Business Surveys

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.