Yesterday I was out to dinner with a friend, and we started talking about retail surveys. She was expressing her frustration with the survey questionnaire design for her company's retail surveys. Apparently, they always score low on this one question:
Most people don't come into her store looking for pants, so the sales associates don't harass customers asking if they need the fits explained. Makes sense. Then why is their online survey asking for customer feedback from all consumers regardless of their primary purpose in visiting the store?
Oh, wait! There's the problem. The survey writer neglected to ask survey respondents why they came to the store. Because of this omission, the survey question in question (Were pant fits explained?) isn't presenting very valuable survey data. The clear solution would be to add a new question and use some form of survey question logic (perhaps branch logic might be ideal here) to only ask those people who were shopping for pants if the pant fits were explained to them. Ideally, when you're testing your survey, you should think through the question flow and catch situations like these.
Another minor point about this question, what about those customers who were asked if they'd like the pant fits explained and declined? How are they going to answer this question to give you accurate data? Even if you would answer "Yes" because it was offered, not all online survey respondents will. This would be a more useful question, after being paired with a screener question, if it asked if a sales associated offered to explain the pant fits.
This same concept applies to hotel surveys, customer satisfaction research, website surveys, etc. The reason why a guest stays at a hotel (business or leisure travel) matters. What someone was looking for when they visited your website (trying to purchase X vs. looking for information about Y), makes a difference. If they are looking for information about Y it does not make sense to ask them if they found information on Z.
Most people don't come into her store looking for pants, so the sales associates don't harass customers asking if they need the fits explained. Makes sense. Then why is their online survey asking for customer feedback from all consumers regardless of their primary purpose in visiting the store?
Oh, wait! There's the problem. The survey writer neglected to ask survey respondents why they came to the store. Because of this omission, the survey question in question (Were pant fits explained?) isn't presenting very valuable survey data. The clear solution would be to add a new question and use some form of survey question logic (perhaps branch logic might be ideal here) to only ask those people who were shopping for pants if the pant fits were explained to them. Ideally, when you're testing your survey, you should think through the question flow and catch situations like these.
Another minor point about this question, what about those customers who were asked if they'd like the pant fits explained and declined? How are they going to answer this question to give you accurate data? Even if you would answer "Yes" because it was offered, not all online survey respondents will. This would be a more useful question, after being paired with a screener question, if it asked if a sales associated offered to explain the pant fits.
This same concept applies to hotel surveys, customer satisfaction research, website surveys, etc. The reason why a guest stays at a hotel (business or leisure travel) matters. What someone was looking for when they visited your website (trying to purchase X vs. looking for information about Y), makes a difference. If they are looking for information about Y it does not make sense to ask them if they found information on Z.
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