Client Survey

Online surveys offer many advantages over traditional quantitative research methods (such as phone and mail surveys), like cost efficiency, user-friendly survey design software, and getting results in electronic format.  One concern with using an online survey mode is that it can sometimes produce lower response rates than other modes. With some planning and careful consideration, however, you can get response rates equal to (or higher than) traditional methods.  One of the main ways you can raise response rates is by increasing your survey’s legitimacy to your audience.  Make respondents feel like they should complete your survey because it is important in some regard.  To do this, implement the following guidelines:

Be professional throughout the entire communication process.  Choose your survey sample wisely, and make sure the survey is relevant to them.  Let them know why you’re asking for their time, and that you really appreciate their opinions.  Tell them what the results will be used for, and that you can send a summary if they wish to see one.  Use appropriate language, and avoid wording things too casually unless the sample’s demographics call for it.  Send them thank you notes.

Personalize the survey for each respondent.  This includes sending personalized email survey invitation, such as referring to them by name instead of "Dear Valued Customer," if you have access to that information.  If you already have demographic data about your respondents elsewhere, do not ask them for it in the survey (link to it later on).

Use a custom survey banner.  Survey respondents like to know who the survey is from, what it concerns, and that it is from a legitimate organization for a legitimate reason.  Adding your logo or letterhead to the survey template design makes it easy to remind them who you are.  This is also basically a free form of branding.

Anything you can do to keep your survey in the research and scientific realms will help increase legitimacy.  Respondents are more likely to complete a survey offered in this manner than when paired with a sales pitch.  If possible, partner with another organization, such as a local research office, college or nonprofit organization.

Many people ask the question How do I create a customer survey? The basic steps are the same no matter what type of client survey you're writing: customer satisfaction, global market research, product development surveys, etc.

Step 1: Sit down and figure out what the goal of the survey is. Are you trying to identify upsell opportunities? Want to discover features missing from your current product? Figuring out if it's a good idea to take your marketing overseas and attack a global market? In the very beginning of the survey planning process, you should know what it is you want to get out of the consumer survey. If you don't have a firm customer satisfaction survey objectives in the beginning, while you go through the other steps such as writing survey questions or selecting the best survey software, you're going to stray from the path. If you stray from the path, you may find the final survey results are not as helpful as you had hoped.

Step 2: Decide on a research methodology. Your goals should help you on this step as well. You need to first decide if you're planning to do qualitative or quantitative research. From there narrow the scope further, if you want to do qualitative research are you interested in focus groups, advisory boards, one-on-one interviews? With quantitative research you may decide on comment cards, feedback forms and surveys. Is your survey method going to be online, telephone-based or paper questionnaires?

Step 3: Survey Design. I'm making the assumption since you're reading a survey blog about how to create customer surveys, you're not interested in the other market research methods right now so I'm going to focus on the process of building customer surveys. Once you've gotten through the first two steps, you're ready to start writing survey questions (Finally! I bet you thought this would be the first step!). Customer satisfaction survey design can be the biggest challenge. Luckily, there is survey designing software to help you step through this. Survey software tools often have templates and question libraries to help you write good survey questions.

Step 4: Data collection. Okay, you've picked your customer survey methodology, created a client survey and you're ready to field your survey (or use the data collection tool in your survey application to collect responses). Exactly what you do in this step will depend on what type of survey you decided to collected: telephone, paper, online. One way to get survey responses is to use email marketing tools to send personalized email surveys. You can also share the link on your website, social media sites, invoices, etc.

Step 5: Analyze customer feedback. Analyzing survey data is one of people's least favorite parts of the surveying process. We have some tips for how to analyze survey data here. Don't be afraid of this step. You need to conduct the survey customer analysis to achieve your goal. It's what you set out to do, so keep your chin up. You're only a step away from the final product (and once you choose survey analysis methods you should be almost finished).

Step 6: Share the survey findings. This is what you set out to do. Get answers to your customer questions. Take the customer feedback analysis you completed in the last step and format it. You're creating a survey report you can share within your organization (and maybe with others outside of your organization). If you need tips for creating survey reports or an example survey report, you can read more about them here.

Step 6.1: Take action. This is still part of step 6, but it's important enough it should be broken out. In your customer analysis survey report, you should have shared your recommendations for moving forward. Make sure you make recommendations and there is an agreement about moving forward based on the customer survey findings. If you don't plan to take action in Step 1, then you should save yourself the time of conducting the customer research in the first place.

Any other survey research design tips? How have you used these steps to create a customer survey that improved processes in your organization?

“Knowledge is power.” Again, a statement that I frequently heard from my parents and teachers growing up. When I was 10, I was probably told this because I was complaining about doing my fifth grade homework. These days, I still say this silently to myself from time to time. This is because knowledge is power not only to the fifth grader who is trying to get A’s in school, but also to anyone trying to make a profit in the business world.

There is no way around it; Cvent Web Surveys software provides you with business knowledge. By surveying your client pool, you will learn about their likes and dislikes, and you can thus enhance your products or services to meet the needs of those who matter. The web survey application also provides you with another kind of knowledge though, through the recent addition of click tracking reports.

Whereas the actual act of surveying customers allows you to learn more about them “from the horse’s mouth”, click tracking reports give you insight into which links people are clicking on in your survey emails, which can be extremely beneficial as well. For example, if you send your monthly e-newsletters out through the Cvent online survey platform (as many of our clients do), then you can run click tracking reports to view which links to outside websites your recipients are clicking on. Who is clicking on which links? Which URLs are the most popular?

Cvent email marketing click tracking reports include graphs that are easy to read and interpret. You can export them into Microsoft Word, Excel, or PDF. Most importantly, however, click tracking reports teach you how to place information and links in your emails. If you use emails to market your organization at all, then click tracking reports will help you leverage your ability to format those emails in order to generate the maximum possible business (and money!) for you.

Although question order effects are believed to be stronger for interviews than for online research surveys, it is still important to take a look at your market survey format and how the questions are ordered throughout your survey questionnaire.  By following the general guidelines listed below, you can reduce possible order effects and response bias from your customer survey samples.

Start broad, then get more specific.  Ask your customers or respondents general questions about your organization and the concepts you are interested in first, then get down to the more detailed questions you want them to answer (such as those about individual products, specific preferences and how to improve customer service).

Ideally, you’d like to find out if the order of your questions can induce biases before you send it to your entire survey population.  Use online survey software that allows you to randomize parts of your online survey, and compare the results with those from predefined orders.  This is an excellent way to pretest your survey questionnaire for possible order effects.

Devote some time and effort to making your survey “flow.”  You want the overall survey instrument to be cohesive, not disjointed or seemingly all over the place.  A big part of allowing for a logical flow throughout a survey comes from writing smooth transitions.  Let your respondents know that you want them to change gears.

Ask demographic questions at the end of your survey.

If you are asking sensitive questions (about topics like income, personal behaviors, etc.) try to place these toward the latter parts of your survey as well.  That way you get at least partial completions in the event that respondents change their mind and exit your survey before full completion.

Sabre, a travel-reservations-technology company, recently conducted a survey of 90 global airlines and a whopping 86% said that efforts aimed at maintaining and growing customer loyalty had the most positive impact on their business. The survey also found that 58% of airlines are increasing fees on checked bags and peak travel times, among others, to help their bottom line.

See the disconnect? No? Well, JD Power reported in June that customer satisfaction with airlines has dropped - for the third straight year. JD Power cites increased fees and decreased services as a prime reason for the drop and also notes that the low-cost carriers - Southwest, JetBlue, and Virgin America - have significantly higher satisfaction. They also tend to have far fewer fees.

Everyone knows that airlines are struggling right now, but I bet your business has seen better times as well. Would you ever simultaneously think that customer satisfaction is the most important driver for your business... and then do exactly the thing that depresses that satisfaction the most? The industry has conducted some great research, but the belief that they can somehow do the opposite of what that satisfaction research suggests and still satisfaction in the long term seems tenuous.

But not all airlines are chasing short term revenues as the expense of long term customer loyalty and profits. The New York Times is reporting that some are urging regulation to stop airlines from charging "holiday surcharges" that do not appear as part of the fare, but are added to the price of your ticket later in the purchase process. Who is urging this regulation? Not consumer groups (well, they probably are as well!), but none other than Virgin Group founder and Chairman Richard Branson. Branson says the "fees are not a good idea" and is worried that airlines risk alienating travelers if they add to many after-fare fees. 

It is good to see that not everyone in the industry is blind to the data - and my personal customer experiences say that Branson is right on the money. I know that I am now far, far less likely to even consider flying on the legacy carriers these days. Why fly United if I'm going to be nickled-and-dimed when I can fly Southwest, JetBlue, or Branson's Virgin America? 

Surveying customers and your target market is only worthwhile if you actually listen to the results and act on them. As the former CEO of Southwest Airlines (a Cvent Web Surveys client!), Herb Kelleher said: "We have a strategic plan. It's called doing things". Survey your market, your customers, and your employees and use the date to enact change. Don't ignore it and hope for the best!

Every organization should ask themselves What is good customer service? and create their own definition for good customer service based on the answer they come up with. Giving customers the opportunity to provide feedback on their customer experience is one way to improve customer service quality, but only if the customer feedback gets back to the employees. Lots of organizations use customer service surveys to measure customer experiences and customer loyalty. What separates the organizations with mediocre customer service from the organizations with excellent customer service is sharing the feedback from the customer loyalty surveys with the employees. Seems pretty straight forward, right?

I suggest you take it a step further, however. While sharing the aggregate results of customer feedback surveys with front-line employees is important, you can use these customer surveys as assessments of employee performance or staff evaluations. If you're not already using customer surveys to support this type of employee performance feedback, here are some steps from the CRMBuyer to make this type of process possible:

• Move from random survey sampling to an attempted census. Random survey samples are great when you're just trying to get an overall sense of customer satisfaction rates. However, if you're trying to collect feedback to figure out how to improve employee performance, a random sample is unlikely to provide enough data for each employee. Like with all other types of surveys, not everyone you send personalized survey invitations to will participate, but you will likely get enough responses to support the employee assessments.

• Develop new employee reports. To improve workforce performance, organizations can't continue to provide infrequent high-level survey reports. Instead, employees should get to see weekly reports. Using standardized reports that compare the employee to the overall average and to their colleagues as a group have the most impact.

• Develop new management reports. Like with how employees see the customer feedback reports needs to change with this strategy, management reports do too. Managers should be able to see responses by employees so they can take appropriate action. Managers will have different opinions on how much information should be shared with their staff; some will want to share every customer comment from the employee performance evaluation form, others wont want to share individual survey results.

• Develop HR guidelines for the use of these employee reports. The HR department should be deeply involved in the creation of these HR employee appraisal forms and employee survey reports. If an employee constantly receives negative customer feedback, the organization may choose to terminate their employment so it helps to keep HR in the loop. However, that shouldn't be the goal of this type of customer survey program. The survey feedback should be used to improve employee job performance and mentor them. With the help of customer service assessment surveys and employee performance review forms organizations can figure out how to improve customer service quality.

When a product fails, there could be many reasons – poor economy, too much competition, or a lack of market demand. Famous examples include “New Coke,” Crystal Pepsi or Sony Betamax.

These products all failed hugely and publicly. While the advertising was blamed in many cases, it’s also true that at least part of the fault lies with poor market research. If proper focus groups and quantitative research surveys had been conducted for any of these products, the embarrassment and monetary loss for all three companies could have been avoided.

In focus groups for New Coke in the '80s, the samples of New Coke were well-received. However, participants were also satisfied with current Coca-Cola offerings, and some had strongly negative reactions when asked if they would buy this new soft drink if it replaced Coke Classic. The survey was less negative, but if the focus group results had been better used to create the quantitative research questions, things could have gone differently. 

For example, the consumer survey could have contained questions such as:

1. Are you satisfied with the original Coke formula?
2. Do you regularly purchase Coke products?
3. Would you consider buying a “New Coke” product if the flavor was different?
4. Would you buy the “New Coke” if the new formula replaced Coke Classic?

These types of questions might have given a more well-rounded view of public sentiment, like the response that happened in the focus groups. Although it might seem less exciting to have a negative result to a marketing research survey, overall the company will save money, and avoid negative press. Paying for a study is cheaper than launching a product no one wants, after all.

No matter what kind of business you are in, you are looking to make a profit. Money may not be everything, but to those of us in the professional world, it certainly counts for a lot. We are all always looking for new ways to increase our revenue and decrease our expenses, and those of us who are smart know that time wasted is the greatest expense of all.

I am not saying this just because Cvent writes me a paycheck twice a month, but rather I am saying it because I know that it’s true: Cvent Web Surveys software is a time-saver. Our clients may pay us to license our online survey application, but in the end, the time they save thanks to the web surveys tool allows them to profit in the long run.

One of our primary goals here on the Cvent Web Surveys Client Services team is to educate clients on the best ways to use the Cvent survey tool in order to save time (and money!). In my opinion, there are a couple of features in particular with which you should familiarize yourself if you want to maximize the time that you save using our system:


If you make use of all 5 of the features listed above, not only will you get out of the office earlier, but you will also bring more money in for your company or organization. Always remember that “time is money,” and familiarize yourself with the Cvent Web Surveys tool so that we can help you save both.

According to an Ad Age article published today, there is no longer an average American. This doesn't come from a consumer survey they conducted, but from the expected results of the 2010 US Census. There are approximately 309 million people living in the United States, and over time, we have become a complex, multidimensional society.

For consumer marketers, this may be a big shift. No more "the American consumer," no more "Average Joe." The U.S. Census is the largest market research project of the decade. The Census Bureau will be gathering data on American consumers and spending upwards of $15 billion doing it. There's a reason that Peter Franceses, demographic trends analyst at WPP's Ogilvy & Mather, New York, calls it the gold-standard of consumer market research studies.

Here are some of the expected findings Franceses shared with Ad Age:


What does this mean for consumer marketers and survey samples? Getting a representative survey sample is becoming even more important. With the death of the "Average American Consumer," market research survey designers can no longer rely on data collected from just one group. When making business decisions, organizations will need to look at the entire picture.

What else? Focusing on niche markets will become more important. It's already very difficult to please everyone, but it's getting harder and harder. Consumer products that will work for a single couple living in New England is not necessarily the same consumer product that will work for a blended family in California. It's important to make sure you're conducting your own product market research. While the Census is collecting a lot of information about consumer trends and consumer behavior, organizations still have to conduct their own market research related to their particular markets.

The first part of this two-part series outlined how to write survey questions that are relevant to your audience in order to design good surveys.  This post will provide the rationale for asking questions to a competent survey sample, and how doing so reduces error and increases the validity of your survey results.

In general, when employees, customers and other types of respondents receive online consumer research or opinion surveys, they believe it is for a logical reason.  They are usually selected because they are employees with insight about a certain company, have previously used particular products and services, provided contact information to you (such as an e-mail address), or are believed to possess other information and/or opinions that are valued by researchers and organizations at large. 

Because of this, respondents naturally feel they should "know the answers" to your market research questions (i.e. they are competent regarding the concepts covered in the survey).  In fact, if your survey respondents come across a question that confuses them, or one that they do not know the answer to, many will select a response regardless of whether it accurately reflects their behaviors or opinions.  To design surveys that can reduce this possible source of error, you should attempt to include questions about which your survey sample is knowledgeable and able to answer. 

You know your customers and survey population best; asking them client survey questions for which they are unqualified to answer can not only confuse respondents, but may cause you to end up with bad data.  Design survey questions that are appropriate for your target market - this means your questions are both relevant to your audience, and that your audience is adequately informed about the concepts addressed in your feedback form.

There are many ways to design survey questions that allow you to collect more actionable data.  Forced choice survey questions makes survey respondents choose a response option that indicates a definitive opinion.  These questions eliminate Don’t Know and Neutral response options, because they are designed to force respondents to express an opinion or attitude.  Forced choice survey questions are usually written in the form of agree/disagree statements with survey scales, or consist of statements where respondents select the one that describes their opinions closest to their true feelings.

Survey research studies generally indicate that excluding Don’t Know and Neutral options doesn’t necessarily change the proportion of responses leaning toward certain sides of a likert response scale.  So these questions can add value, especially when you want to make business decisions based on customer preferences.  Just be sure to take into account the two suggestions below if you’re considering forced choice questions during the questionnaire design stage.

1) Make sure that your customer survey sample is familiar with the concepts and products you are asking about, and that there isn’t a significant number of them who might honestly hold ambiguous opinions.   If you think a don’t know/neutral option is necessary for your target market, it’s probably best to include one.

2) It is still usually a good idea to include a Not Applicable response choice if there are segments of your survey sample to which the question does not apply (i.e., your e-mail list consists of people other than past customers, respondents haven’t used the type of product or service you’re asking about before, etc.).  Your data collection goal may be to force customers to “take a side,” but not at the expense of producing valid, reliable survey data.

We on the Cvent Web Surveys Client Services team always encourages clients to customize the headers for their online surveys. By adding your organization’s logo to the header of your survey, you are essentially branding your organization for free!

Although some clients do choose to add customized headers to their survey design templates, many do not carefully consider the best option for HOW to add their header images. When add your header image to your survey, you have two options:


There are numerous advantages to using the HTML Editor to add your header image, as opposed to the alternative option. My top 5 reasons for why you should use the HTML Editor as opposed to the alternative option are as follows:


As you can see, using the HTML Editor to add your header to your custom survey does indeed have its perks. In general, please take advantage of the HTML Editor throughout Cvent’s Web Surveys tool! As soon as you start working in the HTML Editor, you will undoubtedly agree that it's online survey software made easy. I bet it wont take long for you to start singing its praises as well.

Many product market researchers ask survey questions about consumer behavior.  Often, this includes conducting consumer product surveys that asking how much customers are willing to pay for particular goods and services.  Gathering information about purchasing decisions can help you determine price points, but it is important to remember that how you design your survey questions will affect the validity of the results.  Consider the following tips before finalizing your survey questions about customer willingness and pricing options.

Be concrete.  Use as many specifics as possible about the products and services you ask about, especially if you’re interested in brand or item comparisons.  The more general a question is, the more a customer’s mind can drift or think of categories and items you may not have anticipated.  If you need to define a concept or product, do so.

Use a time frame for reference.  When determining how often someone buys or uses a certain product or service, provide a time frame for them to reference (e.g., How many times do you eat out during an average week?). 

For questions that include possible prices as response options, ask survey respondents whether they would pay a single specific amount (yes or no) rather than asking questions with different amounts as responses.  If they are offered a staggered price list, consumers naturally tend to choose lesser amounts than they might actually be willing to pay in the real world.  In your consumer survey ask some respondents if they will pay price x and others if they will pay price y, and then compare the results of the two groups. 

Today we're continuing our count down of our top five posts. Today's theme? You guessed it customer, client and consumer surveys.

• Don't Just Conduct Customer Satisfaction Surveys, Also Collect User Satisfaction Feedback: In this post, we talk about how the purchaser and the user are not always the same person. So when you review your customer feedback procedures and customer survey best practices, make sure you consider who you're surveying: the purchaser, the user or both.

• Customer Service Feedback To Increase Customer Loyalty: Customers have higher standards for organizations than 20 years ago. We all want more, more more! In this post, we talk about the importance of good customer service and how to boost your customer service satisfaction survey scores.

• What's Your Customer Satisfaction Score? This post debunks the myth that customer service is the defining factor in client satisfaction. Customers switch to competitors, become repeat customers, and recommend products and services based on their overall satisfaction experience, not just customer service experiences.

• Classify Customers: Are They Secure, Satisfied/Favorable, Vulnerable Or Dissatisfied? Typically, client survey best practices say there are four distinct customer satisfaction categories: secure, satisfied, vulnerable and dissatisfied. It's important to classify customers into these groups and uncover similarities in each group. Why? Because it will help you identify new revenue opportunities.

• Customer Reviews Matter: 6 Reasons Why: It's common knowledge that customer and consumer reviews have become an important part of the decision making process. As the title suggests, the post takes a deeper look at why reviews are more important than we think they are.

Did you know, Spanish is the third most used language on the internet? According to Internet World stats, English has the most penetration, followed by Chinese then Spanish. Makes sense considering the three most spoken languages are Chinese, English and Spanish. Depending on what source you're looking at, Spanish and English tend to swap places, but that should tell you something.

What does that mean to you if you're designing a consumer survey for product users? Depends on your product, target market and intended survey sample. In most cases, consumer products serve the masses. If you want to conduct a consumer satisfaction survey, you're going to need a representative sample. Considering the number of Spanish speakers there are in America, I hope you're considering a multilingual survey. Traditionally, Hispanics have a much lower survey response rate than other ethnicities. If you ask them to complete a survey in their native language, your chances for a representative survey sample goes up.

So now the challenge is finding a multilingual survey software provider. Not all survey platforms support multilingual surveys, and the ones that do are not created equal. If you're looking for a survey tool that gives you the flexibility to conduct surveys in different languages, make sure to ask whether they support the language you're looking for with all the features you need. Want to learn more about our survey tool and how we can help you conduct multilingual surveys? Sign up for one of our product demos.

Most planners use welcome pages, thank you pages, presentation headers and email survey templates to personalize their online surveys by putting in customized messages and images related to their organization, the purpose of the survey questionnaire and even the survey incentives. But the Cvent Web Surveys software platform allows you to go above and beyond to personalize the way your survey looks (the graphical survey template), how people see their progress (progress indicator bars), whether they see the survey title and question numbers, what buttons are on the survey and even the text of these buttons!

Graphical Template – Choose from over 50 out-of-the-box graphical templates, each with its own unique background, header image, button style and survey question displays. Beyond the out-of-the-box survey template designs for market surveys, customer surveys, employee attitude surveys, or any other type of survey, you have the ability to further customize the layout of your survey by adding customized headers and footers to reflect your organization's brand.

Progress Indicator Bar – Select whether you want a progress indicator bar that shows survey respondents how much of the survey form they've completed. Choose from four different styles – whether you want them to see % of the survey completed or page X of Y, etc.

Survey Title and Question Numbers – Select whether you want respondents to see the Survey Title; also determine whether they should see the Question Numbers. When it comes to showing survey question numbers ask yourself, Do I have a simple survey or a complex survey? If you have a complex survey, you may not want to show question numbers if you're going to use survey question logic to jump respondents through the feedback form.

Previous and Cancel Buttons – You can choose to display one or both of these buttons to respondents at the bottom of every page along with the Next button.

Button Text – Customize the text of each button – Start Survey, Next, Previous, Cancel, Submit. This can be especially useful if the survey acts as a Test, Quiz, Registration Form, etc. Next can be changed to Next Section, Next Level, Advance, etc. and Submit on event surveys can read Yes! I want to Register.

Button Style – Select whether you would like to keep the default button style of the survey design you selected or choose from the 15 additional button styles available.

Surveys are targeted at a wide variety of audiences, from board members and senior managers of organizations, to kids and teenagers using a product. Using the survey application features above, you can truly customize the look and feel of your survey based on your audience!

Have you ever been lost?  Like, really lost?  You are going the wrong way, and you realize you are turned around so you take the next right turn, justifying to yourself that right-hand turns have never led you astray before, why would they now?  Before you know it, you have managed to end up on a one-way street heading out of town. 

This is easy to do when you are moving yourself physically so naturally, a few clicks here and a few clicks there in an online survey platform will get you in into an even worse pickle.  Not to fear!  The ‘failsafe’ method of right-turn then right-turn may have gotten you into areas of the Cvent online web survey system you didn’t even know existed, but there are some survey software navigational tips that will get you back on track!

1. Cvent Web Surveys application reads like a book.  For anyone that intends to register for our Online Survey Creation & Management Training Class, you will hear this expression at least 3 times.  The easiest way to make all your modifications and ensure you have covered all the necessary bases is to go from Left to Right in your navigation and, once you have clicked into a section, from Top to Bottom within the section links.  This order will take you through the intuitive steps of creating and customizing your survey. 

2. Don’t neglect your breadcrumbs!  Hansel and Gretel used them to navigate their way back from a witch’s house made of candy.  Think about it… this feat should surely solidify breadcrumbs' validity.  Breadcrumbs will tell you where you are and how you got there even when you have convinced yourself that somehow you have entered an alternate universe where the survey software has become a black hole, pulling you deeper in with no intention of letting you leave.  You can either refer to the breadcrumbs to backtrack out or you can click directly on one of the breadcrumbs to be immediately re-directed to the respective section.


3. Designate your "go-to-spot."  This is the place in Cvent you feel the most comfortable navigating through.  For me, I prefer the survey overview page.  If you ever feel like you have completely lost your way, click on that tab or section link.  Wherever you are in the web based customer survey tool, and no matter how many hairs might have grayed in the process of getting there, you will instantly be redirected to that safe haven. 

With these tools at your disposal, you will feel like a modern day Columbus.  So keep on trekking, Chris, keep on trekking.

Survey reports in the Cvent Web Surveys software tool offer a wide variety of ways to view your data and begin conducting your market research survey analysis. The answer summary by question report, for example, pulls up a table, a graph and basic statistical analysis for each survey question. Another example survey report, answer details by respondent, offers you the option of seeing each respondent’s answers on a separate page or answer details for all respondents gives you the opportunity to see all the answers for all respondents on a single page!

But sometimes these are not enough when you want to make a professional report for your boss to present to the board members. This is exactly why Cvent has the presentations feature within the survey application. The presentations section allows you to create reports with unique combinations of filters and display options. You can use our presentations creator to access data views that are unavailable with other out-of-the-box survey reports. Creating distributable reports in the Cvent Web Surveys software tool makes it easy to communicate the survey results in either Word or PDF format.

To determine what you see on each page of your sample report, choose from the options below:

Does it matter if not everyone takes your survey? What if only half your survey sample actually completes the survey questionnaire - or a third? You're never going to get everyone you invite to complete your survey. Those people conducting employee surveys, such as employee opinion surveys or workplace surveys will see the highest response rates on their survey projects. Some HR surveys see response rates as high as 90%. But if you're conducting a consumer survey, help desk satisfaction survey or customer feedback survey 90% response rates may be out of your reach.

The question remains, if I'm never going to get everyone, do those who didn't voluntarily complete your survey matter? Absolutely. Like with most things related to market research, there has been a lot of research to uncover the truth: are survey respondents different from non-respondents? It seems that research points to yes. Even early responders and late responders different, and this is probably due to interest in the survey.

There are a few things you can do to boost your response rates and limit your nonresponse bias.

1. Send email invitation reminders and partial response reminders to those on your email list. Two things happen when you do this, the first, you catch people who never even read your first email. The second benefit is you remind people who were willing to complete your survey but forgot about it.

2. Make sure there aren't any errors in your survey design. Double check your survey question logic, your question and answer choices, your graphical survey template, even your introduction on the survey welcome page.

3. Keep it short. This is a general survey best practice tip you should always follow. While there's not much you can do after you have already sent out email survey invitations and begun the data collection process, you should remember to keep your surveys short and limit the number of survey questions during the survey design phase.

It's important to keep non-response bias in mind when you're analyzing survey data and drawing conclusions from your market research results. Are your respondents different from your non-respondents? Perhaps only heavy users completed the survey, or only people with full time jobs, or only single individuals. Do those who opted not to complete your survey have a different opinion? These are the types of questions you need to ask yourself when evaluating your survey data. In some cases, it may not matter, in others it could cause you to make a decision based on skewed results.

When creating surveys for two sets of respondents, say product users and non-users, the most obvious thing is to create two different surveys and send them out. This is exactly what one of our Web Survey clients in the industrial market thought, until they realized all their contacts were stored in the same file. After importing the file into their Cvent Web Surveys account and adding them to their email survey invitation, they called asking for a solution. They wanted both survey invitations to be sent, but not cause confusion with people in their survey sample were getting two emails.

One option is to insert what our email survey tool calls a survey bridge link. The bridge link allows both links to be in a single survey invitation. It's the same concept as manually finding the two survey URLs, but bridge links saves email survey creator the trouble of having to go into each survey under settings to find the online survey's URL. Using a single email, our client was able to insert two links, one that said Users click here and Non-users click here. This works and using bridge links saves the survey creator time and eliminates confusion for survey respondents.

However, there was an even better solution for our client's survey.

Our Web Surveys team advised the survey designer to merge both internet surveys into a single survey and utilize survey question logic to determine what would be seen by the different types of respondents. A survey question right at the beginning will branch respondents to the appropriate questions. Using branch logic effectively allows survey writers to design and create two surveys in one. One of the numerous advantages of this approach is when designing surveys, you only needed to create a single Welcome Page and Thank You page. You also skip over any possibility of respondents clicking the wrong survey link from the email invitation. When you send survey invitations, all respondents will click on the same email survey link to enter but only answer survey questions relevant to them. To put the icing on the cake, the task of merging existing surveys was made much easier by using the question library. We added the questions from one survey to the question library and quickly inserted them into the other survey without having to retype a single word!

Several of Cvent’s unique online survey technology features like survey bridge links, branch logic and the question library helped this client create a great survey!