Kiosk Survey Software

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.

I've been asked a lot recently what's the difference is between Cvent Web Surveys branch logic and our advanced survey logic features. I can definitely see where various types of survey question logic can get confusing. Hopefully this post will eliminate the confusion! When you're creating an online survey, it's important to include question logic so survey respondents only see questions that make sense for them.

BRANCH LOGIC:

Take the following example business survey questions:


I hope you can see it doesn't make sense to ask people who saw a TV ad about how they found you on search, and vice versa is also true. But you do want to know more about how they found you through a search and have a series of questions you want to ask. Branch logic allows you do do this. You can add "branches" to your survey so only those survey respondents who saw the TV ad see questions about the ad and those who used search see quesitons about search. I think this graphic does a pretty good job of explaining how branch logic works:


ADVANCED LOGIC:

Advanced logic has the same principle, you only want people to see questions that are relevant to them. However, using advanced logic gives you more freedom to narrow down who sees a question based on up to four criteria. You can pull criteria from a survey respondent's contact information (assuming you're not conducting an anonymous survey) and how they responded to previous questions.


What this means is only people who have Marketing in their title, work in California, heard about the organization from word of mouth and did not select option A in question 8 will see this question. Unlike Branch Logic where you control a set of questions by direction a survey respondent down a path, Advanced Logic allows you to only show questions to "qualified" respondents.

Adding in logic, whether it's branch, skip, advanced or pipe improves the respondent experience and keeps them engaged. More engaged respondents mean higher response rates and lower abandonment rates. If you're in the market for kiosk survey software, market research tools, or just an online survey system that will allow you to collect customer feedback or conduct employee surveys, make sure you ask what types of question logic are supported by their enterprise feedback management solution.

While I spend a lot of time writing about the value and cost effectiveness of conducting surveys online, sometimes you want to collect responses through multiple channels. Depending on your target population, multiple channels may be necessary to ensure a representative sample. Not everyone in your population will have access to the internet, or you may not have their email to send them a web survey invitation.

What do you do? Add additional channels to your survey method. The obvious additions could be paper and telephone surveys.

If you decide to call your survey sample, web survey software can still be your data collection tool. Setting a Cvent online survey to kiosk survey mode allows the interviewer to complete the survey based on the responses he or she receives over the phone, then complete the survey again for the next respondent. Using the mode for the kiosk survey system allows you to collect all response data in one place and take advantage of survey reporting features offered by the online survey tool.

Telephone surveys may still be out of the picture for you, but paper surveys are still a viable channel. While someone might point out that it's not a very green option, I'll spare you. You probably already know that, but you've weighed the extra cost of conducting paper questionnaires and decided they're necessary. Using Cvent you can quickly transform your web based survey to a paper version complete with printed instructions for questions that include survey question logic. When you collect the responses to your paper survey, you can easily import batch responses into Cvent. This allows you to keep all your surveys and responses in one centralized location.

Web surveys don't always need to be distributed by email. In fact, you may come across many instances where a different distribution method of your survey is required. That's why Cvent's software is equipped with the ability to offer your web survey in a number of ways.

One such option is to offer a survey in "kiosk mode." Perhaps you are hosting an event and want to gather feedback with a post-event survey. Using any kiosk or laptop connected to the Internet, you can make your web survey available on-site so that guests can take it before, during or after the event. The survey is automatically refreshed after each respondent, so it's simple to reach a number of people in a short time.

Another great use for a online questionnaires in kiosk survey mode? Draw attendees to your booth or desk at an event with multiple vendors, such as a tradeshow. You can run a contest or raffle in exchange for guests taking a few minutes to fill out your trade show survey through the kiosk survey system. You'll capture useful contact information and informative responses as you increase traffic to your booth. The capability to offer your web surveys in kiosk mode adds yet another way to capture the audience and information you're looking for.