Web Surveys 101

We all have that momentary feeling in the pit of our stomachs when we launch a survey form online that there could be a mistake we missed somewhere. It never seems to go away no matter how many campaigns I launch. Fortunately, I found this 12 question survey checklist to help ease that dreaded feeling a little bit.


If you say No to any of these questions, you need to go back and look at the survey created for this project again. once you can answer Yes to all twelve questions, your survey campaign should be in pretty good shape. Still feeling a little uneasy? Here are some more tips for what to look for in Test Mode as one final check.

Measuring customer satisfaction is nothing new, neither is benchmarking that data and tracking improvements. It's typically easy to find dissatisfied customers. When you're looking for customer feedback, dissatisfied customers often come out of the wood work to let you know you're not holding up your end of the bargain. Sometimes understanding why those customers are unhappy can be a challenge.

If you have a well designed survey form with strongly written questions, answering Why suddenly becomes a lot easier. Here's my best suggestion: Read the comments. Comments are often where you're going to find the most customer insights. You'll also be able to see trends emerge as you read through. Training, missing features, poor support, issues with the sales process, they'll all begin to emerge. If you have dissatisfied customers, they usually will let you know how you can fix it and transform them to happy customers.

In the past, I told you that as part of any customer satisfaction survey you should be categorizing customers to better focus your energy and bring in more revenue for your organization. As part of that categorization, consider grouping customers into buckets based on why they're unhappy. From there you can create action items for how to improve the overall satisfaction of your customer base. If it's not clear why a customer is unhappy, reach out to them to find out more. If you want to make things better and understand where you went wrong, chances are your customers are going to be happy to help - so let them.

Just last week I shared how expensive conducting paper surveys can be, particularly if it's a survey project run every quarter for benchmarking or trending analysis. But cost isn't the only benefit online survey questionnaires can have over the old fashion mail questionnaire. Here are a few other things to consider next time you're debating between an instant survey online and it's paper-based equivalent:

• Speed: Creating surveys online offers instant distribution via web links posted on your website and email survey invitations. When you make surveys online, you can see the responses begin rolling in immediately - not trickle in a week or two after you first put them in the mail. Don't discount how much quicker you can analyze survey data either, since response are collected online, there's no manual data entry.

• Efficiency: This benefit goes right along with speed. It's more efficient to design a survey online and collect feedback using the internet. It's also easier to copy, or clone, your surveys for repeat deployment. 

• More Thorough Responses: By utilizing survey technologies like email survey invitations, and survey reminders for both non-respondents and partial respondents, you can collect more thorough responses and improve the accuracy and validity of your survey data.

• Randomization of Answers: We shared our thoughts on the benefits of randomizing answer earlier today. To get caught up, read this post on when you should randomize answers. But in summary, randomizing answers helps decrease certain types of survey bias and makes your survey results more reliable.

• Improved experience: Paper surveys limit you in providing a less than excellent survey respondent experience. Remember, every interaction with a customer impact the overall customer experience - this includes completing surveys! Designing surveys online gives you the ability to use survey question logic such as skip, branch, link logic or other types of  advanced logic that improves the overall experience. Instead of having to write survey questions like, If yes, when was the last time you purchased Agent ABC? Instead, that question only shows when the respondent indicates they have purchased Agent ABC. Couple these types of question logic with pipe logic that makes the survey even more engaging (remember, more relevant and engaging the survey is, the higher he response rate will be).

Unfortunately for the mail survey, they just don't have these types of functionality. Luckily for all online survey builders out there, you can simply select a survey designing software (like the Cvent Web Surveys application), and start improving your survey programs while cutting costs.

Sometimes we forget we can't be everything to everyone all the time. It's just not possible. It wouldn't make sense for a shoe designer to start creating hard hats just because a customer wrote on a comment card in response to a retail survey that she wished the designer also made hard hats because the her husband worked in construction. It seems obvious to most people, going into the hard hat market would be a bad call on the shoe designer's part. So why don't organizations have the same clarity when it comes to their business?

It can be hard to say no to customers, particularly when they have good ideas. But just because an idea is a good one, it doesn't necessarily mean it's right for your business model. Take the example many organizations have to face in their life time: where do they belong? Is it in the high end of the market, the mid-market or the bottom feeders? Most people when you ask them don't want to admit to being a bottom feeder, but there's a market need there that can be very profitable. The organization that can fulfill that need is very rarely, if ever, the same organization that can fill the need at the high end of the market. This just points out, again, that we can't ever be everything to everyone. I remember my marketing classes in college always told us you could only be two of the three things: good, fast or cheap. You can never be all three. Good and fast is expensive; fast and cheap is inferior; good and cheap is slow. It's because we can't be everything to everyone.

So how do you figure out what you should be? Your organization's mission should be a start, but missions can change and transform over time. One place you can start is to ask your employees, survey staff to see what they think the organization is and where they should be going. Employees have stellar ideas, but this may sound like a trick question so make sure to follow these tips for employee opinion surveys.

You should also ask for customer feedback. Your customers will help point you in the direction you should be heading. Sure you'll have the one off cases like with the shoe designer who's customer wants her to create hard hats for construction works, but chances are, no one else will respond that way on her customer questionnaire. And then, at the end of the day, you should be armed with the information you need to support your decision. As you're reading through survey comments, you'll notice that everyone doesn't want you to be everything.

We all know the holidays are getting closer, which means office pot lucks are about to become all the rage. What will you be bringing? How is your office going to make sure that not everyone plans to bring the same thing? How do you determine the winner of this year's Tastiest Dish Awards?

Competitions involving food are definitely a favorite around this time of year. However, if you have a big office, it can be a pain to collect everyone's votes. As I mentioned at Halloween, building polls to quickly identify the winner of your office Halloween Costume contest can be applied to the Best Dish Award too. Simply log into your web site voting poll software, make a poll to gather employee opinions on who should win this year's Best Dish Awards. Have different categories, such as best presentation, tastiest appetizer, most unique recipe? Add in images of the dishes to help jog people's memories and create one web poll using your poll maker.

Don't think that an online poll survey software tool can only play it's part at the end of the pot luck event, you can send a pre-event survey to find out who plans to bring what. If too many people are planning to bring dessert, a typical favorite, the online poll generator can easily run a survey report to identify categories with too many volunteers. You can easily create a survey contact group to email those volunteers and ask them if they can bring something else.

Holidays are a time to celebrate with family and friends, and eat delicious food. Unfortunately, we often make such office traditions a little more painful than they need to be by forgetting we can use a polling system or survey software tool we already have. Since Cvent Web Surveys doesn't limit the number of responses you can have, it wouldn't make sense to suffer through paper ballots when it can be done for you! Ready to create a poll for your next staff opinion survey? Get started with a free trial.

What are your other sample employee opinion survey examples?

A few weeks ago, I did a series of posts about the effect colors can have on individuals and how you should keep them in mind when designing a web survey. Today, I came across a survey form that reminded me again of the importance of your survey template's color scheme. When you're designing surveys, make sure you pick colors that are easy to read.


Can you read this question from a sample customer questionnaire? Probably. Is it easy to read? Do you want to answer pages and pages of survey questions writen with this color scheme? Probably not. Because it's hard to read, you will probably see a high abandonment rate and then you'll have to deal with speculations about nonresponse bias. To avoid having this issue, make sure to ask people if they find the survey easy to read when they're testing it for you. Believe me, you don't want poor color selection to decrease your response rate.

You can read more about the effects different colors have in these posts:

Every year it seems like the holidays get earlier and earlier. This year I noticed stores had holiday decorations out before Halloween costumes! While I can attest to retail stores being ready for the holiday shopping season, it makes me wonder, are you?

Online web surveys are just one more way you have the ability to engage with your consumer email lists. Customer surveys should be no brainers. But how can an online survey form apply to holiday marketing strategies? Well that depends, are you setting survey objectives that will impact your marketing strategies?

Here's what I mean: I receive countless retail marketing emails everyday. Most of which I opted in to, however, no one ever asks me about my shopping habits or preferences. These companies could easily put together a retail survey using an online survey application and find out more about who I am as a customer, what I prefer, how frequently I shop in their stores or how frequently I visit their website. From the responses they get back, they can then customize their marketing messages based on how I shop with them. If I only shop online, it may make sense to group these customers together and do a special online promotion. All the customers who only shop in the stores would receive a different promotional offer because they shop differently than I do.

This concept goes back to one I've shared previously: profiling customers to better understand your organization. The holidays are closing in quickly, but it's not too late to build an online survey and collect customer feedback instantly.

How have you designed online survey questionnaires in the past to impact your marketing strategies?

Marketing departments love client testimonials and customer quotes. They're great to share with the sales team when prospects need referrals, they're helpful to put in powerpoint presentations, and can be a critical piece of any marketing website. Getting those sound bites from clients can be a challenge, however. As you can imagine, the challenge only gets bigger if your organization sells consumer products. Admittedly, the growth of social media has made finding people who are saying good things about your product, services or organization has gotten a little bit easier. But, it could be easier still.

Imagine a world where you had a plethora of client sound bites and quotes to share with the outside world. A marketers dream. No more tracking down sales reps to talk to their clients and mangle their words. Everything is already done for you. Well, if you're conducting client satisfaction surveys or consumer surveys, you should be gathering those sound bites already. You can even consider using website polls and website usability surveys to get those sound bites. Depending on the online questionnaire design, you may still need to contact the customer to get permission to use their quote, but the hard part is still done. You have the quote.

Question remains, how do you pull these customer quotes out of your survey web form? You make sure to add an additional comment box. Customers who love you will typically share those sentiments in the additional comments area, particularly if there are not other open ended questions in the survey for them to share why they like an organization.

Still wondering why your marketing department needs sound bites? Opinions for others is one of the driving forces behind purchasing decisions. If you want to learn more about the importance of customer reviews, check out this past post. It's also worth mentioning, this same idea can work for employee surveys and your HR department for recruiting purposes.

Vocus, a leading provider of on-demand public relations management software, released the results of a recent public relations and marketing survey they conducted. The survey sample was made up of 1,800 marketing and PR professionals. Among Vocus's key findings was the response of 80% respondents that social media would be a key focus for them in 2010. Vocus shared that they believe social media has been a catalyst for the change in the PR industry, where PR is becoming increasingly more important.

How is the PR industry dealing with the fact they're being asked to do more with less? Investing in technology. Sounds like a familiar story, right? Marketers turn to email survey tools to send out email survey invitations instead of having to manually send all email marketing messages through Outlook. Accounting departments use software to help them manage finances instead of the old way of paper, pencils and ledgers. Technology is often used to help professionals manage their work loads, and PR industry is doing the same thing.

Here are some of the other key findings Vocus shared from it's marketing survey:


You can learn more about the survey results by viewing the recording of webinar Vocus hosted yesterday, PR Planning Considerations for 2010.

Some people still believe in using paper surveys instead of designing online questionnaires, sending personalized email survey reminders and utilizing electronic survey methods. Sometimes I have to wonder, Why? Some of the reasons people claim they want to use paper questionnaires instead of web survey forms is because they think it's cheaper. That's not usually the case.

Consider this: Online survey response rates are typically hire than response rates on a direct mail survey. Online survey research designed well will yeild response rates from 20-40%. Let's be conservative and say the paper survey you plan to send out will get a 20% response rate as well. I looked up the cost of a ream of standard multipurpose paper (500 sheets) on Office Depot's website: $7.09. A black ink cartridge for a laser printer is $77.99 and will print on a maximum of 2,200 pages. Most printed surveys will be kept to three to five pages, longer than that your survey form looks over whelming from the very beginning and is going to lower your response rate. This is how that cost quickly adds up:


Keep in mind these costs don't include the staff time of stuffing envelopes to send out the direct mail survey, or the staff time of manually entering in all of the responses into some sort of data collection software, be it Excel or a survey software tool. You can figure it will take an intern a week to send out 5,000 survey responses and another week for them to do the data entry for the 1,000 responses. So that's an additional cost of $600 to $800 for one survey campaign. What if you want to do a quarterly customer satisfaction survey? You're looking at an annual cost of over $25,000.

For me, that would be enough reason alone to look into an online survey software application. With a web survey tool, you have the ability to not only send one invitation, but reminders survey emails as well. Sending reminders, as we've mentioned before, can drastically increase your survey response rate. My suggestion: don't fall for the myth that paper surveys are cheaper than online surveys. It's definitely the other way around.

What is a survey design's ideal length? In the past we've told you the typical survey best practice says surveys, whether they're paper or web survey forms, shouldn't be longer than thirty questions. While thirty certainly isn't a huge number, if you tell me you have a thirty question survey you want me to complete, forget it. I'm never going to complete your feedback form. However, if you tell me it's only a 10 question survey, I'm more likely to be on board. That is, unless I start to give you the customer feedback you're looking for and feel like your online questionnaire is longer than 10 questions.

You probably didn't lie to me, at least not if you're read about the dangers of lying about survey length in your email survey messages. It's probably a case of side view mirror syndrome: objects are closer than they appear - or applied to web survey design, questionnaires appear longer than they are.

Not surprising, if your survey form is interesting, the survey respondent is going to perceive it's shorter than it really is. However, the reverse doesn't seem to be true. If your web survey feedback form is boring and on an uninteresting topic, respondents will perceive it's the same length (and too long) whether there are fifteen questions or thirty questions.

It's not just about the actual length of your form when designing a questionnaire online, it's also about the perceived length. Even though your survey is only ten questions long, it may feel a lot longer if your collecting feedback about an uninteresting topic. If your survey questionnaire feels long, you instantly increase your chance of survey respondents abandoning your feedback form.

Designing survey invitations so that they render correctly in the person inbox is critical. However, with every email client, from Hotmail to Gmail to Lotus Notes to Outlook, have their own rules for rendering HTML email. In the past, I've given you updates on changes Gmail has made that's effected email rendering. Today, I wanted to share some tips to ensure you're creating emails that will look good in Outlook 2007. With Outlook 2003, the general rule of thumb is if it looks good in Internet Explorer, it will look good in Outlook. Outlook 2007 doesn't play by that rule.

Depending on your target market and who you expect your survey respondents to be, you may care more about these email survey design tips. If you are a business-to-business organization, most of your email marketing list is probably going to have business emails on it as opposed to freemail domains. If you're a business-to-consumer organization, you may care more about the rules Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail use to render your emails.

Next time you're sitting down to work on your email survey design, keep these Outlook 2007 tips in mind:

Keep styles in line: This is a general email marketing best practice because a lot of email clients don't support embedded CSS. Outlook 2007 does support embedded CSS, but not all properties work the way they should when their rendered. To avoid running into these problems, just keep your styles in line.

Avoid animated files: Animated .gif files are not going to work in Outlook 2007. Instead of animating, the email will just render with the first image in the animation. As long as you're happy with this first image of the animated .gif file, then it's not going to detract from your email message. Just know that when you go to test your email survey invitation in Outlook 2007, nothing's going to happen.

Specify accurate table widths: This is another email marketing best practice for designing online survey invitations. You should use tables to design HTMl emails. If you have multiple columns and your column widths don't add up to the width you specified for the overall size of the table, you're probably going to run into issues when someone tries to read your email in Outlook 2007. To avoid this, just make sure you're doing your math correctly, or use percentages instead of pixels (just make sure you're adding to 100% not 101%).

Use Alt tag: In Outlook 2007, images are blocked by default. While some users may chose to turn this off and have images automatically show up - you shouldn't count on this. To avoid survey respondents from having no idea what your email says, be sure to include alternative text for all images.

No Forms: If you're trying to embed a survey form in an email message, it's not going to work. Outlook 2007 disables embedded forms. Instead of embedding the form, include a link to your electronic survey hosted either on your website or your survey software company's website.

For the most part, these email survey design tips shouldn't be that hard to follow. In fact, if you're using Cvent Web Surveys software, our email survey tool will keep some of these tips in mind for you - and you don't need to do anything. What do I mean? Our easy-to-use HTML editor automatically codes the email for you, so when you insert a picture, it's going to ask you for alternative text. When you are changing background colors or applying different rules to headings, it will make sure to code the in line style versus embedding CSS. If you're not using an email survey software tool that keeps email marketing design best practices in mind, you're going to need to do the research yourself to find out what different clients allow - or don't allow - in emails.

Rarely are we asked the question, What is a survey? Typically questions follow the path of, Why do I need a survey program? What am I going to get out of conducting online web surveys to collect customer feedback? Or How do I get started measuring employee satisfaction with online questionnaire templates?

However, sometimes it's good to define market research and what it means, and answer the rarely asked question, What is a survey?

Market Research Definition (mahr-kit-ree-surch)
The gathering and studying of data relating to consumer preferences, purchasing power, etc., especially prior to introducing a product on the market.

Survey Definition (ser-vey)
Collect quantitative information about items in a population. Surveys of human populations and institutions are common in political polling and government, health, social science and marketing research.

Chances are though, you're still wondering about those other questions. These posts may help you answer those ever burning questions about why you should create and design surveys.

This week I've shared what different colors mean and how they can effect people. The neutral color group is the last of the three groups, cool and warm colors being the other two.

Neutral Colors are good background colors because they unify diverse color palettes. When neutral colors are paired with warm or cool colors, they allow the focus to be on the other color (whether it's warm or cool). They also serve to tone down the intensity of the other color. As I've mentioned in the other two posts, neutral colors do have attributes of warm and cool colors. Blacks, browns, tans, golds and beige are considered warm. Cool neutral colors include white, ivory, silver and gray. As you might guess though, these attributes are much more subtle than those of reds (the hottest color) and blue (the coolest).

	Black - As we've discussed with other colors, black can have contradicting meanings. While black is conservative, conventional and serious it can also be sophisticated, mysterious and sexy. Black, like many of the neutral colors, match almost every color. The colors black doesn't match well with is other very dark colors.
	White - White represents purity, cleanliness and innocence. Like black, white goes well with most colors. Keep in mind that too much bright white can cause some people headaches and be a bit "blinding." For the most part, the colors paired with white, no matter the proportions, are often the ones that pass on meanings in your survey design.
	Gray - This is a neutral color, but it also has cool elements and rarely evokes strong emotions. Dark, charcoal grays show strength and mystery, similar to black. Gray is a sophisticated color, without the negative connotations of black. Grays are good background colors because they're so neutral. You can swap a light gray for white, or a darker gray for black.
	Silver - Silver can be cool like a gray, but it can also be livelier than a gray. Silver is often associated with being sleek and modern and imparts an ornate feel. Silver is a cool metal and lack the warm that gold has. When you use silver, it can give an earthy, natural, or sleek and elegant feel.
	Brown - Earthy. Wholesome. Dependable. Brown is a warm color that can be associated with all of these things, as well as being considered steadfast, simple and friendly. Not sure that brown represents dependability? What about UPS? They've built their whole brand around brown's dependability. Browns, taupes, beiges and creams all are excellent background colors because they make the other colors appear richer and brighter.
	Beige - Like a chameleon, beige takes on the attributes of the colors that accompanies it. However, on it's own, beige is a calm background color. The reason beige can behave like a warm or cool color is because it has the warmth of a brown and the coolness of white.

If you're using the Cvent Web Surveys software application, you'll notice all our pre-created survey templates take into account how colors interact with each other. So next time you're working on a world class customer service survey or creating web polls, check out the graphical survey templates in your online survey account.

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

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

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

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

I found an interesting poll today about colors preferred by men and women, and it provoked some questions about what are the best colors to use when you create polls or design survey questionnaires. Here's the breakdown from the poll shared in a Lyris Whitepaper:


Why does it matter? Because colors are also a form of non-verbal communication. So whether you're creating an online questionnaire to collect feedback or using an email survey tool to craft email marketing messages for survey invitations, you should care how colors affect those reading your email or completing your customer survey forms.

Colors can cause physical reactions. For example, too much red has been show to increase blood pressure. As you design survey templates, keep in mind how color meanings can affect survey respondents.

Cool colors: Cool colors typically have a calming effect. Keep in mind that cool colors can appear smaller than warm colors and visually recede on the page.

	Blue - As you might have guessed, blue is calming. Almost everyone likes some shade of blue, whether it's a strong and steadfast blue or a light, friendly blue. In fact, in 2008 Pantone selected Blue Iris as the color of the year. As a result of the calming effect blue has, it can make time seem to pass more quickly and help you sleep. However, too much blue can cause the calming effect to go to the extreme and cause you to have the blues. Beyond just being calming, blue can convey richness and sometimes superiority (deep royal blue) or it can convey trust and truthfulness (combining light and dark blue). See how using blues could improve your response rate if it helps people trust you?
	Green - Like blue, green has some calming effects and can make time seem like it's moving quicker, but it also signifies growth, renewal, health and the environment. Like with blue, green has it's own extreme as well, green can mean jealousy or envy and inexperience. With a hint of warmth and coolness, green can create balance, harmony and stability.
	Purple - Over the ages, purple has come to be synonymous with royalty. Since purple comes from red (warm) and blue (cool) it has intriguing qualities of both. Typically deep and bright purples suggest riches, while lighter purples are more romantic and delicate. Keep in mind though, while purple can be noble and spiritual, too much purple can cause moodiness - the same as with too much blue.
	Turquoise - As a blend of blue and green, turquoise can have a soft, feminine qualities or a more sophisticated feel with the darker teals.

Look for parts two and three later this week for warm and neutral color meanings.

Halloween is time for spooky movies, scary amounts of candy consumption and silly costumes. This holiday always ensures you'll see at least one person around the office dressed up - but what about when you do an annual Halloween costume contest? How do you poll the office to come to a fair consensus? Quickly create a web poll using your online poll creator. You wont need to worry about writing your own online poll script because the online poll software tool will take care of it for you.

Here at Cvent, we have an annual Halloween Costume Contest, as you might have guessed. In the past, we've used the clapping and cheering approach (who ever gets the most applause wins) and our web polling software. With the image gallery, it's easy to upload your costume pictures. When you're creating a poll online, you can customize the survey questions and add your own graphics and pictures, in addition to information about what the costume is of - because let's be honest, sometimes it's hard to tell. After uploading the pictures, you can quickly send a note to your employees letting them know it's time to VOTE!

When was the last time you ran a quick employee poll for a silly contest to lighten up the hum-drum of the day-to-day office life?

By the way, since I'm sure you're wondering, this year's Halloween Costume Contest winner was a Taco. Congratulations Andy, but why didn't you bring enough Taco for the rest of us?

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

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

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

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

I recently read an interesting state on Drew's Marketing Minute: 70% of business lost in America is lost due to post-sales apathy. Now, I don't know where that 70% number came from, but it's terrifying. Too many organizations are out there just focused on bringing in more customers, not worrying about keeping them (happy). When it costs ten times more to acquire a new customer than keep an old one, it's shocking so much business would be lost because you ignore a customer post-sale.

Drew says, If you don't have a customer retention program - one that turns your clients into raving fans... you need one. And you know what? I agree.

Your retention program should be simple and easy to implement. If you make it too difficult, you're probably not going to want to do it. After you implement it, consider doing a post implementation survey. Find out if your program is working, what changes you need to make, what isn't working, what's going great?

No CEO wants to see clients leave because your sales staff or client services team wasn't paying enough attention to them. As always, I'd love to hear about client retention programs you've implemented, what worked and what didn't?

I probably don't need to explain why creating employee surveys should be part of every HR department, but coming up with the correct employee evaluation template or employee job satisfaction survey questions isn't as as obvious as know you should do them. I recently came across a few sample workplace survey questions I thought may help when you start writing employee questionnaires:

One thing you should notice in the example employee satisfaction questions are they are different survey question types. A general online survey best practice to remember when crafting employee survey questions is to vary the question type. It helps keep the respondent engaged and lowers survey abandonment rate.