Respond To Survey Feedback Quickly With Triggered Survey Email Alerts

Wednesday, July 1, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
Survey email alerts, also commonly referred to as triggered email alerts, are a must-have feature for online survey software. Why? So you can respond to customer or employee feedback from HR questionnaires to product evaluation to customer service surveys. Yesterday, I wrote a post on tips for listening to feedback. Timeliness in closing the feedback loop should be a priority for organizations looking to improve how they respond and implement changes in reaction to comments.

Example of a Survey Email Alert

A common form for feedback collection is web based surveys. So it should be no surprise when I say you need to have email alerts triggered to quickly respond to customer questionnaire or employee survey responses. Not every survey needs triggered alerts and you don't always need them for every respondent, so Cvent's Web Survey tool gives you three options for survey email alerts:

1. Alerts at the question level.
If a client responds to a customer satisfaction survey saying they are very dissatisfied with your product or states they are unlikely to renew their contract, it may be appropriate to set a task for their account manager to follow up. Follow up as soon as possible. I find the sooner you can follow up with someone, show them that you're listening and want to resolve any issues, the easier it will be to win them back. The longer a customer has to think about a problem and stew about the pain it's caused, the bigger deal it's going to be later - possibly a deal breaker.

2. Alerts based on survey score. Many people use online surveys as a lead generation tool, for many of those users scoring leads to help the sales team prioritize follow up is important. In cases like this, you may decide you want to receive an email alert when someone scores over a specified number on the survey to ensure the team is following up with the hottest leads. The same idea could be used for educational surveys where you may want to know when a professor receives below a certain score on teacher evaluations completed by students.

3. Alerts for a completed survey response.
There will be cases where you want to know when someone completes your survey and how they responded. Be careful with this, when you have a large survey sample, you don't want to be receiving emails every minute to let you know someone completed the survey.

With Cvent, surveyors have the opportunity to send the survey alert to five people and include a custom message in the alert. If you're using survey question level alerts, you can have different alerts be sent to different people as well. Meaning, if you want your customer care team to know when someone gives good feedback on a call they had, but the sales team to know when someone is unlikely to renew, you can set the alerts up that way.

Sign up for a product demonstration to learn more about Cvent Web Survey software features.

Questions From A Customer Survey Template

Friday, June 26, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
It's been awhile since we've provided any customer survey templates or example customer satisfaction survey questions. Here are some sample survey questions from an online customer satisfaction questionnaire:

Example survey question: What is your overall satisfaction with COMPANY NAME?

Example Survey Question: How often do you use COMPANY AND/OR PRODUCT NAME?

Example survey question: How satisfied are you with PRODUCT NAME in the follow categories:

Example survey question: Would you recommend Gadget A to your friend or affiliate?

Now, you can't see behind the scene's of this survey so I want to point out what I've spent a lot of time talking about this week: using data you already have in conjunction with pipe logic to personalize the respondent experience. Every place Gadget A appears in the survey is intended to be pipe logic from a question I already know the answer to: what product do you use? In my opinion, it makes your organization look much smarter to the respondent because each question doesn't say something to the effect of "our products and/or services."

Learn From Other People's Surveying Mistakes

Wednesday, June 24, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
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 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.

Offering An Additional Comment Section Is An Online Survey Must

Tuesday, June 23, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
Have additional comments, concerns, ways for us to improve? Let us know!

Seems super simple to add this example survey question to any type of online survey - right? Yet, it's a frequently forgotten question. I'll admit even I forget the need for this type of question. I'm usually focused on keeping my questionnaire as short as possible by limiting my survey questions to only essential ones.

However, when I'm filling out a survey, I typically look forward to those comment boxes so I can provide additional customer feedback. Particularly when I'm filling out a feedback form measuring customer satisfaction. For example, I was watching a TV episode on abc.com and was having trouble with their media player (I always have trouble with their media player, and they are constantly changing it!) When I finished watching and closed the browser, I received an invitation to complete a customer satisfaction questionnaire. I was expecting one of the customer satisfaction survey questions to be an "Additional Comments" box, since none of the questions centered around my viewing satisfaction. No such luck. I was seriously disappointed. I wanted to give my feedback so hopefully, next time the viewing would be better.

Most people agree to fill out your survey because they believe there's something in it for them
. You don't have to offer an incentive to make people think there's something in it for them. Simply asking for customer or employee feedback implies that you're ready to make changes, that you want to identify problems and fix them.

If you fail to offer a "last ditch effort" with and additional comments (optional) question, you could be making a huge mistake. Depending on your survey design, it may be the only place a survey respondent can give you truly honest, unprompted feedback. While you can craft technically perfect questions, they still limit what you can find out from questionnaire respondents. The additional comments section may bring to light something that wasn't even on your radar: new product enhancement requests, process changes that ultimately could boost employee and customer retention, customer service issues, website design flaws, etc.

Including an additional comments section is even more important with online surveys, because with telephone or paper surveys the respondent has the chance to at least tell the interviewer or write in extra answers. It's always possible the extra comments may be discarded, but the respondent can still try to give additional feedback. There's no extra chance with a web based survey. Adding this one extra question wont destroy your response rate or cause your survey to be bad. In fact since it's such a common question type, I would guess if the respondent doesn't have additional comments, they hardly even notice the question.

Survey Question Flow Impacts Survey Findings

Thursday, June 18, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
Sample Survey: Employee SatisfactionQuestion order is an important part of questionnaire design. Whether it's a paper feedback form on customer satisfaction or an online survey to gather employee feedback, how you order your questions could impact your survey findings. When you create surveys, dont simply list the questions in the order they pop into your head. The ideal survey has a natural flow and the question order makes sense.

Thankfully, most web based survey management software gives surveyors the freedom to rearrange survey questions to achieve the best question order. Unlike when you're creating a survey in an office suite - like Microsoft or Open Office - where the survey creator needs to copy, paste and delete to rearrange questions, online survey tools allows you to move questions with a click of a button.

If you're new at creating questionnaires, here is a commonly used, and accepted, method for ordering questions:

  1. Qualifying questions
  2. Open ended questions
  3. General/Overview questions
  4. Specific questions
  5. Demographic questions
  6. Additional comments question

It's important to start off general and move towards more specific questions. Otherwise, when someone is answering a general question, after answering specific questions, their honest general feelings are likely to get skewed either towards their feelings about the last set of questions or overall. I like to think of this scenario:

Mary is completing an online customer satisfaction survey for her cellphone provider. The questionnaire begins with specific questions about her service and experiences. While Mary is satisfied overall with her wireless company, the survey pointed out some pain points. The last question asked Mary to qualify how satisfied she was overall with their service, because Mary was reminded of past issues ranked them lower than she would have if they'd asked a general question in the beginning.
 
For me this scenario really brings home the importance of question order. When you sit down to design your next online survey project spend some time thinking about the flow of your survey. I think you'll find it's a lot easier to order survey questions logically than it may seem reading about how to do it. However, if you still find it difficult to create a survey with logical question flow, Cvent offers online survey services through our Professional Services Group that can help you with survey question design.

USAA Tops Another Customer Service Ranking, Survey Says

Thursday, June 11, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
It seems that every time I turn around, USAA is being praised for their service. Yesterday, MSN Money released it's third annual Customer Service Hall of Fame (and Hall of Shame) ratings, identifying several organizations with operations in New Mexico. Here's the top ten list:

  1. USAA
  2. Trader Joe’s
  3. Netflix
  4. Amazon
  5. Nordstrom
  6. Publix
  7. Whole Foods
  8. Apple
  9. Costco
  10. Southwest Airlines

There's one thing I always notice when looking at survey reports like this one, the same companies typically appear in the list every time. Not too long ago FGI Research shared their customer satisfaction ratings for the Top 100 online retailers. Netflix, Amazon and Apple were all on the list. When Forrester Research released their Customer Experience Index Ratings in April, USAA was listed second and several organizations at the bottom of Forrester's list are in MSN's 2009 Hall of Shame:

  1. AOL
  2. Comcast
  3. Sprint
  4. Capital One
  5. Time Warner Cable
  6. HSBC
  7. Qwest
  8. Abercrombie & Fitch
  9. Bank of America
  10. Citigroup

It's not easy to change an organization's culture, and typically culture plays a big role in customer satisfaction and experience (leading to customer loyalty and retention). But when an organization continues to fall a the bottom of ranking lists, it's time to do something. Chances are if you're at the bottom of the list, you're losing customers. These ratings do not develop in a vacuum away from customers. Customers influence these ratings, so if you're at the bottom (or the top) it's because your customers put you there.

When was the last time you conducted research to find out what your customers think about you?

Progress Bars in Online Surveys: The Good.. The Bad.. The Ugly

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
Survey Template: Progress Bar
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).

Step One In Survey Research: Set Goals

Monday, May 18, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
Surveys Without Goals Are Like Loose Puzzle PiecesBefore you start writing any survey you need to define clear project goals. I mean it. Before you place pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard to design a questionnaire, clearly defined project goals is a must. With out goals, your survey project is going to be worthless. Well, not quite worthless, you'll get some facts out of it, but they wont mean anything. They'll be single pieces in a 1,000 piece puzzle. To make sense, puzzle pieces need to fit together to form the whole picture, and survey data is like that as well. Each piece fits together to give you the whole picture.

Defining your goals for the project will help guide you when creating the survey, whether it's a customer satisfaction or client survey, staff opinion questionnaire, market research, or course evaluation. Once you begin writing questions and designing the questionnaire, if cannot answer the question "what will I do with this data?" then the question does not belong in your project. By defining a goal at the beginning, the survey writer is forced to eliminate unnecessary questions - hence keeping the survey short.

This rule applies for both qualitative and quantitative research. Read my past post to learn more about the six steps in the market research process.

Survey in Real Life: Is It Easy For You To Gather Customer Feedback?

Monday, May 18, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
DinnerwareSometimes I feel like I'm always wearing my marketing hat. I watch TV and comment on commercials and their cohesion with the brand. I receive a sales and marketing email and critic the message. I go to a website and wonder how it could be more user friendly. I go on Twitter looking for help after a company offers terrible phone support and am irritated at their lack of presence in the social media realm. I'm always wearing my marketing hat. If you're like me, you probably are always wearing your hat too, whether it's marketing, customer service, HR, sales, the list goes on.

I went to Red Robin Friday night for dinner. We were seated in the first booth by the front - right by the kitchen which gave us great access to fresh bottomless fries. It was already loud and hard to hear the conversation with my table partners, but that's to be expected on a busy night, right? Then, out of no where, the manager starts blowing up balloons right next to us! We could no longer hear ourselves think, let alone have a conversation. I began looking for their feedback form on the table. I told you - I am always wearing my marketing hat. I wanted to give feedback because maybe they never thought blowing up balloons could be such an interruption (I'm always willing to give business the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise).

No customer feedback form on the table. I go to Red Robin a lot, and on occasion I've filled out the customer survey they leave on the table. I have always appreciated how easy it is to tell them they've done a good or bad job. Their feedback form was always easy to leave comments on - not just answer scale questions about my customer satisfaction. But there was no feedback form.

I began thinking, do organizations make it easy for customer to provide feedback?

At the end of the meal, the check came with an invitation to complete a customer satisfaction survey online. While I am a big supporter of using online survey tools to collect feedback, I was a little disappointed in their questionnaire. There was no real place for me to add additional comments like on the feedback form on the table, how were they ever going to hear my plea? So my point is two fold: 1. make it easy for customer to give you feedback on their experience and your service or product; 2. make sure you don't limit their responses on a client survey so the organization cannot see the whole picture. When your organization makes the switch from paper surveys to web based surveys, make sure you don't lose a critical part of your current process.

Netflix Beats Amazon In Customer Satisfaction Again, Survey says

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
Netflix Secures #1 Customer Satisfaction Ranking Netflix was ranked #1 for customer satisfaction for the fifth consecutive year, beating the other Top 100 online retailers. The new customer satisfaction survey, released by FGI Research, has Amazon falling a short second, and Avon.com, DrsFosterSmith.com, Newegg.com and QVC.com tied for third. The FGI survey report estimates a single point increase in customer satisfaction could result in an increase of 9% of the online retailer's year-over-year sales. Furthermore, satisfied online visitors are 44% more likely to make purchases through the retailer's other channels (like in the store). More importantly, they're 72% more likely to recommend the brand. Customer satisfaction has a direct correlation to customer loyalty.

These survey findings are very similar to another FGI Research report we shared with you back in December 2008. While Netflix and Amazon still top the ratings, other rankings have shifted - for better or worse. Back in December Apple.com, Barnes & Noble, LLBean.com, Newegg.com and Wal-Mart.com shared the number three spot. Everyone except Newegg.com saw their rankings fall a few points. If FGI's estimate holds true, those fallen points could translate to drops in year-over-year sales figures.

What does this mean for you? Just because you have a high customer satisfaction ranking today, it doesn't mean you'll be able to hold on to it tomorrow. Netflix is continually improving their offering and delivering on their promises. Competitors will always try to best you to gain market, wallet or mind share - or perhaps all three. Don't sit back and rest on past rankings. Organizations should be trying to improve, always offering a better customer experience, always trying to boost customer retention.

How does your customer satisfaction compare to last month, last quarter or last year?

Customer Service Surveys: You Need Feedback

Friday, May 8, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
You Need Customer Service FeedbackAnyone who knows me knows how much I value customer service. One bad experience impacts my future purchasing decisions. I'm not the only person who places value in customer service. Unfortunately for organizations, many of your customers are just like me. However, many senior managers, marketing, sales, customer service employees don't enter their jobs remembering what it's like to be a customer. Everyone is a customer, yet we all forget that's true when designing programs and interacting with our own customers. Finding out if you're doing a good job in the customer satisfaction and experience arena is simple, if you continually ask yourself:

How do your customers feel about your service?

In the past, I told you the first sign of something being wrong is the sound of customers leaving. If you don't ask them how you're doing, you're never going to find out. You may find customers think your customer service team is excellent or you may find customers dread anything going wrong and having to contact your organization. Either way, you can't improve something if you don't know and understand what your customers need. Begin developing a customer service survey program today and gather customer service feedback tomorrow.

How Can Employee Satisfaction Surveys Improve Morale?

Monday, May 4, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
Employee Surveys Can Help Boost MoraleAre you investing in employee morale? In a recession, it's not unusual for employees to question their job stability. Fears of job loss causes concern about finances, which can drain employees' energy. When employee morale is low, just about any excuses is good enough to just stay home. Organizations need to invest in their employees.

A good way to keep tabs on employee moral is with employee satisfaction surveys. With the help of employee feedback, employers can identify possible causes for low morale and take steps to boost satisfaction.

We've mentioned before that employee satisfaction is linked to customer satisfaction. In a down economy, organizations need productive, efficient teamwork and happy representatives who want to help customers. Even little things such as personally greeting employees or thanking them for their hard work can boost morale.

What has your organization done to improve employee satisfaction based on feedback from employee questionnaires?

Skip And Branch Logic Create Engaging Online Surveys

Wednesday, April 29, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
A colleague of mine was recently filling out a post event survey online for a tradeshow we attended. She turned and asked me, "why is this survey so long?" There could be lots of answers to this question: they're asking too many non-essential questions or they're not utilizing online survey tools efficiently or they didn't set clear survey goals. In her case, it was the surveyor's lack of utilizing technology to enhance the respondent experience. There was no logic being used. Instead, she had to read every question to find out if she needed to answer it, after answering "No" to a previous question.

What a waste of her time.

Online surveys like the one she took make me wonder time and time again, do organizations even care about the respondent experience? Do they care about the customer's satisfaction with the engagement? I think a lot of organizations think of a survey as a tool for them to find something out and forget that the survey experience is a touch point.

Technology has come a long way. Web survey companies have designed tools to help organizations conduct customer surveys, put lots of time and money into developing these tools to improve the respondent experience, boost response rates and enhance survey reporting. But time and time again, surveyors fail to use one of the most important features: Logic.

I'll admit, for some people, survey logic may sound like a difficult feature to implement. Let me assure you, with a good online survey tool, using logic is just as simple as adding or editing a question. Skip and branch logic are probably the most common types of logic found in an online questionnaire. When used, and used correctly, branch and skip logic keeps the survey relevant and engaging (the more engaging the survey is, the less likely respondents will abandon it).

Need a quick review of skip and branch logic? Consider this example survey for a moment:

Sample Survey Questions

Skip logic allows respondents to skip forward in the survey based on their response to a question. In the example above, if someone did purchase something from the store, they would skip the Net Promoter question.

Branch logic allows the surveyor to send respondents down different paths depending on how they respond to a question. In our example survey, branch logic could be employed to separate everyone who had visited the store from those who did not. If they visited the store they would answer the next five questions, if they hadn't they would be rerouted to the last question before the demographic questions. At the end of each branch path, the respondents can be funneled back into the same survey path and have the chance to respond to the demographic questions.

Things to keep in mind when designing a survey with logic:

Always flow downstream. Skip and branch logic don't send respondents backwards in the survey, only forward. I once heard someone describe a survey like a river: it only flows downstream but there are channels that leave the main path, sometimes returning to the main river further down.

Closed questions only. As you can imagine, it would be difficult to create rules for skip and branch logic for an open ended question. If you want to be able to insert logic after a question, make sure it's not an open ended question.

Page breaks are important. Like with anything else, surveyors have preferences about how to group questions and insert page breaks. Skip and branch logic will over ride these preferences.

Consider the progress bar. We've recommended the use of a progress bar in the past as a way to reduce abandonment. However, if you're using logic to reduce the number of question from 100 to 20, a savvy respondent might
suddenly notice they're almost done, go back, change an answer and see what happens. This could easily mess up your data. If you're offering an incentive and using screener questions, a progress bar could be a real disadvantage. If you want to use a progress bar, be sure to disable the previous button.

Test, test, test. Like with any other survey, it's important to test it to a sample sub-group. But when using any kind of logic, always make sure to test each possible path to ensure the survey flows the way you intended before sending the survey to any respondents.

Remember, if you ever find yourself writing "If you responded 'XYZ' to the previous question," stop immediately, take a deep breath, think about the tools you have in front of you, then start again. Successfully implementing skip and branch logic can quickly pair down a long online survey to fewer than 30 questions because respondents only see questions relevant to their responses.


Already working on a survey project but need help? Cvent's Professional Services Group would be happy to consult with you to develop an engaging and relevant respondent experience. Contact us to learn more.

Five Steps to Begin Interpreting Online Survey Results

Tuesday, April 28, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
The hardest part of any survey project is creating a solid questionnaire. If you create a good survey and plan the analysis, interpreting the data should be a walk in the park. Here are five easy steps for analyzing survey data:

1. Take a birds-eye-view. A good first step of interpreting survey data is to take an overall look at the data and responses. Consider these questions:
  • How many people completed the survey?
  • What was the response rate?
  • What was the average amount of time respondents spend completing the questionnaire?
  • How well do the respondents represent the survey target group?
Answering these questions at the beginning should help you understand how reliable your data is and evaluate how potential biases could be skewing survey results.

2. Look at the responses to your key survey questions. If the goal of the survey was to evaluate customer satisfaction and identify possible product enhancements, a key survey question may be what percentage of respondents said they were unsatisfied and what percentage were extremely satisfied. What kinds of enhancements could improve the customer experience and increase the satisfaction with the product?

3. Cross-tabulate demographic characteristics with responses to key questions. By cross-tabulating the responses by demographic characteristics such as age, gender, experience levels will help you which features may be more important to key groups. Cross-tabulating helps marketing executives further identify target markets.

4. Look at the open ended questions.
We've given you tips to help analyze open ended questions in the past. Using open ended questions in any type of market research or customer survey should help you identify the language your target market is using. Sometimes marketers think customers understand the messaging they choose, while the customers are describing the problem and the ideal solution in a completely different way. Open ended questions can help identify some of these disparities so the marketing department can create messaging to speak your customer's language.

5. Create a "to do" list and take action.
We've mentioned before that conducting surveys, whether they're online questionnaires or paper feedback forms, create expectations. Be sure to act on the survey results.

Giving the survey analysis as much thought as the survey creation is critical if you want to be able to really improve your organizations value adds. Some people believe that the analysis process beings only after the web based survey has been launched and responses have been collected. Unfortunately, this approach will hurt your survey results. You should consider the types of customer analysis you want to do while developing a questionnaire. The question type you chose when creating an online survey will limit the analysis. So while the above steps have to do with interpreting the data, you need to think about the process in the beginning as well.

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Census Surveys

Monday, April 27, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
Despite all your survey sampling options, some surveyors still want to send email survey invitations everyone on their house list and think it's the better option. For those who insist on conducting a census instead of a sampling, here are some pros and cons:

Pros:

Increase confidence interval. Conducting a census often results in enough respondents to have a high degree of statistical confidence in the survey results. If you have a population of less than 1,000 individuals, you may often need to survey everyone to achieve statistical confidence.

Maximum chance of identifying of negative feedback. If you're using online survey software, such as Cvent, you can set up email alerts to notify the surveyor, customer care department, sales team, etc. of negative feedback and contact the customer to make the situation right. By acting on negative feedback immediately, organizations have the chance to improve their customer satisfaction ratings.

Everyone is invited. For annual measurements, such as customer satisfaction survey, it's important to give everyone the opportunity to provide feedback.

Cons:

Limits other possible survey opportunities. Organizations cannot ask the same people to complete a survey time and time again. If you email your house list a survey, you have to respect their time. If you decide to conduct a census, be sure to evaluate other survey projects that are in the pipe line. You may decide a census isn't worth having to put a hold on other survey projects.

Declined response rates. The more times you try to survey your entire list, the lower the response rate will be each time. Census surveys tend to be longer than the typical survey. Your respondents will remember that the next time you ask them to complete a survey. When you do conduct census surveys, remember some of the best practices for email marketing such ask telling the respondent how much time they should expect the survey to take. Lying on a longer survey is going to hurt your response rates for future surveys.

When weighing the advantages and disadvantages of census surveys, be sure to keep in mind the survey goals and other survey projects in the pipe line. If you've decided that maybe sending email survey invitations to everyone for a web based survey isn't a great idea, you can review some of our past posts on probability and non-probability sampling options.

Survey Says: Apple Beats Windows and PCs?

Friday, April 24, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
Apple LogoAfter Forrester released their Customer Experience Index rating last week, there has been a lot of discussion about how Apple beat all other PC companies. Most people seem to have come to the conclusion the disparity is due to operating systems. Apple scored the highest for all three customer satisfaction factors in the survey research: ease of use, enjoyability and usefulness. They scored 17% and 15% better in ease of use and enjoyability, respectively.

Bruce Temkin shared some of his thoughts in his post, Apple Beats Windows, Part 2:

Operating System matters. It's impossible to ignore the fact that operating system plays a roll in a computer's usefulness, enjoyability and ease of use. At the same time, Microsoft cannot take all the blame. Temkin reminds us that Dell was the "darling child" of the industry not too long ago.

Microsoft is getting short changed. Think of all the things you do on a PC everyday, it's pretty amazing the range of functionally Windows has. Even Mac users use Microsoft products, namely Microsoft Office. How we use a computer would be very different if it wasn't for their Office Suite.

Apple has a following. People who have Macs LOVE them. There is a very real following with the Apple name. PC users do not have the same love for their computers or associated accessories. Even PC users have iPods or iPhones and admire the quality of Apple products. If you know any Mac users, just ask them how they feel about their computer or the general brand.

I think this survey is a great example of underlying correlations. When examining survey reports, try to keep in mind factors that could be impacting the results. It's almost impossible to prove causation, and as Temkin mentioned in his post, Microsoft shouldn't shoulder all the blame. Consider using cross-tab survey report to identify possible correlations. You may find gender, age, or other demographics make a difference; or you may uncover a deeper, more hidden correlation that could help move your organization forward.

Introducing a New Question Type: Net Promoter Score

Wednesday, April 22, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
We recently added two new question types to our web survey software: Matrix Spreadsheet and Net Promoter Score. If you're not familiar with the Net Promoter Score, here's some quick background. Introduced in 2003 in a Harvard Business Review article by Frederick Reichheld, Net Promoter simplifies the complexity of measuring customer satisfaction. The Net Promoter Score gives a stable measurement of performance that can be compared across the organization or industries.

An organization can obtain their Net Promoter Score by asking customers a single question on an 11 point scale (0-10). Questions typically ask how likely the respondent is to recommend a product or service.

Example of Survey Question: Net Promoter Score

Based on the response, respondents fall into one of three categories: Detractors, Promoters or Passives. Detractors answer with a 0-6 rating. Detractors are unhappy customers who could potentially damage your brand through negative word-of-mouth. Passives answer with a 7 or 8 rating. Passives are individuals who are satisfied but are vulnerable to competitor offerings. When calculating the Net Promoter Score, Passives are ignored. Promoters answer at the top of the scale with a 9 or 10 rating. These people are loyal customers and brand enthusiasts. Promoters will continue to buy your products and refer others, ultimately fueling an organization's growth.

To calculate your Net Promoter Score, simply subtract the percentage of detractors (those who answered with a 0-6 rating) from the percentage of promoter respondents (those who gave a 9 or 10 rating)

Net Promoter Score = (% of Promoters) - (% of Detractors)

The goal is to have a high Net Promoter Score. Typically, 75% is considered a good Net Promoter Score. We recommend using an open ended question after a Net Promoter question. This allows appropriate action to be taken by employees and management to identify and resolve customer issues.

Tips To Improve The Telephone Survey Experience

Wednesday, April 22, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
I cannot begin to explain how frustrating I find telephone surveys. They drive me crazy. I'm always happy to share my opinions with organizations but don't waste an hour of my day on a bad telephone survey. A bad survey experience reflects on the brand. Respondent's experiences converge into the customer experience, they don't keep the buying and the surveying experiences separate in their minds.

It's easy to create a questionnaire online with web survey software and finding online survey tools that fits your needs is easy. So why are there not more online market research studies being done? Why does my phone ring every night, while I'm eating dinner, with another request to complete a telephone survey? Technology improves the respondent experience tenfold. As I hinted at above, respondent experience impacts customer experience, which influences customer loyalty and retention. If you think you need additional channels for your data collection other than online, here are a few telephone survey tips to help the respondent experience:

1. Training is essential. Make sure your interviewer is well trained and understands their job. For open ended questions, have the interviewer read back the response, ask for more details, and clarify the response they have recorded is exactly what the respondent said. Interviewer bias has a tendency to creep into open ended questions and training is the best way to combat bias.

2. Vary the question type. Asking more than a few of the same question type in a row becomes tedious for the respondent. Respondents also lose interest and you begin to lose their focus. Alter your question types to keep respondents engaged and giving honest feedback.

3. Speak English. With more and more organizations and market research agencies offshoring their telephone surveys, it's really important to ensure your interviewers speak clear English. It should not, at any point, become the respondent's responsibility to try to figure out what the interviewer is asking. Remember, you called them and asked them to help you. In most cases, the respondent isn't getting anything out of it.

4. Only ask important questions. This is a best practice for all survey types whether its a web based survey or a paper feedback form. If you don't need the answer to the question, take it out. If the question does not directly relate back to the survey project objectives, take it out. Do not ask the same question three different ways, one way is good enough. Respondents completing an online questionnaire may be more forgiving of extra questions than in a telephone survey, don't waste their time with extra questions.

The only time I recommend using telephone surveys is when you're trying to build a relationship. Asking for customer service feedback or conducting customer satisfaction surveys are excellent opportunities to take the time to call your clients. The personal touch can go a long way to improve customer retention and loyalty.

Barnes & Noble Get Top Customer Satisfaction Scores, Survey Says

Monday, April 20, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
According to a Forrester Research survey released last week, Barnes & Noble is consistently rated "excellent" in customer satisfaction. A survey sample of approximately 4,500 consumers were asked about interactions with a range of  companies. Respondents ranked their interactions according to usefulness, ease of use and enjoyability.

The big news in this survey report is the poor showing from the computer industry and ISPs. Apple led the pack in customer satisfaction at 23 out of 113, with some excellent ratings for usability. Apple scored an 80% or a B-, where PC manufacturers such as Compaq, HP and Gateway ended up between 63% and 66% or D. With a poor 58% overall rating, Dell flunked the customer satisfaction survey. Compared to ISPs and cable providers, the computer industry ratings look good. Time Warner Cable, Comcast and Charter Communications ended up at the bottom of the list.

Forrester Research: Customer Satisfaction Survey Results

The full Forrester Research report is available here.

Surveys In Real Life: Employee Confidence Factors

Friday, April 3, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf
Harris Interactive recently completed survey research that unveiled some interesting findings surrounding employee confidence.  If your organization is facing tough decisions, consider some of the research findings about what concessions employees are willing to make to keep their jobs:

70% would take on more projects and responsibilities
62% would work longer hours

40% would take a pay cut
35% would accept reduced benefits such as health and dental
34% and 30% would take unpaid leave or give up vacation time, respectively

Running cross-tabulation analysis is important when doing market research, customer satisfaction, HR surveys, etc.  If you look at the ages of the respondents, the employee confidence survey found workers 55 and older are less likely to take on more responsibilities and work long hours than younger workers.  In addition, younger workers are more willing to give up vacation time.  This information could be very important to HR executives and senior management trying to find ways to boost productivity and cut costs.