Survey Analysis

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.

While designing a web surveys is fairly simple, make sure you are aware of common online survey pitfalls so you can avoid them:

• Plan the correct date and time to send survey invitation emails and consider your target audience. If your survey sample is office workers, it would be best to send it out during the work week when they will be at a computer most of each day. Do a little research on what the best day is – while it is widely known that Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays are not optimal, there is always new information on this topic. Don’t forget to consider the time zone of recipients too – if you are sending something that will land at 7 p.m. their time, it will likely be buried or forgotten by morning.

• Create your questions carefully. In an online web survey, the respondents are obviously on their own. You can’t clarify things for them. Make sure the questions are clear and easy to understand.

• Keep the open-ended questions to a minimum or you will be poring through the answers for hours. Respondents tend to be more forthcoming with electronic surveys, and this is a positive thing. But just because you can get all those open-ended responses, you may not really want them. Always be thinking ahead to how you will analyze survey data and present findings.

• Entice the respondents to take the survey. Many times online surveys fail to offer enough incentive. Even though online surveys are more convenient, the respondents are still volunteering their time and should be rewarded.

When you plan your online market research study, you still need to remember the standard steps for any market research project, plus some online specific tasks:


The time frame for an online study is, as discussed previously, often shorter because of the immediacy of the results. Keep this in mind but be sure to give yourself enough time to analyze survey responses.

It is crucial that you consider reporting a main element of your web survey design at the outset of your research project.  What you can say about your results hinges heavily on the types of analyses your questions and the capabilities of your response scales.  Today, I will outline the difference between the two major branches of statistical analysis available for most survey data: descriptive and inferential.

Descriptive statistics are the basic measures used to describe survey data.  They consist of summary descriptions of single variables (also called “univariate” analysis) and the associated survey sample.  Examples of descriptive statistics for survey data include frequency and percentage response distributions, measures of central tendency (which include the mean, median and mode), and dispersion measures such as the range and standard deviation, which describe how close the values or responses are to central tendencies.

Inferential statistics offer more powerful analyses to be performed on your online web survey data.  As the names suggests, this branch of statistics is concerned with making larger inferences about social phenomena.  This can include associations between variables, how well your sample represents a larger population, and cause-and-effect relationships.  Some examples of inferential statistics commonly used in survey data analysis are t-tests that compare group averages, analyses of variance, correlation and regression, and advanced techniques such as factor analysis, cluster analysis and multidimensional modeling procedures.

By designing online questionnaires and survey web forms with a good idea of what you want to do with your data after it's collected, you can create cohesive, powerful reports and presentations. Need more tips for how to analyze survey data, read some of these data analysis posts.

There are many options available to market researchers when designing a web survey form. I covered this topic a bit last week when I discussed creating online surveys, and included some dos and don’ts.

Conducting a study for the Web offers several opportunities for market researchers that paper questionnaires do not. For example, you can create an instant survey and check on responses frequently for updates. You may even allow the respondents to view the current results when they complete the survey. This works best for one or two-question quick polls rather than longer studies. But knowing they will see the results immediately is frequently a tipping point for respondents who are on the fence about completing your feedback survey form.

This can be helpful in analyzing survey data as well. For example, suppose results for your online survey form vary wildly throughout one week. One day, 10% of respondents use your client’s brand of glass cleaner. The next day, it’s 65%, but then the following day it drops back down to 20%. This could mean something (possibly that you need to check your recipient list) and is good information to track for your client.

The instant results also allow you to add more questions and gain clarification on points you may not have considered prior to launching the survey form. There are dozens of survey web software tools available that can create instant survey results – it’s a method that is worth trying out, but as always, consider your client’s needs before committing to a particular survey method.

Completing a study is just the first step in the market research process. A good researcher knows there is plenty of work left to be done analyzing survey data and taking action on survey results.

Stay in touch with the client and schedule presentations of the research. If you have a client contact assigned to the project, go over the preliminary survey data to see what key findings they feel are the most important to share. Create presentations around these key findings. You can also create separate market survey reports for different groups within the same company.

For example, if you have just completed a large product survey that includes feedback on customer satisfaction, the client may want a presentation simply on customer feedback for their customer service team.

A good researcher also has an eye for finding problems. If you notice an area for improvement in the course of your market research analysis, propose a solution to that problem for the client. Take this market research survey example, customers complain about being on hold too long when calling customer service. You could propose several ideas from hiring more staff to setting time goals for staff to talk to customers.

Even though the client may not agree with your solution ideas, ignoring problems you identify through the research is a bad idea. The client is paying you to compile and analyze research data, and they will likely appreciate all your efforts even if the information does not fit in with their current business plan.

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.

In today’s world a lot of organizations from various industries conduct surveys to get the feedback about their products or services. Responses collected from survey respondents are used to further improve the quality of the products or services.

But do the survey writers and builders have enough time to spend creating the surveys, running the survey reports, analyzing survey data and sending the presentation to their bosses for the review?

There is a solution to this: Cvent's Survey Professional Services Group. Cvent offers a variety of online survey surveys to get your survey campaigns up and running with minimal time and effort on your part.

Survey Building: Let Cvent turn your paper survey or list of questions into a professional online survey. Web survey services team can review your questions and responses, as well as add conditional logic to make sure your electronic survey is designed to capture accurate, reliable data points.

Graphic Design Services: The skilled designers on our survey design services team can create professional looking surveys that can match a desired look and feel, be consistent with your organization's branding, and even feature embedded media.

Summary and Analysis Reports: Surveys create a lot of data - combing through it to find the meaningful trends is time-consuming work. Cvent's Survey Professional Services Group takes the pain out of analyzing survey data, because we'll turn your piles of data into eye-catching, boardroom-ready reports that highlight the business intelligence that matters to you. The report looks great, and so will you.

How to get most out of your project?

Most people conducting surveys today are not trained survey experts. A little help from our online survey professional services enables you to get the most out of your project - even if it's your first survey.

Strategy Consultation: Not completely sure how best to use web based surveys in your organization? Talk to one of our experts to learn what kinds of questions and responses you should include to accomplish your organizational goals.

Question/Response Review and Commentary: Before you send personalized email survey invitations out into the world, let our Survey Professional Services Group review it and make recommendations to improve the quality of your survey data.

List Procurement and Response Generation: Cvent can connect you to your target demographic and build your survey sample list, helping you capture accurate, meaningful data.

Turnkey Project Management: At times it's best to leave things to the experts - talk to us about letting Cvent run your survey campaign from start to finish.

Yesterday, I shared the first 5 tips from the Meetings & Convention article, Survey Science: How to craft more effective attendee evaluations. No one can deny the importance of measuring customer satisfaction, so why wouldn't you want to conduct a post-event survey to measure attendee satisfaction? Particularly if it's an annual conference, meeting or tradeshow. If you want attendees to keep coming to your events, you need to make sure you're gathering feedback on what worked well, what didn't, what should be included next year.

In continuing with the fifteen survey best practices shared in the article, here are the next five:

6. Be careful with demographic survey questions. This tip comes from our very own Eric Eden, VP of Marketing here at Cvent. Survey respondents don't always like to share all their demographic information on surveys. If you already have the information from registration, match it up later. Otherwise, if demographic information is a must for your survey analysis then make sure to put them at the end of the survey.

7. Ask intensity questions. You don't want to just ask yes-or-no questions. You want to know the degree with which the survey respondent agrees or disagrees with your statement. For example, don't ask if you should include public speaking skills at your next training conference, instead ask how valuable the attendees would find a session on public speaking. Asking these types of questions in the pre-event survey can help you prioritize the agenda. If you get a lot of weak interest for one session, you may want to include the session that got fewer, but more passionate, votes instead.

8. Offer a midpoint. As I've mentioned in the past, there are passionate arguments among market researchers about how many points should be on your scale. This article suggests going with an odd number scale because it has a true midpoint.

9. Questionnaire design should be balanced. This is another suggestion by Eric I fully agree with. Survey design is a definite skill. Some people try to write a lot of open-ended questions when they're working on designing survey questionnaires because they think they get better data. This is a mistake. You want to have a mix of close-ended questions (multiple select, single select, rank questions) and open-ended questions. The best surveys will include more closed-ended questions. They provide you with better data and are much easier when it comes to the survey data analysis.

10. Introduce the survey. We've gone over this many times. It's important to introduce your questionnaire. In the introduction you want to explain what the survey is about and why you're conducting it. By providing survey respondents with this information, you're likely to see a higher response rate. Introductions get "buy in" from the survey sample, they see that the data collection is important and are more likely to complete your survey.

Do you have anything to add to these conference and seminar survey tips? What questions have you asked in pre-conference surveys to  help you plan the event?

Many people ask the question How do I create a customer survey? The basic steps are the same no matter what type of client survey you're writing: customer satisfaction, global market research, product development surveys, etc.

Step 1: Sit down and figure out what the goal of the survey is. Are you trying to identify upsell opportunities? Want to discover features missing from your current product? Figuring out if it's a good idea to take your marketing overseas and attack a global market? In the very beginning of the survey planning process, you should know what it is you want to get out of the consumer survey. If you don't have a firm customer satisfaction survey objectives in the beginning, while you go through the other steps such as writing survey questions or selecting the best survey software, you're going to stray from the path. If you stray from the path, you may find the final survey results are not as helpful as you had hoped.

Step 2: Decide on a research methodology. Your goals should help you on this step as well. You need to first decide if you're planning to do qualitative or quantitative research. From there narrow the scope further, if you want to do qualitative research are you interested in focus groups, advisory boards, one-on-one interviews? With quantitative research you may decide on comment cards, feedback forms and surveys. Is your survey method going to be online, telephone-based or paper questionnaires?

Step 3: Survey Design. I'm making the assumption since you're reading a survey blog about how to create customer surveys, you're not interested in the other market research methods right now so I'm going to focus on the process of building customer surveys. Once you've gotten through the first two steps, you're ready to start writing survey questions (Finally! I bet you thought this would be the first step!). Customer satisfaction survey design can be the biggest challenge. Luckily, there is survey designing software to help you step through this. Survey software tools often have templates and question libraries to help you write good survey questions.

Step 4: Data collection. Okay, you've picked your customer survey methodology, created a client survey and you're ready to field your survey (or use the data collection tool in your survey application to collect responses). Exactly what you do in this step will depend on what type of survey you decided to collected: telephone, paper, online. One way to get survey responses is to use email marketing tools to send personalized email surveys. You can also share the link on your website, social media sites, invoices, etc.

Step 5: Analyze customer feedback. Analyzing survey data is one of people's least favorite parts of the surveying process. We have some tips for how to analyze survey data here. Don't be afraid of this step. You need to conduct the survey customer analysis to achieve your goal. It's what you set out to do, so keep your chin up. You're only a step away from the final product (and once you choose survey analysis methods you should be almost finished).

Step 6: Share the survey findings. This is what you set out to do. Get answers to your customer questions. Take the customer feedback analysis you completed in the last step and format it. You're creating a survey report you can share within your organization (and maybe with others outside of your organization). If you need tips for creating survey reports or an example survey report, you can read more about them here.

Step 6.1: Take action. This is still part of step 6, but it's important enough it should be broken out. In your customer analysis survey report, you should have shared your recommendations for moving forward. Make sure you make recommendations and there is an agreement about moving forward based on the customer survey findings. If you don't plan to take action in Step 1, then you should save yourself the time of conducting the customer research in the first place.

Any other survey research design tips? How have you used these steps to create a customer survey that improved processes in your organization?

A year ago, the Cvent Web Surveys Blog posted it's first post. Over the past year, we've shared many survey best practices with you that can be applied to online surveys and paper questionnaires alike. Here's a list of some of our most popular posts:

• Tips For Providing Survey Incentives: We get asked all the time about incentives and their place in survey research. There are arguements for and against offering survey incentives. This post isn't about those sides. Instead, it focuses on tips for offering survey incentives if that's the path you choose to go down.

• Offering An Additional Comment Section Is An Online Survey Must: Simply asking for customer or employee feedback implies you're ready to make changes, you want to identify problems and fix them. If you fail to offer a "last ditch effort" with and additional comments (optional) question type, 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.

• Survey Question Flow Impacts Survey Findings: Question order is an important part of good survey design. Whether it's a paper survey on customer satisfaction or an online questionnaire to gather employee feedback, how you order your survey questions could impact your survey findings.

• Survey Report Tips: Writing the Executive Summary or Setting the Stage: When writing a survey report, you can't just launch into the survey responses and the data collection results. You need to provide the report reader with some general background information about the survey project including why you ran the survey, what the goals were, what the data collection methods were. Then you can summarize the results and make recommendations.

• Five Steps to Begin Interpreting Online Survey Results: The hardest part of any survey project is creating the questionnaire. If you design a good survey and plan the analysis, interpreting the data should be a walk in the park. Make sure to review these five easy steps for analyzing survey data.

• Analyze Open-Ended Questions Faster with a Quick Trick: We all know using closed questions are easier to analyze. But sometimes they just don't cut it. This post gives you a quick six step process for how to analyze survey data quickly to summarize survey responses without spending days on the survey analysis.

• Difference Between Causation vs. Correlation in Survey Data: To be able to prove causation, you need to be able to rule out all other possible explanations for the connection. This post aims to debunk the myth that correlations found in survey data means that one thing caused the other.

• What To Look For When You Move Your Online Survey To Test Mode: It's definitely an online survey best practice to move your web survey to test mode before sending it out to your survey sample. Make sure to use this 7 step checklist to avoid any online survey pitfalls.

• Market Research Process: 6 Steps to Project Success: When working on survey research projects - be it a customer satisfaction survey or product development survey or a staff performance review form - you should always follow this six step process to make sure you get the maximum return on investment from your survey project.

• Online Survey Question Pitfalls—And How to Avoid Them: This post points out common online survey pitfalls that are in surveys all the time. However, identifying problems with your work performance assessment or customer feedback questions is only half the battle.

You have to know where you’re going, if you ever plan to get there. These are certainly words of wisdom, if I’ve ever heard them. I remember my dad saying something like this to me when I was trying to decide on a major in college. Since my undergraduate major would likely affect the type of job I secured after graduation, my dad just wanted to make sure that I was thinking long-term when I made my “major” decision.

The concept of “thinking ahead” is a good one to grasp when it comes to a lot of things in life, including designing web surveys. If you stop reading this post here, please just remember this: Think about how you want to analyze and report on your data BEFORE you start building surveys in Cvent's Web Survey software! Below, I have included a short list of important things to think about, no matter which of the different survey formats you choose:


As long as you have considered these things before you launch your survey and send out email survey invitations, you are golden! You will undoubtedly find that your life will be much easier when you are analyzing survey data and reporting survey results on the collected data.

Survey reports in the Cvent Web Surveys software tool offer a wide variety of ways to view your data and begin conducting your market research survey analysis. The answer summary by question report, for example, pulls up a table, a graph and basic statistical analysis for each survey question. Another example survey report, answer details by respondent, offers you the option of seeing each respondent’s answers on a separate page or answer details for all respondents gives you the opportunity to see all the answers for all respondents on a single page!

But sometimes these are not enough when you want to make a professional report for your boss to present to the board members. This is exactly why Cvent has the presentations feature within the survey application. The presentations section allows you to create reports with unique combinations of filters and display options. You can use our presentations creator to access data views that are unavailable with other out-of-the-box survey reports. Creating distributable reports in the Cvent Web Surveys software tool makes it easy to communicate the survey results in either Word or PDF format.

To determine what you see on each page of your sample report, choose from the options below:

Does it matter if not everyone takes your survey? What if only half your survey sample actually completes the survey questionnaire - or a third? You're never going to get everyone you invite to complete your survey. Those people conducting employee surveys, such as employee opinion surveys or workplace surveys will see the highest response rates on their survey projects. Some HR surveys see response rates as high as 90%. But if you're conducting a consumer survey, help desk satisfaction survey or customer feedback survey 90% response rates may be out of your reach.

The question remains, if I'm never going to get everyone, do those who didn't voluntarily complete your survey matter? Absolutely. Like with most things related to market research, there has been a lot of research to uncover the truth: are survey respondents different from non-respondents? It seems that research points to yes. Even early responders and late responders different, and this is probably due to interest in the survey.

There are a few things you can do to boost your response rates and limit your nonresponse bias.

1. Send email invitation reminders and partial response reminders to those on your email list. Two things happen when you do this, the first, you catch people who never even read your first email. The second benefit is you remind people who were willing to complete your survey but forgot about it.

2. Make sure there aren't any errors in your survey design. Double check your survey question logic, your question and answer choices, your graphical survey template, even your introduction on the survey welcome page.

3. Keep it short. This is a general survey best practice tip you should always follow. While there's not much you can do after you have already sent out email survey invitations and begun the data collection process, you should remember to keep your surveys short and limit the number of survey questions during the survey design phase.

It's important to keep non-response bias in mind when you're analyzing survey data and drawing conclusions from your market research results. Are your respondents different from your non-respondents? Perhaps only heavy users completed the survey, or only people with full time jobs, or only single individuals. Do those who opted not to complete your survey have a different opinion? These are the types of questions you need to ask yourself when evaluating your survey data. In some cases, it may not matter, in others it could cause you to make a decision based on skewed results.

When undertaking survey research projects, many organizations treat reporting as secondary to designing an instrument (the survey questionnaire), selecting a survey sample, and managing data collection activities. While these aspects are important, project managers would be well-served to make reporting an integral consideration at the outset in planning and conducting a survey. By prioritizing survey reporting early on, you can clarify objectives, ensure cohesiveness throughout the project’s life-cycle, and emphasize data-driven decision making. Reporting considerations affect what survey questions you will ask, how you will ask them, and even what you will be able say about your survey results.

Keep the following kinds of questions in mind during the questionnaire design phase (and avoid unwelcome surprises when it comes time to analyze survey results and reporting):

Just because you find correlation in your data when analyzing survey results does not mean there is causation. I find this is a common mistake in lots of survey reports when someone is new to survey research or conducting data analysis. Take this example:


Some people see this connection as a causation. Customers are satisfied because you contact them frequently to make sure everything is going well. The problem is, it's not a causation. Causation are extremely hard to prove because you cannot control every factor. For example, you may split your territory by industry and your solution suits some industries better than others. Or clients who are really satisfied simply use the product more often so the customer success managers reach out to them more frequently, because they are more likely to have questions. While those who use the product less have less to be satisfied about and may feel they are wasting those budget dollars.

To be able to prove causation, you need to be able to rule out all other possible explanations for the connection. As you can imagine, that's almost impossible to do since we do not control outside factors influencing the survey respondent or even the greater survey sample. Instead, when situations like these occur, we're seeing a correlation between two things. In my customer survey question examples, there's a correlation between how satisfied customers and how often they are contacted.

This principle does not only apply to customer survey research, it also applies to analyzing employee feedback forms, product surveys, market research and any other type of data collection and analysis.

Post-conference surveys can be a nightmare to design. The vast majority of conferences these days involve numerous sessions and speakers, and not everyone attends all of the sessions or hears all of the speakers. How is it possible to design a survey where only the people who attended a particular session answer the relevant questions for that session?

With advanced logic, this is indeed possible. The Association for Fundraising Professionals is just one of Cvent’s survey clients who can attest to the incredible value and utility of advanced survey question logic when it comes to designing a survey to collect post-conference feedback. After seeking advice from the Cvent Web Surveys Client Services team, AFP applied advanced logic to their post-event survey, so that only those survey respondents who had attended each session saw the survey questions about that session. The first survey question asked respondents which session(s) they had attended, and after that, people saw the appropriate set(s) of questions for them.

Although it sometimes takes a while to “get a hang of it,” advanced logic is an absolutely indispensable feature to survey writers. Instead of formatting separate surveys for each of the sessions, the survey creator was relieved they were able to collect all of their responses using one survey and advanced logic. The advantages to distributing just one survey as opposed to multiple surveys are numerous, but one of the most important advantages to using one survey is the time that you save during reporting. Having all of your data in one place is certainly a huge plus when running survey reports and analyzing survey data collected.

In April, we added a Cvent Web Surveys software feature to allow survey creators to import responses from outside sources. Last month, we added a new feature that will save you a lot of time creating client questionnaire, or product feedback surveys or employee 360 feedback forms. Whether your data collection methods are telephone surveys or paper questionnaires, importing question as a batch instead of manually entering them began saving users time before getting to the meaty task of analyzing survey data.

Whether you're migrating to our survey software system from another online survey tool or making the jump from paper questionnaires and paper survey design software to online surveys, being able to import your questions in a batch rather than creating survey questions one at a time is a huge time saver. You certainly don't need me to tell you cutting a few minutes here and there leaves you more time to do other tasks.

Using various survey question types in your survey is important, we've mentioned it as a survey best practice before, and you can import all 19 different question types using a single spreadsheet.

When you begin creating your next survey, you'll see an additional button at the top of the design survey questions section. If you click Import Questions, a 5 step survey creation wizard will walk you through the steps of importing your questions, including mapping the fields in your spreadsheet to the fields in Cvent.


After completing the wizard, all your questions will be added to the end of your online survey questionnaire. If you're just creating a simple survey, you're done. If it's a more complex online survey questionnaire, you can go through and apply any survey question logic and page breaks to improve the survey respondent experience.

Have a question about how to improve your next online survey using our new features? Contact our client services team via email at customercare@cvent.com or by phone at 866-318-4357.

I came across this definition of a client survey on CSM that I think is useful:


I might disagree with the fact that a client feedback form is automatically objective, but with the right client survey question creation and survey method it a client survey can be pretty close to completely objective. What the definition does not point out is just because you conduct a client satisfaction survey, decisions wont be made for you. You need to take steps to analyze survey results after the data collection. Customer surveys give you the opportunity to review customer and client feedback and analyze results to get you going down the right decision making path.

So what can conducting client satisfaction questionnaires help you do?


We have some tips for how to analyze survey data - which is the goal of your client satisfaction right? To be able to analyze survey responses and use the data to make decisions.

Did you know there are 6 steps in the market research process?  While this process speaks directly to marketing research professionals, the process applies to HR, customer or education surveys as well:

1. Identify and define the problem.  Before you start any web survey project, you should identify the key issues you hope to be able to solve.  This step should also include clearly defined objectives.
    
2. Develop the approach. In this step, you need to establish a budget, understand influencing factors such as the environment or economy, decide on sampling and survey methods, and formulating hypotheses.
    
3. Research design. Designing a survey or questionnaire is considered the most important step in any survey process.  Question design takes a lot of thought and time.  We like to say, "If you put garbage in, you'll get garbage out."  This means that if the questions are bad, the data will be bad as well.  During the survey research design, keep in mind sampling methods and data analysis factors you intend to use.
    
4. Collect the data. Don't forget to test your survey before to ensure you're fielding the correct data.  Thankfully, with the help of an online survey tool, this step is relatively painless.
    
5. Analyze the Data. The types of analysis you planned to perform on the collected survey data should have been decided in earlier steps, but after collecting the data you have to actually perform the survey analysis.  Analysis can be performed using survey analysis tools like office programs, such as Excel, or more advanced programs such as SPSS - the complexity of the questions will determine this.
    
6. Report, Present, Take Action.  The final step in the market research process is to present your survey research findings and draw conclusions.  While Step 3 is the most important because it defines the outcome of your survey, if you fail to complete this last step and act on the findings in some way, the previous steps don't matter. 

As I mentioned in the beginning, this same process can be applied to any type of project: product evaluations, customer satisfaction questionnaires, public relation surveys, etc.  If you give each step the attention it deserves, each of your online surveys should be a success.