feedback that drives vision. voviciwhitepaper Whitepaper: 7 Habits of Highly Successful Surveys Overview Surveys are perhaps the most proven method for gathering data about customers in a structured way. But a number of trends have made it harder for survey authors to be successful. First, phone surveys suffered declining responses, as people thought the Do Not Call list exempted them from surveys (it doesn t) and as households gave up landlines for cell phones (which it is against U.S. law to call in an automated fashion). Now, web survey response rates are dropping due to the rise in spam and the increasing use of smart phones to check . A successful survey is one that is designed to meet its original goal, provides accurate data that is representative of the target population, and that improves the satisfaction level of its respondents. This whitepaper distills the seven keys to ensuring the best possible outcome for the survey author. The 1st Habit: Focus on a Goal Be precise about what information you need to gather and what you plan on doing with it. If your organization hasn t done a survey in a while, the tendency is for every department to chime in with questions they want you to ask. Talk to stakeholders who will use the data to understand their wants and needs. A narrow goal will help you to relentlessly simplify the survey. Ask yourself, Can I meet the goals without doing a survey at all? Is someone elsewhere in the organization doing a survey on this topic or researching this issue? Are customers (or employees or ) the only source of this information? Do our CRM, web analytics or other systems hold data that would address this issue? Bad Survey Goal Maybe customers would like it if we provided support after 6 p.m. What are our customers thinking right now? Let s create a committee and see what they want to find out from a customer survey. Determine how often callers into help desk check the customer service portal before calling. Better Approach Prioritize ideas for expanding customer service. Conduct one-on-one unstructured interviews with customers. Survey employees about customer information they lack to determine the priorities for your customer research. Record customer-service portal log-ins and knowledge-base searches into the CRM system Vintage Park Plaza, Suite 250, Dulles, VA t: f: e: sales@

2 The 2nd Habit: Survey the Right Number of People Some might consider a census approach to surveying, attempting to gather feedback from 100% of the population. Others take a sampling approach. If you are thinking of taking a census approach with your survey, consider: The census approach works best for populations under 1,000 individuals It may require you to utilize incentives to boost response to the appropriate level Make sure you invite all respondents Use reminders and deadlines to ensure highest response rates among your population A sampling approach may be more effective for your situation. Some of the benefits of a sampling approach are as follows: The sampling approach works best for populations over 1,000 individuals This approach avoids fatiguing respondents Segmentation allows you to obtain information on particular subgroups If you are going to take the sampling approach, be mindful of the number of responses required to get a solid indication of how the target population overall would respond to your questions. To ensure good sampling, make sure your selection of population is as random as possible. Send scheduled reminders. Do not invite all potential respondents, thereby leaving names available for future surveys. For web surveys, make sure they are representative of the population for which you have addresses; you may need to expand and test the representativeness and comprehensiveness of your house lists. The 3rd Habit: Craft Your Invitation Carefully A well-crafted invitation is essential to jumping response hurdles. For general market research, do not buy lists of addresses; legitimate vendors will only rent their lists, not sell them. For research to house lists, make sure that lists are double opt-in. Maintain a suppression list of addresses that have opted-out. Provide different categories of opt-out (e.g., marketing vs. newsletters vs. surveys). Remove suppressed addresses prior to ing. It is critical that your invitation is designed to minimize the likelihood of being flagged as spam. Avoid spam-filter trigger words ( Free, $, act now ). To be CAN-SPAM compliant (when ing within the United States), make sure that your subject lines are truthful, the from address is valid, and that you provide a physical address and valid opt-out link. And make sure that your invitation is as appealing as possible. Use a compelling subject line, such as Help us improve our products and send from an individual person s address as opposed to a general corporate address. Once someone clicks on the invitation, you have less than eight seconds to make a good first impression. Tell recipients what you want them to do as soon as possible in the invitation. Know your audience and write the invitation with this knowledge in mind. Keep it short. Let them know how long the survey will be. And consider using HTML s vs. text for more visual appeal. Consider using a combination of incentives and deadlines to gain rapid response. For example, The first 100 people to submit a completed survey by May 31 will receive. You can limit your financial liability by putting a cap on the number of incentives offered. A deadline creates sense of urgency, and relevant incentives motivate invitees. Stay away from sweepstakes due to complexities of state laws. At Vovici, our experience is that a large number of small incentives typically gets better response than a small number of large incentives.

3 The 4th Habit: Order Questions Logically An inverted pyramid approach to question order can help ensure the effectiveness of your survey. Begin with screening questions. Conventionally, screeners route people out of a survey depending on answers to initial questions. You have their attention; skip them out to another survey instead if they are not a fit for the survey underway. Otherwise they get the impression their feedback isn t valuable. After your screening questions, open-ended questions are a good next step. Start with essay questions such as What, if anything, do you like about? or What, if anything, do you dislike Capture their views in their own words before biasing them with your later questions. When you get to general questions, use them as the basis for branching off into specific questions dependent upon how they responded in the general questions. Doing so requires using skip patterns and branching logic, tools that can be applied easily in a good online survey software platform. After specific questions, you can delve into demographics and firmographics. Use demographic and firmographic questions to profile respondents and their organizations. This will enable you to cross-tabulate and compare subgroups. Place these near the end of the survey as they are tedious and intrusive. Pre-populate from CRM systems where possible, so that information can be updated rather than re-entered. Finally, ask for any final comments about any aspect of the survey or its topic. Ask for permission to follow-up with them about their answers, and prompt them if they have an issue they want to be contacted about. The 5th Habit: Write Objective Questions Remember the adage Garbage in, Garbage out. Poorly worded questions will lead to suspect results and erroneous conclusions. Respondents should not be able to determine where you stand on any topic, so use nonjudgmental wording and choose neutral terms. Don t ask leading questions such as What do you like about your service? but instead ask What, if anything, do you like? Remove any ambiguity in your questions. Ask one item at a time, rather than using confusing questions like How would you rate our price and service? Make sure to avoid industry jargon. Write from the respondent s perspective and not your perspective. Have others proofread your questions for clarity, and consider pre-testing your survey with a segment of your audience. The best practices for writing scales have been thoroughly researched. Respondents prefer fully labeled scales; they have greater reliability and validity. Five- and 7-point scales have the greatest reliability and validity but 10- and 11-point scales are popular. Where possible use standard scales rather than writing your own. Numeric values alter the meaning of labels and should be avoided.

4 The 6th Habit: Shorten the Survey The shorter the survey, the better the response rate, as the graph below proves out. Tips for keeping your survey short include the following: Keep your focus Remove questions that don t directly address the goal of the survey. Ask only the most important questions A common research tactic is to have three similar questions on a similar topic; just use one. Don t ask esoteric questions Cut questions that make distinctions only apparent to those within your organization. Don t set false expectations Remove questions that raise issues that can t be addressed (for customers, free services; for employees, extended vacation time). Also, do what you can to shorten the survey from the respondent s perspective: Skip respondents past sections that don t apply Don t subject respondents to surveys about products or services they don t have or can t have. Import answers Use CRM data to pipe in answers to hidden questions. Randomize displayed sections For less important sections, randomly display only one section to each respondent. Break the survey into multiple questionnaires Maybe questions around different target groups are so different that they are best served with different questionnaires!

5 The 7th Habit: Close the Feedback Loop Your respondents contribute because they value their relationship with you and they want to see you improve. Explain what you re using the data for and share your data with the relevant communities. Identify actions you re taking as a result of survey. Consider using web seminars, video conferences and meetings to share data. Use this approach to stimulate additional participation and ongoing feedback. For ongoing feedback, consider implementing an online community. Finally, use the survey alerts and triggers available in better survey software platforms to improve satisfaction by taking corrective action. The 7 Habits: As a recap, here are the seven practices to consider if you want to make your surveys more successful: 1. Focus on a Goal 2. Survey the Right Number of People 3. Craft Your Invitation Carefully 4. Order Questions Logically 5. Write Objective Questions 6. Shorten the Survey 7. Close the Feedback Loop For a more detailed treatment of each of these seven practices, please download our ebook, Survey Software Success. A central element to practicing these seven habits across your organization is the adoption of an enterprise feedback management (EFM) survey platform. Vovici helps organizations achieve these benefits because we provide a single enterprise feedback platform that uniquely combines: Online surveys that allow you to quantitatively measure attitudes and opinions in order to make business decisions Proprietary panels and online communities which allow you to hear customer sentiments and attitudes Advanced business intelligence capabilities that allow you to easily analyze, report and distribute information critical to your business The Vovici platform unifies these capabilities through a powerful database that links profile data and survey data so that you can get the insight you need quickly, efficiently and at much lower cost than existing methods. To learn more, please contact a Vovici sales representative at sales@ or