Surveys:

Get Priceless Feedback From Your Customers

Surveys can yield valuable information about customer expectations, customer satisfaction and strategies for improvement. While it is tempting to start by writing questions for your customers, the critical first step is answering some questions yourself. Surveys are tools to aid in decision making. But all the information in the world is useless if you don’t know what to do with it.

Step One:

Set Goals and Objectives

• Why are you creating this survey?
• How will you use this information?
• What decisions will this information help you make?
• Are you ready to act once you have the relevant information?

Step Two

Define the type of information you want or need

• Do you want perspective and/or opinion?
• Do you need statistics?
• Do you need quantitative data?
• What do you really need to know?
• Why is this information important?

Step Three

Determine Timeframe and Frequency

• How soon do you need this information?
• If changes are going to be made made as a result of this survey, how long before you need to reevaluate the relevancy of the newly collected information?
• Will you need follow-up surveys to manage the quality?
• What future changes in your customer base or your offering make these results irrelevant?

Step Four

Determine Sample Size

• Which customers should you survey?
• Do you have customer segments with different behaviors, or are most of your customers pretty much the same?
• Should you chose random customers or specific individuals or groups?

Step Five

Ask the right questions in the right way

• Are the questions relevant to your survey goals and objectives?
• Are they specific? Based on the type of information you outlined in Step 2, do you use open-ended questions, closed questions or multiple choice questions?
• Are your questions simple and understandable?
• Do your questions contain language that may lead the customer toward a biased answer?

Be considerate of your customers' time. An online survey shouldn't include too many more questions than you just answered – and the questions should be a heck of a lot easier! But taking the time to clarify your objectives and information requirements can save you a lot of time and money. If you don’t define these requirements, your survey won’t teach you anything useful or actionable. Instead, your research leads to more research.

Your customers will tell you how to be successful - if you ask. Call us today to learn more about The Green Internet Group’s online survey services.