Feedback Survey

The vast majority of survey research projects are studies at a single point in time of a specified population, such as employees, customers or the general public.  Fewer web survey designs track opinions over time.  This post outlines the different types of surveys carried out by researchers.

Point-in-time surveys are called cross-sectional studies.  They study a single population or sample size during a single specified time-frame, and give us a “snapshot” of opinion data.  Cross-sectional surveys comprise the largest number of projects that are undertaken. 

Longitudinal surveys, on the other hand, are those which study trends over time, and usually consist of cohorts or panel respondents.  These can be further classified into three distinct types of longitudinal designs (trend, cohort and panel).

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.

When many of us think product market research, we think along the lines of consumer interest or consumer satisfaction studies. But what about a study conducted specifically to find ways to improve a product?

Sometimes a client may want to find ways to improve an existing product or service. It is risky to launch a brand-new product, particularly in today’s economy when businesses are failing more frequently. It is often better to grow a successful product than try and start from scratch.

When you are conducting a study for this purpose, it is important to analyze from several angles. You need to gather current consumers for a consumer satisfaction survey, as well as non-consumers for a survey or focus group. To gather product feedback ask the consumers questions like:


Utilize the survey to gather their opinions on pricing, quality and more. The client can use this information about what they are already doing right as a baseline for improving their product.

The non-consumers are a little tricky. You need to find out why they don’t purchase or use the product. Maybe the price point is just a little too high. Depending on what type of product it is, perhaps the client might be able to offer a similar item at a lower price point to gain more customers.

Perception of non-consumers is just as important as that of consumers. Perhaps the reason they are put off is something the client can easily fix, thus gaining new and loyal customers.

Perhaps you have an extra special research project that really needs a good response turnout, or you’re simply looking for ways to boost your response rates. Well, maybe its time to try sweetening the pot a little?

Studies have shown that surveys where potential participants were offered monetary incentives of as little as $1 received higher response rates then ones that didn't’t offer any incentives at all. In fact, offering any incentive to your potential survey respondents as a way of saying “Thank You” even before they take your survey is a great way to get started on the road to higher survey returns. Good examples of survey incentives that work are gift cards, checks, gift certificates, and of course good ol' fashioned cash.

The amount isn't as important as the belief by the participant that the offered incentive will actually be provided. Credibility is key. So if you choose to offer incentives to your potential respondents after they have participated in the survey (say for example the option to be entered into a random drawing for a chance to win an iPod) remember to follow through on giving out the reward after you collect feedback from all the survey respondents!

This tip is particularly useful when trying to avoid survey bias. By offering incentives you're more likely to attract people who would not normally participate in your surveys. Learn more about minimizing survey bias from some of our other posts.

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.

Sometimes we get so excited about creating a survey we want to jump right in and ask the really interesting questions. Those typically consist of finding out about who our clients are, where they're located, etc. (factual questions). In other words, our demographic questions.

But if we don’t take the time to think about placement of these really important factual items within our surveys, we may be inadvertently affecting the results we see. By placing your demographic survey questions (name, gender, race/ethnicity, age, etc.) close to the end of the survey feedback form as opposed to right at the beginning, you are increasing the chances that respondents will fill out these items, leading to richer data collection and more useful results. Respondents are more likely to feel invested in your survey, and will understand why you are asking those personal questions if those sensitive items are placed after survey questions that address the purpose of your survey.

Check out these blog posts to get started with your demographic survey questions.

If you’ve ever looked at results from a public opinion survey or political poll, you’ve no doubt seen the margin or error noted alongside the findings.  Usually the note will read something like margin of error = plus or minus x%, CL 95%.

So what the heck does that mean?

Well, the first part basically tells you how close the results from your selected sample are compared to what you'd find if you surveyed the entire population.  The expression of “plus or minus x%” tells you that the percentages of given responses might be a bit higher or lower “in reality” (i.e., if you surveyed absolutely everyone).

Generalizability to the larger population is also described by an associated measure called a confidence level (CL). This term describes how confident you can be that your results are not due to chance alone.  A confidence level is normally set at either 90%, 95% or 99% (95% has become standard).

Let’s use an example to understand how these two concepts work:

A random sample of Americans were asked whether they preferred cake or ice cream for dessert.  The results showed that 60% preferred ice cream over cake, and 40% preferred cake over ice cream.  This question had a margin of error of +/- 3% at a 95% confidence level. What this means is that you can be 95% confident that the percentage of all Americans who prefer ice cream would fall between 57% and 63% (60 plus or minus 3).  Another way to put it would be as follows: if you conducted 100 surveys of the entire population, at least 95 times you would find that the percentage who preferred cake ranged from 37% to 43%.

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.

As market researchers, we are all aware of the many ways data can be gathered for a study. There is the online survey, telephone survey, in-person interview, direct mail questionnaire, email survey, focus groups and more.

Telephone surveys often yield decent response rates but can be difficult to conduct. A lot of people simply don’t want to be bothered on the phone and spend time answering poll questions. But phone surveys are great because you can ask all the questions and get clarification on any answers that don’t quite have the information you are looking for. The opportunity for that is of course not present in an online, email or direct mail survey.

A telephone survey is not going to work for every study, however. There are some products that won’t match up well. For example, a survey about a medical product is likely not one that anyone will want to discuss over the phone with a stranger.

For a consumer survey with a lot of feedback answers using numbered responses, an email questionnaire might be best as it could grow tedious and leave too much margin for error.

If it works, you can also combine survey methods and gather data both ways. When creating the surveys be sure to incorporate the differences into the call script and email. If it is necessary to have pre-screening questions for the phone interview, make them as concise as possible. Combining data collection methods is helpful and can achieve a more well-rounded result, but be careful about choosing the best method for your purposes.

There are literally dozens of ways respondents can misread and even misconstrue survey questions.  Some potential errors may be easily identified, while other errors can go unnoticed all the way up until data collection begins.  The possibility of a large number of respondents skipping the same questions, or customers providing invalid feedback because of faulty survey questionnaire design and implementation, are just two of the many reasons you should test-run a survey before sending out the real thing.  Conducting a pretest is the single best way to identify phrases subject to misinterpretations (and question design flaws in general).

Pretests (also referred to as pilot tests) are used to test the validity and reliability of individual survey questions, the entire questionnaire, and/or response scales.  While carrying out a pretest adds a step to your task list, the benefits of sending out a valid instrument far outweigh the costs of a pretest (which for online surveys usually means only extra time, not dollars).

To conduct a pretest, you first need to select a smaller survey sample that is still fairly representative of your target population.  You then have this pretest sample complete their surveys, while providing feedback about your questions, any technical concerns and other elements you feel could introduce bias or error into the process and subsequent results.  These respondents will no longer be eligible for actual survey participation since they will have been exposed to the questions ahead of time, but the process is well worth it.  The final step in the pretest is to analyze your results and decide how you should revise the survey to make it better and easier to complete.

One big caveat: make sure you use people unfamiliar with your research.  If you use colleagues or acquaintances who are knowledgeable about any relevant topics or technical issues, they may overlook correctable errors such as leading and loaded questions, faulty transitions and overly technical terminology.

By taking the extra step of conducting a pretest, you can gain valuable information from a small subset of people.  This will allow you to make the necessary and appropriate revisions, and in turn produce valid, reliable survey questionnaires for your formal survey research project.

Using Cvent’s Web Survey tool, you can choose to send your survey emails manually or setup a specific date and time for the emails to go out.

Manual Send is ideal to send emails to specific invitees from the target list. As you get the option to select:

1. Respondents by choosing which Contact Group the email needs to be sent to
2. Respondents that have not received the email before.
3. Manually enter the search details to search for particular respondent(s)
4. You can click on the Search Button to search for all respondents that have been added to this targeted list
Auto Send on the other hand is ideal to send out mass emails to every contact in the target list on a specific date and time. This feature is perfect to send out reminder email survey invitations to respondents who have not yet completed the online questionnaire or send confirmation emails to completed respondents thanking them for their time and feedback.


Along with these options, there are various other features that you can choose from in the Cvent email survey tool:

1. What format do you want to use to send this email?
Choose from both HTML and plain text or only plain text. If both HTML and plain text are selected, an invitee will receive either the HTML message or plain text message, depending on their email settings.

2. Click Tracking
A way to track which links are being clicked in HTML emails. You can run reports to determine which survey invitation emails and links are getting the most traffic. Turning on Click Tracking enables tracking in your HTML emails.

3. CC Option
Sending to a CC email address is available in all survey email templates. When the CC email recipient takes the survey, the primary contact’s information and email address will be pre-populated within the survey.

To use all these features for your organizations benefit. Sign up for a Free Trial Account now!

Increasing survey response rates is a major goal of most survey builders and market researchers. There's an art and a science to increasing campaign response rates whether it's an email marketing campaign or an online market research study. I wanted to share some of my tips for how to increase survey response rates:

• Make the email survey invitation from names easy to recognize. You can do this by including an individual's name within the organization that's well known (such as the CEO or if it's a client survey, the name of their sales rep). You can also use the organization's name, or both. For example, I'm subscribed to a few MarketingProf's newsletters. When they send out emails they include the same person's name and their organizations name so it looks like this: Anne, MarketingProfs. I recognize it everytime, and since I enjoy their newsletter, I made sure to open the email.

• Keep subject line's compelling, but short. The subject line and the From Name are the two most critical pieces to get your email opened. Try to keep your subject lines to 35 characters or less. You don't need to put the entire email in the subject line, but you do need to include enough information to make the recipients open the survey email.

• Create an attractive survey invitation. Studies have shown that well done HTML email messages get better response rates than plain text emails. With HTML you have the opportunity to include images, change font sizes, bold text, etc. Take advantage of this chance. It's one more way to get people to click through to your survey!

• Send personalized survey invitations. Personalizing your emails, even something as simple as including the recipient's name in the greeting, will return a higher response than a generic message. It creates a personal touch, and makes the recipient feel like someone took the time to send them a personal message (even though your email survey tool did it for you).

• Introduce the survey. Let the participants know why they should participate in your survey. If they don't understand why their opinion is important to your survey findings, why would they want to take the time to fill it out?

• How long will the survey take? Not setting expectations in the beginning for survey length leads to low response rates and high abandonment rates. Not what you want to see. If you don't let people know how long it will take to fill out your online survey, they're going to assume you're hiding something about how long it is. Tell them it will take X minutes or the survey is only Y questions long. Definitely be honest, if you lie here, you're going to hurt your future chances of getting those respondents to complete your next online survey questionnaire.

• Remind your survey sample that their responses will be kept confidential. This is particularly important for surveys about uncomfortable topics. For example, you created a poll for a public opinion survey to see how your population feels about an emotional topic such as abortion. If you don't keep the information confidential, you probably will not get honest feedback. Same thing goes with employee questionnaires, they should always be kept confidential and anonymous. Not keeping responses confidential will definitely hurt your response rate, as well as the validity of the data.

• Offer an incentive. Offering incentives is a proven method for increasing survey response rates. But this method doesn't work if you don't let people know about it up front. Put it in your email, put it on the welcome page of the survey, then make sure to follow up. Again, if you drop the ball here, the chances of that survey respondent completing your online survey form in the future is drastically reduced.

• Always say Thank You! Remember when your mom always made you write thank you notes when you got presents or cards from people for holidays and birthdays? It was because people like to feel their effort is noticed and appreciated. Same idea here, it's nice to just get a short note thanking them for their time. After all, survey respondents are doing you a favor.

• Don't over email your contact list. This is very important. You shouldn't be inviting the same people to complete your online surveys every month. It's important to segment your list using whichever survey sampling method that works best for your surveys to avoid email list fatigue. Make sure that you're coordinating with other campaigns as well. Just because you know they're different initiatives you're emailing about, your contact's wont necessarily see it that way. If you begin sending emails too frequently, contacts are going to just delete your email and never open it, opt out or report you as a spammer.

Have a tip that I missed? I'd love to hear it!

Before you select a sample or design a single question, the first step in a survey research project is to establish your goals and objectives.  With proper planning, time and attention given to this step, all subsequent steps will flow more smoothly. 

Ask yourself--and answer, in writing--broad questions such as the ones below, and then you can drill down into more specific research questions and move on to procedural matters.

What information am I seeking to gather?  Why do I need it?  What is the “end game” regarding what I’m trying to learn?

Who (exactly) can I get this information from?  How can I contact them?  How many people do I need to contact, and do I have an exhaustive list?  Am I interested in any particular subgroups?

Has anyone else done a similar project in the past?  If so, what did they find out and how could what they did help with my current project?

What kind of data and results do I want my questions to produce?  Am I interested in public opinion, actual behaviors, satisfaction levels, employee feedback/workplace surveys, etc.?  How will I go about collecting and analyzing the data?

How will my results be reported?   What will the report format look like, and who will receive the results?  What kind of summary data do I need, and how can I design questions with response options that will provide me with actionable data?

Establishing clear, attainable objectives and goals is of the utmost importance when undertaking a research study.  Your results will likely only be as clear as your objectives, for better or worse!

I was asked to complete a product market research survey today. The product survey asked me a series of questions about possible products related to improving my beer drinking experience. One of the many things I didn't like about this survey was they never asked me if I thought there was a problem.

For example, one of the possible products was for a different method of carrying beer. Unfortunately, I'm perfectly happy with my current method: keeping the beer in the package it comes in. The suggested product would make me move the bottles from their packaging to take them somewhere. I'm not interested in that extra step. Did they ask me why I wouldn't by the product? Nope. They only asked if I would.

Maybe for their survey research goals, that's all they cared about: Would I buy the product, Yes or No? Kelli mentioned in a post earlier today that it's important to gather product feedback on a smaller scale before launching a bigger market research study. The goal of this market research questionnaire easily could have been to identify which product ideas should be considered for further qualitative and quantitative research. Only products where more than 20% of survey respondents indicated they would be interested in purchasing will have more research around it.

On the other hand, I like to make sure my position is clear when completing attitude surveys. This is probably a respondent bias I bring to the table because I spend so much time sharing online survey best practices. I know that often survey questions are written in a way that doesn't always collect the data the survey creator wants. They just don't always write the right questions. So avoid being "mis-quoted" so to speak, I like to be able to answer a series of question about why I feel one way or another.

Believe me, there were a lot of poorly written survey questions in the feedback form, as well as other issues with their data collection method. I've found that where there is one serious problem with a survey template, there are others hidden as well. If you're worried your survey questionnaire may have problems, go ahead and ask our online survey Professional Services Group to take a look. We're always happy to help.

Looking for sample market research survey questions? Here are a few sample product survey questions you can use in your next product research survey:

Private businesses tend to guard findings from their research efforts very closely.  In some instances, where significant investment dollars and time were spent on sampling frames and reporting, this makes sense.  It's nice to have proprietary research at your disposal to impress clients and customers, and internal employee survey results, for example, may be reserved for senior leaders.

But in most cases, I suggest sharing your survey results with as many people as possible.  The benefits outweigh the perceived drawbacks.  After all, most survey research comes from of a specific point-in-time sample, and whatever narrow edge you may get from keeping the results private will be short-lived.

At minimum, you should share the results of your survey with respondents themselves.  People like to know what they're a part of (and why).  In fact, offering to provide respondents with survey results has been shown to increase response rates! 

It's a great idea to set up partnerships with community leaders before you even send out your community attitude survey.  Publicize your organization and your efforts toward being proactive.  Let your community know that you value them and are interested in feedback and suggestions about the process.  Create anticipation and eagerness to both complete questionnaires and receive the results after the survey is completed.

You can also organize a press release highlighting selected findings from your survey.  This can be posted on your website and in other locations (external websites, community hotspots, etc.).   Call local news organizations if you think the results would appeal to their audiences.  Tell all who will listen how you've made original contributions to the knowledge of your industry, and how you will improve business practices based on your results.

Market research is incredibly useful at any stage of the game. Though starting out small may seem like an unnecessary step, sometimes it works out better for you and your client. A thorough study is necessary for any new product or service launch. When dealing with a NEW concept, you may want to conduct a smaller initial study to gauge interest level before continuing.

When conducting the smaller study, set criteria for continuation of the study. Criteria for every client and every study will be different, but the goal of setting parameters should always be the same. Decide what percentage of respondents must be interested in order for you to further develop the concept before continuing the study.

For example, if you gathering product feedback for a major cleaning product company about a brand-new product, you might want 60% of product market research survey respondents to express an interest in order to develop the study further. A full product market research study is extremely time-consuming - the entire project will likely include multiple online product surveys, focus groups and other data-gathering methods.

Market research projects like this have a lot of moving parts - your team will have to write survey questions, compile results and create presentations based on their market research analysis of the data. If it turns out that only 20% of respondents are interested in the new product, it may be better to return to the development phase before continuing with the study.

Even though it might be tempting to forge ahead, particularly in lean economic times, your clients will appreciate you more if you save them time, effort and money by starting out small.

How do you use 360 feedback surveys? Many people don't believe in doing 360 surveys, others will hang their hats on them. No matter how you slice it, there are some risks associated with conducting annonymouse 360 degree feedback surveys: Hurt feelings, burnt bridges, career retibution, etc. I think these are all fair. Even though giving and receiving feedback is important (and essential!), it's hard to not take comments personal. Many of us fail to really see the value of feedback and lack the introspective skills to apply this valuable perspective to our personal development.

So the real question is, how have you conducted 360 surveys in the past? Have they been successful? How did you use the data collected?

I think it's important to keep in mind that 360 degree feedback surveys are best used to begin the conversation. If it's not well managed, it can quickly take a turn for the worst and just become lots of negative rants. This isn't what you want. These feedback surveys should be used for development purposes, not to trash talk coworkers. Using these surveys to get the conversation started helps make the topics that society tells us are "no-nos" okay to talk about.

I'd love to hear your experiences with 360 degree surveys.

At the beginning of the week, I shared the first 10 tips from the Meetings & Convention article, Survey Science: How to craft more effective attendee evaluations, in Part I and Part II of this post. The first ten event survey tips include several of your typical online survey best practices: set clear survey objectives at the beginning, create clear survey questions, think about question flow, vary your question types, etc. While the last five tips shared in the article are still good online survey tips, they do focus a little more on event and conference surveys.

11. Avoid the spam folder. Once upon a time, spam folders weren't something paper survey designers worried about. It's a different story now with email survey invitations. Nat Estes, an account executive here at Cvent, shared his tips in this article: Avoid using all caps in the subject line, avoid the word "free" and the use of lots of dollar signs or exclamation points. These tips apply to both sending reminder survey invitations as well as the initial invite.

12. Offer incentives. We've talked about how incentives tend to boost survey response rates in the past. Offers can include free products/samples, cash, gift cards and drawings, or it can even go the route of sharing the survey report after the survey is over.

13. Use pre-meeting surveys. Post-attendee surveys are no brainers at this point, but they don't always tell the whole story. Think of this survey questionnaire example, the post-seminar survey shows that the majority of the attendees have a positive impression of a product. The planner doesn't know if their impression was changed because of the seminar, or everyone already had a positive impression before the event. The reverse could be true as well. The majority of registrants may have had a positive impression before, and after the event had a negative impression. Something went really wrong! But if you don't ask pre-event survey questions, you're not going to be able to track the change. Not to mention the benefits of asking other pre-event survey questions about what they want to get out of event, etc.

14. Use regret event surveys. As a leader in the event management space, this tip is near and dear to our hearts here at Cvent. Most people make the mistake of just forgetting about those people who say they can't come, "They don't matter." This is definitely the wrong approach. Every planner should want to know why people aren't coming to their event. Regret event surveys should be kept short, only a few questions. The questions should try to find out if the invitee is still interested in the topic or product, why they can't come (schedule conflict, not in the budget, etc.).

15. Conclusions? Don't Jump! Lots of us look at survey results and draw conclusions about the entire target population based on a small survey sample. If your event survey has low response rates, don't make drastic change's just because that's what the survey data pointed to. Think about how representative the sample was, and if the changes make sense.

Hopefully everyone will consider asking attendees to give feedback through survey questionnaires or comment cards after the event. If you get really adventurous, you can set up survey kiosks at the event using a kiosk survey system (My suggestion? Cvent.) to catch attendees while your event is still top of mind.

The research is mixed regarding the extent of the effect that prenotification letters have on survey response rates.  But since most studies do show at least a modest increase in survey completion rates, it’s a good idea to send a prenotification to your sample survey respondents. 

The most frequent reason cited for not using prenotification letters in mail and telephone surveys was the cost -- but you are using online survey software where the “letter” is an email, so that’s not a very good reason anymore.  Yes, your respondents are receiving an extra message from you, but sending a prenotification email serves other valuable purposes as well:

1) The letter describes the purpose of the survey, to whom it is being sent, and a description of who is conducting it.  Here’s a chance for you to introduce (or reintroduce) yourself to your customers.  It can also serve as a notice for changes or new ways of business on which you’d like their feedback.

2) The letter provides you an opportunity to “hook” respondents, and they will then expect to receive your survey (and hence you can gather their valuable feedback).  Tell them exactly why they were selected for the survey, and that their opinions matter. 

3) You can let them know (in advance) the incentive that they will receive if they complete your survey.  With a prenotification letter, you’re providing the proper justification for why they should give their time and effort to you.

Most survey poll creators will agree that while respondents always prefer to have choices explained clearly in words and phrases, numbers are much easier and far more effective when drawing inferences from the data collected. Take this typical sample customer service satisfaction survey question:


The client satisfaction survey sample question above from a measuring customer service sample survey looks much better by listing the choices as "Very Satisfied/Dissatisfied" as opposed to asking respondents to check one of the numbers between 1-5.


However, when the survey data collection is complete and it's time for data analysis and running survey reports, many survey administrators are left scratching their heads. What analysis do they draw from the individual number and percentage of respondents listed as "Neither Satisfied nor Dissatisfied", how to they compare these percentages to last year’s survey on a category by category basis and still draw an overall inference? How do they know the percentage increase in the level of satisfaction? Is it better to have a large number of people fall into the neutral category?

The answer to all these questions is the same – Export Values. The ultimate tool for anyone looking to analyze the data they have collected. Using Export Values the survey builder can assign a number (or a different word or phrase if you like) to answers as well as questions in their survey! In other words, instead of going through the never-ending text of questions and answers trying to find some semblance of meaning in the data, the questions in your report could be listed as CS1, CS2, CS3, etc. and the answers as 1,2,3,4 and 5 for each question. After exporting the Expanded Answer Details for All Respondents (the survey report with Export Values) to Excel, you can even use these numbers to calculate a mean or average – how much easier would it be for the decision makers in your organization to see the response to the above question summarized into a single number:


A case in point is our survey clients who go a step further and used this feature to export just such a report to Excel and then analyze it using SPSS and other survey research analysis software. For those of you who are already drooling over the prospect of generating such accurate feedback for your organization, export values are pre-included in your Cvent Web Surveys Professional or Enterprise account. Go on, generate that perfect report – you can thank me later.