Business Surveys

With the emergence of widespread internet usage and powerful online survey software, the web has become the survey method of choice for many project managers and market research professionals.  Utilizing an online web survey design allows for levels of efficiency unheard of in traditional mail questionnaire projects, but it also poses new challenges for business survey researchers.  One of the questions that is asked often is, Is my customer feedback sample and/or survey data skewed because I used an online survey?

The answer could be either no, yes, or maybe, depending upon your specific research issues and target demographics.  The demographic that use the internet (and newer technologies in general) the most are younger people.  Those who are new to online technologies, or those who are not tech-savvy, might be intimidated or confused by a web survey form or an email survey invitation from an unknown sender, which can decrease your rates of nonresponse.  Also, you can run into the issue of coverage error for those who do not have internet access, which is more common among lower-income and less-educated individuals.

But overall, the reliability and validity of online survey results can be on par with or better than other modes, especially if you know your target audience well, including their rates of internet usage.  According to a September 2009 survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 77% of all adults - and 93% of those ages 18-29 - use the internet “at least occasionally.”  Less than half of those aged 65 and older use the internet or send and receive email, however.

So while there are drawbacks to online questionnaire designs of which you should be mindful (as there are with any survey modes, such as interviewer bias, etc.), the efficiency and reduced costs are more than enough rationale for most to employ online data collection techniques, either exclusively or as part of a multi-mode survey design.  Knowing and understanding your target audience is the best way to be sure that your chosen mode will produce quality data.

In yesterday's post we looked at how your survey question items, if worded improperly, may be biased, resulting in unusable or incorrect results. Now we know how survey questions shouldn't look, let's delve deeper into why those previous examples were poorly worded, and how with just a few small adjustments you can easily start to hone question items within your survey forms.

When you design internet surveys, how do you write objective questions that won't bias your results one way or the other?

Here are a few main points:


These first few points are a great starting place when you're designing a questionnaire. The final post in this series will look at a few final survey best practice tips for writing great survey questions and the benefits you'll gain from crafting quality items. In the meantime, questions previously stored in our question library already come properly worded and ready for use!

The benefits of online and email surveys are numerous. This is not to discount other survey methods but merely to point out the advantages.

1. Cost savings. It is fairly inexpensive to email survey questionnaires, once you have the email addresses of your target audience.

2. Ability to attach pictures or sound files. You can attach or embed necessary files in the online web survey – you cannot show someone a picture over the phone, or send an audio file easily through direct mail.

3. More honest responses. It’s been shown that respondents are more likely to reveal truthful information online than to an in-person interviewer. Think about how much people reveal through personal blogs and web sites, and this makes sense.

4. Limitless possibilities. With certain kinds of survey software, you can control what types of questions survey respondent can access, show additional questions if they answer a certain question in a particular way, and more. This can be done with paper surveys but it’s a bit more cumbersome and requires written directions: If you answered 'No' to the above question, please explain.

5. Fast results. As I discussed yesterday, the results of online surveys are very rapid, which saves researchers time and money.

Technology has come a long way – ten years ago, the majority of surveys were not online, and that has certainly changed. Now market researchers are using this format more often than not for at least one aspect of gathering feedback. Whether you're looking to conduct a product enhancement survey or an internal business survey of employees, web survey forms have their place in your internet research process.

Yesterday, I pointed out you should think about how the colors you pick may affect survey respondents when designing survey templates. There are typically three groups of colors to consider: cool, warm and neutrals. Cool colors are typically thought of to be cooling colors. But what about their counter part?

Warm colors: Get up! Get going! That's the mantra of warm colors, they get us going. Warm colors create excitement, and sometimes, evoke anger by conveying emotions from simple optimism to strong violence. Much the same way that white and gray can carry cool attributes, blacks and browns carry warm attributes. Since I mentioned that cool colors tend to appear smaller, you may be expecting this next part: warm colors sometimes appear larger and closer. As a result, warm colors can over power a cool color when they are used in equal proportions.

	Red - The color red can evoke a range of emotions: passion and love versus violence and war. Both cupid and the devil are associated with the color red. It certainly does seem to have a conflicting identity. Red is the hottest of all the warm colors and as a result, is a good stimulant. Think about the places you see red and what it indicates: red tie in the boardroom denotes power, flashing red lights warn of danger, etc. Red tends to grab people's attention and gets them to take action. But don't put all your calls to actions in your next email survey invitation in red because it can quickly become overpowering and evoke the wrong emotions.
	Yellow - Ahh! Sunshine! One of the many things the color yellow brings to mind. Like the color red, yellow can have conflicting meanings: happiness and joy versus cowardice and deceit. As you might imagine, yellow is best used in conjunction with other colors and not as the primary color. However, it can work as a primary color depending on the overall design. While blue iris was Pantone's Color of the Year in 2008, Mimosa is their 2009 Color of the Year.
	Orange - As a blend of red and yellow, orange brings together some of the best qualities of both colors. Orange brings the energy, warmth and cheerfulness of the two colors while leaving out the aggression that red brings to mind. Like other warm colors, orange is stimulating and is a good way to get noticed without "screaming" at your survey respondents.
	Gold - Gold is a cousin to yellow and orange, both warm colors. Because gold is a precious metal, it's also a color that represents riches and extravagance. Much like it's cousin yellow, gold can be both bright and cheerful, as well as somber and traditional.
	Pink - Pink is the softer side of red. Park that aggression at the door. Pink is sugar and spice and everything nice. As a result, it's often associated with the "weaker sex" and too much pink has been shown to create physical weakness in people. Both red and pink tend to allude to love, but unlike red's fiery passion, pink tends to denote romance. When combined with black or gray, pink tends to take on a sophisticated.

Gathering feedback and designing surveys that get a good response rates are definite challenges along the business survey decision path. However, if you keep simple color rules in mind and don't overwhelm your respondents, it gets a little easier.

One of the great things about Cvent Web Surveys software application is that it is constantly getting “better.” I, for one, am not aware of another survey software company that can state with confidence that 80% of all product enhancements come directly from the requests of current clients. Cvent, however, has certain processes in place so that every time a client expresses interest in seeing a new feature added to the online survey application, this request is quickly relayed to our technical team.

For those of you who were clients before our most recent product release in August 2009, you definitely noticed at least one big change in your account the first time you logged in after the release. As soon as you logged into your Cvent Web Surveys account, you saw that your surveys were no longer organized into folders on the Survey Selection page. Instead, they are now displayed in “views.”

Now, you may wonder why I chose to write my blog post this week on the transition from folders to survey views. It may seem like a pretty dry topic. I wanted to write on this particular survey subject because I get so many calls from clients asking how to create a new survey view that pull the appropriate surveys into view. If you have a lot of surveys created in your account, then this is a pretty important thing to know how to do, so that you don’t have to sort through all of your company’s surveys just to find the few that you are personally working on!

When you are ready to create a new survey view and filter the appropriate surveys into this view, you need to remember 3 simple steps:

1) Create a survey custom field. You can create survey custom fields under the Administration tab, on the same page that you create contact custom fields. Survey custom fields are primarily used to classify the surveys in your account and pull them into the appropriate views on the Survey Selection page. So, for example, if your marketing department and human resources department are running surveys, you may want to create 2 separate survey views, one for each department. The first step to do this would be to create a survey custom field for department.

2) Create a new view on the Survey Selection page. You can create a new survey view by choosing “add new view” from the Display drop-down menu. When you add the new view, you will need to name it and also specify certain options (i.e. whether you would like the view to be private or public). Finally, at the bottom of the page, you should apply an advanced filter based on the survey custom field you just created for department. For example, if you are adding the survey view for “Marketing Surveys,” you should choose “department” as the field, “equals” as the operator, and “marketing” as the value.


3) Now that you have created the survey custom field and added the new view, all you need to do is pull the appropriate surveys into the view you just created! When you added the new view for “Marketing Surveys,” you should have gotten a message, “no surveys match your criteria.” This is because you have not yet applied the survey custom field at the survey-level! To do this, simply go into an individual marketing survey, and click on  Settings on the top navigation bar. On the General Information page, you should click on the Custom Survey Fields tab. Here you can apply the “marketing” label to the individual survey, so that it will show up in the “Marketing Surveys” view.


Hopefully this post will be helpful to those of you who are struggling with the transition from folders to survey views. Believe me, survey views are completely customizable and will help you organize online surveys in your Cvent Web Surveys software account.

Does your customer survey have "survivor bias"? I'm betting it does. Why? Because when most survey designers create business questionnaires or client satisfaction surveys we only collect feedback from individuals who are still customers. What about lost business? Why aren't those customers who left asked to complete your client feedback form? You better believe they have feedback.

In her post at the Dimensional Research blog, Customer Satisfaction Surveys: Avoid "Survivor Bias", Diane Hagglund defines "Survivor Bias" as drawing conclusions only from data that is available or convenient and thus systematically biasing your results. AKA biasing your survey sample by only asking "happy" customers. They may not be over the moon about your product, but they're at least happy enough with your offering if they're still paying you.

I agree with Diane on this one, it's pretty ridiculous to allow this bias to creep into your customer market research. It's easily avoided considering you should have all the customer data you need to send them the same client survey template. Make sure you're measuring client satisfaction among customers who left you for a competitor as well as those who simply decided not to renew the service (and didn't go with anyone else).

When you begin writing customer survey questions to create client questionnaires or update your annual template for a client satisfaction survey make sure you think about your former customers. If you don't know who they are, this is a good time to find out. Thank goodness for internet research software and customer insight solutions to make the act of surveying clients a little easier.

Looking for secondary research data? Earlier this week Google quietly launched a new repository for stats. Google Internet Stats is a small landing page on the UK google platform that aggregates industry stats and insights in one place. Google is collecting data from various third party vendors. You can even submit your data to their repository. Don't worry, Google verifies all the information before adding it to their tool, so you can have faith the stats you come across are not submitted by random people making things up. Current categories include:


Unfortunately, a Google UK representative told Search Engine Land there are no current plans to launch this initiative anywhere else. But even still, if you're looking for secondary data to help with your current market research projects or your next marketing survey for customers and clients you may want to look at Google Internet Stats.


It's definitely an interesting tool to play around with, here are a few random stats I found interesting:


Many people don't realize that using secondary data when writing a satisfaction survey question can help improve your survey. If the data already exists for your market, you don't need to ask it again. The same idea applies to credit union surveys and insurance surveys, not every organization needs to conduct industry surveys to use the data collected. If the data you need already exists, use it and ask questions that will dive deeper when you're designing custom business surveys.

I read a great post by Paul Dunay over at Marketing Prof's Daily Fix blog last week: Is Real Time Marketing in your future? Paul made a great point, a few years ago marketing was allowed some ramp up time for strategic shifts, today that's not the case. We've moved into the era of Real Time Marketing where we are expected to plan and react quickly - not in 45 days.

So where do survey questionnaires fit into this new age of marketing? I think it's clear paper surveys and paper survey software is not the way to go anymore. Paper surveys take entirely too long to send out, collect survey responses and do the required data entry before you can even begin to analyze survey responses. On the bright side, there is great online survey creation software to help you get a web survey project of the ground quickly. Online marketing survey software cuts down the time to create online survey questionniares with the right survey questions, send email invitations, collect feedback and analyze survey data.

But wait, creating business surveys isn't instant, neither is collecting responses or presenting survey findings. This is true, but your marketing team also can't fly blind when making instant decisions. Even though we need to react instantly, we also need to have the data on hand to make informed decisions.

Paul shares one of his boss' sayings with us, if you had a leak in your basement would you wait 45 days for a consultant to put on a webinar on How to fix your leaky basement? The answer is of course not, you're going to start getting quotes to fix the leak immediately. Same thing with marketing surveys, you need to collect data to be able to make decisions. I would recommend not waiting until you have a leak to begin collecting customer feedback or conducting client satisfaction surveys.

I've been asked a lot recently what's the difference is between Cvent Web Surveys branch logic and our advanced survey logic features. I can definitely see where various types of survey question logic can get confusing. Hopefully this post will eliminate the confusion! When you're creating an online survey, it's important to include question logic so survey respondents only see questions that make sense for them.

BRANCH LOGIC:

Take the following example business survey questions:


I hope you can see it doesn't make sense to ask people who saw a TV ad about how they found you on search, and vice versa is also true. But you do want to know more about how they found you through a search and have a series of questions you want to ask. Branch logic allows you do do this. You can add "branches" to your survey so only those survey respondents who saw the TV ad see questions about the ad and those who used search see quesitons about search. I think this graphic does a pretty good job of explaining how branch logic works:


ADVANCED LOGIC:

Advanced logic has the same principle, you only want people to see questions that are relevant to them. However, using advanced logic gives you more freedom to narrow down who sees a question based on up to four criteria. You can pull criteria from a survey respondent's contact information (assuming you're not conducting an anonymous survey) and how they responded to previous questions.


What this means is only people who have Marketing in their title, work in California, heard about the organization from word of mouth and did not select option A in question 8 will see this question. Unlike Branch Logic where you control a set of questions by direction a survey respondent down a path, Advanced Logic allows you to only show questions to "qualified" respondents.

Adding in logic, whether it's branch, skip, advanced or pipe improves the respondent experience and keeps them engaged. More engaged respondents mean higher response rates and lower abandonment rates. If you're in the market for kiosk survey software, market research tools, or just an online survey system that will allow you to collect customer feedback or conduct employee surveys, make sure you ask what types of question logic are supported by their enterprise feedback management solution.

I came across an interesting conversation today where someone was objecting to conducting a customer satisfaction survey because they were concerned the customer questionnaire would only reveal negative customer feedback. This is definitely the wrong attitude. If you think online survey results will only contain negative feedback, it's even more important you select a feedback management tool or survey designing software TODAY and create a customer satisfaction survey tomorrow. Then start fixing the problems that are resulting in all the negative feedback.

Fortunately, the person who thought they would only receive negative feedback will probably be proven wrong. Unless your organization has some serious issues you've been turning a blind eye to for awhile, no survey - customer or employee survey - is going to result in all negative feedback. If everyone hated your company, then you would have no customers and/or no employees. So relax.

The misnomer here is that only unhappy people complete survey questionnaires. This is not true. Happy customers complete them too. Even people who don't have strong opinions either way complete surveys. I honestly cannot say it enough: conducting business surveys to measure customer satisfaction or employee loyalty is essential to all organizations.

Don't be afraid of negative feedback. It's actually a good thing because it forces you to make improvements. Your organization isn't perfect, and there is always more room for growth. Sign up for a free trial today and begin collecting feedback from customers and employees.

Matt Foley, blogger for MROC Talk, asked an interesting question today:


I think this question can be altered to work for surveys: Would you complete your online survey? It doesn't matter if you're creating business surveys or customer surveys, if you wouldn't take your survey - neither will your survey sample. If you even hesitated in thinking about how to answer that question, it's not going to happen. Keep these simple survey best practice tips in mind when working on your survey design (these apply to business-to-business surveys for customers, employee questionnaires and consumer surveys alike):

1. Introduce your online survey. You don't have to explain everything you plan to ask, keep it short and sweet (like your survey questionnaire). Give a short outline of the topic you're asking about and why.

2. What's in it for them? Are you offering an incentive? Promising change? Tell your respondents why they should complete your questionnaire. Business professionals need a reason to complete your research survey just as much as consumers do. Consider offering an incentive to give them a reason to help you out (yes that's right, they are helping you).

3. Keep it short. Put yourself in your survey respondent's shoes, if someone sent you this survey would you complete the whole thing? If it's too long for someone else's online survey, it's too long for yours. According to some people, keeping your survey to 30 surveys questions or less is a survey best practice. I don't recommend going over 30, but don't think that because it's a survey tip means you need to use all 30 questions. Only use as many as absolutely necessary.

4. Keep it interesting and engaging. Use various question types and logic patterns to keep survey respondents from zoning out or rushing through your survey.

5. Make it visually appealing. Don't be fooled, looks and survey layout matter! The graphical survey design can make it easier or harder for online survey respondents. Keep color schemes and graphics in mind: are the colors easy to read or do they clash; do the images enhance the respondent experience or are they distracting or offensive?

6. Test, Test, Test! Another survey best practice: always test your survey. When you ask other people to look at it, ask them if they received an email survey invitation whether they'd complete your web survey or abandon it. Same rule applies, if your testers wouldn't take it - neither will your target population.

I was out to dinner with a friend the other day and had an odd thing happen when the check came. Our waitress asked us if we would complete an online survey about our experience. Now so far being asked to complete a restaurant survey on customer satisfaction and overall experience with the dining establishment, pretty normal. But the link to the survey wasn't on our receipt. It was on the receipt the restaurant keeps. Huh? Did they expect me to memorize the website survey link and the validation code? Obviously that was not going to happen.

But I was hooked. Because of my desire to pass on survey best practices and tips, I'm always curious about organizations' surveys. I always want to take them - who knows what great idea or technique they'll have that should be shared. Or on the reverse, what faux pas was committed that should be used as a survey example of what not to do.

Before I let you in on what I did to be able to take the survey, lets pause for a moment so you can allow this concept to sink in: it's a bad idea to not give the customer something they will take way that contains the survey link. It's your job to make it easy for patrons to give customer feedback. I'm not a fan of paper surveys or comment cards, because I think online surveys are a better solution. But if you cannot handle passing along the website link generated by your online survey software tool, use comment cards and feedback forms instead. The key: Make it easy for respondents to complete your customer survey.

Obviously, I took the survey, so I must have somehow taken something home that had the information on it. I suppose in hind sight I could have just written the information down on my receipt, but I did not. I ripped off the middle section of their receipt and took it with me.

Finally, while I'm talking about making it easy for customers to complete your feedback survey questionnaire, try to use an easy link. You can do this one of two ways:

1. If you're a Cvent Web Surveys software customer, you can brand your URL to include your organizations name and the name for the survey.
    
2. You can set up a redirect on your website, or another domain, that will redirect to the longer online survey link. For example, instead of having to type in http://guest.cvent.com/v.aspx?3B,Q3,2c85db16-4ab4-45a2-ae17-... they would only have to type in www.example-survey.com.

It's a good idea to always review the online survey respondent experience. It may not seem worth the time because no one else does, but if it's too difficult to take your survey, no one's going to take it.

Did you know you could import survey answers into Cvent? It's true. It's as simple as importing a list of contacts. The tough part, in my opinion, is understanding why you would use it. Here are two basic scenarios I think of when thinking of importing answers to an online survey:

Scenario 1: I conducted some type of business survey offline or out of the web survey software and need to load the answers into the survey for analysis or future needs.

Scenario 2: I have information about my respondents prior to their responses. For example, I'm conducting an employee feedback survey surrounding staff opinions. It's important to me to know which department the employee works in so I can ask appropriate questions, route them down the correct question path using branch logic with my survey questions and analyze survey responses based on department. However, I already know which department they're in - I don't need to ask. In addition to slightly shortening my questionnaire, I ensure the respondents cannot lie on this question and skew my survey findings.

While Scenario 1 has value if you're using an offline survey method or multiple survey data collection methods, Scenario 2 packs more of a punch. If you're using Cvent for your online survey project, here's one way to go about achieving Scenario 2. First, create an online survey just as you normally would. Include all your skip, branch and pipe question logic during your survey question creation. Second, hide the question about which department an employee works in. Third, import survey responds into your employee survey.

Developing and designing a survey can definitely be a challenge. That's why we offer web survey services through Cvent's Professional Services Group. We can help you identify cases such as this scenario through a survey review and consultation, that can personalize the respondent experience while improving the quality of your survey results. Learn more about what online survey services our team can offer for your next online survey project.

I was looking through a customer survey template the other day and the first question was "Which of these products do you use?" The options were Product A, Product B, Product X and Product Y. Umm, hello? The point of a customer questionnaire is that you're surveying customers, which means you should already know what product survey respondents bought. Now if you're a B2C organization that distributes products through retail stores, this statement might be a little unfair since a consumer can go into any Target and purchase your product. But for now, let's assume you don't have this channel for product distribution.

Why are you making your business survey longer instead of shorter? You already know the answer, put this information in the contact record. Since you have the data, I would even recommend including the question, hiding it and importing the answers to this question for respondents before sending out any email marketing soliciting survey responses. This way, you can utilized online survey tool features like Pipe Logic. Using Pipe Question Logic allows you to personalize the respondent experience and keep them more engaged. Customer survey best practices tell us more engaged respondents are less likely to abandon your survey, aka increase your response rates.

What other common questions could you eliminate during customer research studies because you already have the data somewhere in your organization?

If surveying is part of your job (HR surveys, marketing surveys, customer feedback surveys, etc.), one of the best things you can do before you creating a survey - especially if you've never done a survey project before - is to learn from others. I always take surveys when I'm asked. I'll admit my draw to taking them is because I'm curious about what they're going to ask, but I also want to see what things they're doing right and what things I should avoid.

Looking at other people's surveys are a great way to get ideas for good survey questions. If you're focus is on customer satisfaction or customer service feedback, it should be easy to put your hands on other organizations' business surveys. After all, we're all someone's customer. This is the same with marketing questionnaires or product surveys. Every once in awhile, you should fall into someone's sample. However, if you're trying to get sample survey questions for an employee evaluation feedback form, staff opinion survey or other HR survey, the internet might be your best friend.

While it's easy to get question ideas from questionnaires in the same category as the one you're working on, don't discount what you can learn from surveys in other categories. Best practices cross over categories and someone creating a customer service survey can learn a lot from an education survey.

If you're interested in learning more about survey best practices, sign up for Cvent's free webinar.

The most important part of any research project is sharing the findings, it doesn't matter whether it's a research report, qualitative research or survey questionnaires. Even in high school and college, a lot of research projects ended with some kind of presentation so each person or group could share what they learned from the assignment. While I don't want to reduce the importance of doing business surveys and market research, the idea is very much the same. If you don't share the results, why did you conduct the research?

At the end of all our webinars and events, we conduct post event surveys. I know this comes a surprise considering we're an online event management and web surveys software provider. Recently, looking at the results of our attendee feedback survey for our Web Survey Best Practices Webinar, I found some interesting results surrounding who survey results are shared with in an organization.


Over 1,800 attendees have completed our follow up survey since the beginning of the year, but only 130 (approximately 7%) do not share survey results with any of those groups. I'm going to go back later and do a cross tab survey report to see if that 7% currently does surveys. But that's a later post...

For now, I'd like to explore the options a surveyor has to share their research findings with various groups. The answer obviously depends on the online survey software tool you're using. Cvent users have a few options at their disposal:

• Manually pull a report each time someone asks to see the data
• Share your log in so individuals can pull the reports themselves
• Park reports so approved individuals can access the reports when they need them

There are other options, but these are the "best" three. Among them, there's a clear leader. Parking reports is the easiest, fastest and most secure way to share your online survey data. In the past, we've given you an idea of the power of parked reports. But in light of our survey finding, I thought it was appropriate to remind you how easy sharing real time survey reports can be. Did I forget to mention that parking reports does not just give a snap shot of the moment in time you set up the report? Each time someone accesses the report, it generates the most up to date information. This means if I launched my survey, created a parked report and emailed the weblink to my senior management yesterday, when they go to see the results today not only will they see the results from before I created the parked report, they will also see all results that have come in since then. I'm happy and management is happy, and I never had to log back in to pull a report.

How do you currently share your survey data and with whom?

People argue for and against using progress bars in online surveys all the time. Personally, I think the length of the survey determines whether a progress bar is a good idea. I should point out here, length of the survey means total questions, not just the longest possible path a respondent may take. Sometimes when people use skip, branch and other advanced logic they forget the total number of questions matters when it comes to the progress bar.

Think about these three scenarios:

Scenario 1: Your cable provider sends you an email survey invitation to complete their customer satisfaction survey. You click through to the survey. At this point, you have no idea how many questions you're in for (unless the email invitation told you), but most likely you were given an estimate of how long the survey should take. You begin answering the survey, because of your responses, you're taken down a specific question path. You begin to wonder how much is left in the survey and notice there's a progress bar! This survey is rather complex on the backend and has several paths and over 120 questions, but any given respondent can only travel down a path of 20-30 questions. If your path was the first path, it will look like you have a lot more pages to go through before the end. At this point you're close to done, but unfortunately, the progress bar makes you think you have many, many more questions left. You bail. You don't have time to complete their long feedback form and will think twice about participating in one of their "short" surveys in the future.

Scenario 2: Your cable provider sends you an email asking you to complete their customer service questionnaire. You click through to the survey, answer several questions and notice the progress bar at the top has hardly moved at all. You begin to think, "uuuuuugh this was a mistake!" Then suddenly the progress bar shows you're almost done. Because you're curious, you go back and change your answers to see what other questions the cable provider is asking customers (after all you may want to add your two cents). Suddenly, without meaning to you've messed up their data by not respondent honestly.

Scenario 3: Your cable provider sends you an email invitation to complete their market research survey. You click through to the survey. You answer several questions begin to wonder if the survey will be over soon, but you keep going. A few questions later, you've finished the survey in the amount of time the cable provider's email marketing said you would. Even though it was a little annoying to complete the survey, it was a good experience, and hopefully it will improve your service! Furthermore, they kept their promise on the time and haven't lost your trust.

If you're conducting a business survey, whether it's an employee feedback questionnaire, course evaluation or client survey, which of the above scenarios would you like your respondents to experience? I'm hoping you're thinking to yourself "Scenario 3, of course!" I certainly want my respondents to finish (not abandon) my survey and give me honest feedback (not change their answers to see what else I'm asking).

That said, progress bars wont discourage people from finishing a short survey with honest answers. As part of your survey design, you should consider whether a progress bar will add to the respondent experience or take away from it (and your results).

In a struggling economy, generating leads for a hungry sales team can be a challenge.  Have you considered adding sales surveys into your lead generation process?  Asking various types of questions during the lead generation process can have a number of benefits:

1. Qualify leads
2. Personalize follow up based on prospect challenges and goals
3. Identify marketplace factors

If you’re like us, you’re asked to attend various types of events during the year.  Chances are these events, whether they're educational workshops, best practice webinars or product demos, aree being used to identify prospects and generate leads.  Inserting surveys into the event (before, during and after) to understand attendee future goals can help your sales team form a plan of attack when following up.  We’ve gathered a few examples of survey questions for lead qualification and generation:




These sample survey questions are from a workshop conducted by an investment education company trying to understand the needs of potential students.  During the workshop, the staff uses survey questionnaires to recommend their services.  You don't have to limit yourselve to using surveys to generate leads to events, consider your lead geneartion process, where do business survey may fit into the mix?

Using online surveys to gather business intelligence may not be always be an automatic instinct for your organization. However, customer survey questionnaires are in fact a great way to evaluate your competition and gather insights about the business value propositions your clients rate high.

If you employ surveys to prospects and leads who leave the sales funnel, you can discover even more valuable information about why prospects chose another product or service. Were their features better? Did they they prefer the competition's follow up during the sales process?

When creating a questionnaire for competitive research, it's important to set goals. As with all surveys, whether it's a business survey, customer service questionnaire, employee evaluation or course evaluation survey, you should always "begin at the end." Define what the organization wants to get out of the project. Setting a goal before beginning the questionnaire design will better guide you through the survey creation process.

We hear it time and time again from organizations: Web based surveys are not a good fit for their goals because the people they want feedback from are not Internet users. However, a recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project may make you reconsider.

According to the new study as reported by eMarketer, more than 50 percent of respondents ages 65 to 69 are online, while 45 percent of 70- to 74-year-olds are Internet users as well. These statistics represent a significant increase since 2005, when only a quarter of 70- to 75-year-olds were online.

Not surprisingly, online usage by younger age groups remains high. About 93 percent of users age 12 to 17 are online (an increase from 87 percent in 2005), while Internet users make up over 80 percent of respondents in various age groups from 18 to 49.



What does this mean for organizations that want to create questionnaires for customer research surveys, customer service surveys, and other customer or client surveys? Don't shy away from an online survey program because you doubt its ability to solicit enough responses for statistically significant data. Clearly online demographics are changing; now more than ever, the Internet is a key tool for reaching audience members of all ages.

With the help of an online survey tool such as Cvent, organizations can launch Internet surveys and gain the necessary responses through the various online methods (email marketing, advertising, social networks, websites, etc.). Your target market likely has many more people online than you think, and online survey tools can help you grow your database of those people.

Pew Internet & American Life Project researchers expect Internet penetration to level off over time. For now, surveyors should be aware of the trend and embrace the changes, taking note of age groups in their target market that are most likely to be online.