Survey Application

It is tempting to include many similar question types with similar response options in your online survey design.  Matrix questions, for example, provide an efficient questionnaire design method to help you gather lots of data in a neat, brief survey form.  It is wise, however, to resist the urge to use too many uniform survey questions and response lists, namely because of two sources of bias that stem from doing so: habituation and acquiescence.

Habituation occurs when respondents begin providing the same answers to survey questions with the same response options.  They start to get in a habit and select the identical response choice for every question.

Acquiescence is related to habituation, and occurs when respondents passively agree with an interviewer or survey questions.  Agree-disagree scales are the most often-used response options in opinion surveys; it is important that you take steps to avoid the chance that respondents will passively agree with your statements in order to quickly complete the questionnaire or provide what they think may be the “right” answers.

To avoid these response biases, you can use online survey software that allows question randomization, break up your matrix questions with other types of questions and scales, and phrase some questions in a manner that makes respondents switch their thinking.  An example of the latter would be to ask a series of positive questions in your survey questionnaire, and then throw in a couple questions worded differently so as not to allow habituation or acquiescence.  Use care up-front in your online questionnaire design to be sure that you'll reduce error and bias in your results.

I think I have always thought of myself as a "planner." While some people "fly by the seat of their pants," I am constantly thinking ahead to the consequences of my actions. The way I see it, this can be a good thing and a bad thing. Being a "planner" is bad because I am not as spontaneous as some of my friends. The "life of the party" is usually not someone who thinks ahead. However, it is a good thing at the same time, especially when operating in the corporate world, and specifically when designing online surveys.

I wrote a post a couple weeks ago about the importance of thinking ahead to reporting before designing a questionnaire online. I want to address a related issue: survey question logic. We on the Cvent Web Surveys Client Services team always strongly encourage our clients to use survey logic to their advantage. Lately, however, I have been getting lots of calls from clients who are having trouble with the logic they have applied. The reason for this is simple: too many clients do not plan or map out the logic they'll apply to their electronic survey. This lack of planning can cause numerous problems, most notably conflicting survey logic.

In the past two weeks, I have spoken with two clients who applied both branch logic and advanced logic to their online surveys. Both of these clients called because they were concerned there was a technical issue which was prohibiting the logic from functioning as it should. "But, I set up my branch logic correctly, and I know that my advanced logic should be working fine too, so what is wrong?" In both cases, the problem was the clients had applied branch logic which conflicted with the advanced logic, and the survey system therefore did not know where to send survey respondents when they answered a question a particular way. "If only these clients had planned ahead and mapped out the survey logic before launching their surveys," I thought, "then this problem could have been avoided."

Moral of the story: Please take advantage of the wonderful survey logic functionality available with Cvent Web Surveys software. However, at the same time, make sure to plan ahead. Even if you are someone who generally "flies by the seat of your pants," when designing online survey questionnaires, you should be a "planner" for once.

All too often, we begin the survey creation process, but draw a blank.  How should we design a survey?  Should a survey design have the company look and feel?  Or should we design it to be a fresh look?

Having an online surveys tool that has survey templates built into the system is extremely important.  It eliminates the nagging question, "What is a survey design? How do I create a professional looking web 2.0 survey?"  This gives the survey builder that boost to get the creative juices flowing. In the Cvent Web Survey solution, there are over 50 graphical templates, ready to help you in designing surveys. Any color, any pattern, any style. They are all preloaded in the Cvent Web Surveys application. Definitely check these out the next time you are trying to figure out survey research design ideas for your next questionnaire.

Want to learn more about our survey design software? Sign up for a product demonstration.

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.

One of the great things about Cvent Web Surveys software application is that it is constantly getting “better.” I, for one, am not aware of another survey software company that can state with confidence that 80% of all product enhancements come directly from the requests of current clients. Cvent, however, has certain processes in place so that every time a client expresses interest in seeing a new feature added to the online survey application, this request is quickly relayed to our technical team.

For those of you who were clients before our most recent product release in August 2009, you definitely noticed at least one big change in your account the first time you logged in after the release. As soon as you logged into your Cvent Web Surveys account, you saw that your surveys were no longer organized into folders on the Survey Selection page. Instead, they are now displayed in “views.”

Now, you may wonder why I chose to write my blog post this week on the transition from folders to survey views. It may seem like a pretty dry topic. I wanted to write on this particular survey subject because I get so many calls from clients asking how to create a new survey view that pull the appropriate surveys into view. If you have a lot of surveys created in your account, then this is a pretty important thing to know how to do, so that you don’t have to sort through all of your company’s surveys just to find the few that you are personally working on!

When you are ready to create a new survey view and filter the appropriate surveys into this view, you need to remember 3 simple steps:

1) Create a survey custom field. You can create survey custom fields under the Administration tab, on the same page that you create contact custom fields. Survey custom fields are primarily used to classify the surveys in your account and pull them into the appropriate views on the Survey Selection page. So, for example, if your marketing department and human resources department are running surveys, you may want to create 2 separate survey views, one for each department. The first step to do this would be to create a survey custom field for department.

2) Create a new view on the Survey Selection page. You can create a new survey view by choosing “add new view” from the Display drop-down menu. When you add the new view, you will need to name it and also specify certain options (i.e. whether you would like the view to be private or public). Finally, at the bottom of the page, you should apply an advanced filter based on the survey custom field you just created for department. For example, if you are adding the survey view for “Marketing Surveys,” you should choose “department” as the field, “equals” as the operator, and “marketing” as the value.


3) Now that you have created the survey custom field and added the new view, all you need to do is pull the appropriate surveys into the view you just created! When you added the new view for “Marketing Surveys,” you should have gotten a message, “no surveys match your criteria.” This is because you have not yet applied the survey custom field at the survey-level! To do this, simply go into an individual marketing survey, and click on  Settings on the top navigation bar. On the General Information page, you should click on the Custom Survey Fields tab. Here you can apply the “marketing” label to the individual survey, so that it will show up in the “Marketing Surveys” view.


Hopefully this post will be helpful to those of you who are struggling with the transition from folders to survey views. Believe me, survey views are completely customizable and will help you organize online surveys in your Cvent Web Surveys software account.

There are several things to remember when creating an employee survey. Obviously, you must ensure no one outside the company can view or take the survey. This is simple enough to do by setting the survey settings in the employee survey software to only those on a targeted list. This will guarantee that your data is not compromised by pranksters, former employees or anyone outside the company.

You must also guarantee anonymity for your employees. This is generally a standard practice but cannot be emphasized enough when you create employee questionnaires. Employees are going to be more skittish than the average survey respondent because they may be concerned about repercussions if they admit dissatisfaction in the survey. So, you cannot express anonymity enough.

When creating a workplace employee survey, include both quantitative and qualitative questions. Provide an open-ended comment space for them to write down any concerns they felt were not covered in the survey. This is a great opportunity for employers to find out things that bother or impress employees. Employers should also share all survey results with employees once the online questionnaire is closed. It could negatively impact employee morale if the results are perceived to be kept secret. Also consider creating action items immediately, if they make sense for the company. For example, if employees express a desire for more training opportunities, look into them and offer a few on-site training classes if feasible.

You should think about employee workplace surveys as employee morale surveys.

The Invitation Forwarding feature is one of the absolute coolest things about Cvent Web Surveys software. After all, who doesn’t love having someone else do their work for them? Invitation Forwarding allows your survey respondents to email survey invitations to up to 10 other people. This in turn allows you to grow your database of contacts exponentially, as the system will automatically put all of these new contacts in your Cvent Address Book for you!

In my humble opinion, Cvent does a fantastic job of updating your Address Book for you, and Invitation Forwarding is one of the reasons why. Many of our clients actually find that their Cvent Address Book is more inclusive and “up to date” than their organization’s internal database! Remember that you always have the option to export your entire Cvent Address Book, which in turn enables you to update your internal database, if need be.

Like many of the features present in the online survey application, Invitation Forwarding saves you time that you otherwise would have had to spend hunting down people who were relevant to your survey. Allowing your survey respondents to forward the survey along to other people obviously has other perks as well, since it will undoubtedly increase your response rates and the reliability of the data you collect.

In summary, here is my advice to all of you out there reading this post: Leave the Invitation Forwarding feature turned on on the Thank You page, as long as you are not conducting a private survey. Invitation Forwarding will definitely save you time, increase you response rates, and grow your database of contacts, all of which are guaranteed to make your boss happy.

Even if you clearly understood the above question and could provide your opinion accurately, you likely did a double take.  Questions like this are an example of double negatives.  They usually include the word “not” somewhere in the question itself, and then ask respondents whether they agree with the statement or position.

You can see how these questions are troublesome.  Taking our example question, if someone feels that they should use the best online survey software available, they would have to select a disagree response option to provide an accurate response.  This introduces a second form of negation that is confusing and unnecessary.  It’s easy to understand that this question is difficult to understand.  In addition to confusing your survey sample respondents, it increases cognitive burden, something you are trying to reduce.

Instead, use “positive” question wording.  The question above would be better if it simply asked whether respondents agree that they should use the best online survey software available.

Double negative questions make respondents do a double take when trying to understand and provide answers.  Designing your survey questions in a positive manner gives you one less source of error and bias to worry about, and that's not a bad thing!

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.

Incentives with surveys are often used to increase response rates.  Well, do you handle internal trainings? Is your organization involved with continuing education courses? Use online surveys to gather information on those attendees: What is their satisfaction with the training course or training instructor, what kind of courses would they like to see, etc.

Then, let those attendees know how important that information is to your work by giving the certificate of completetion only after they have finished the survey (by the way, with Cvent Web Surveys software that can be automatically done for you). Survey incentives can work both ways - as a gift for the respondent OR a gift for the survey creator (which in this case is incredibly high response rates!).

Don't inundate survey respondents with too many questions though. After all, they may have just paid for a class, seminar, or workshop. Get your data quickly and easily and let them be on their way. They'll appreciate it.

I recommend taking advantage of the technological power within good online survey software programs.  A great way to increase your survey response rates is to send reminder email survey invitations to your customers if they have haven't completed your questionnaire after receiving notification of selection for your surveys.

People are busy; email inboxes are bombarded with messages, alerts and spam.  Customers may delete your survey invitation email if they are in a hurry, trying to clean up their inboxes, or do not feel the feedback survey is relevant or interesting to them.  Often, people will receive a survey invitation and look through it, but not follow-through in clicking though to the survey questionnaire to complete the actual online survey poll.  They may even have made a mental note to complete the survey later, but then it gets lost in the shuffle.

You can take steps to reduce both these nonresponse problems by sending personalized email survey reminders.  If a respondent or customer contact does not respond to your online questionnaire within a given time frame (that you specify), you can program your online survey software to automatically resend survey invitations (multiple times!).  You set up the invitations, so you can choose to resend the original invitation or tweak it with a different message to remind them they have yet to complete the survey.

In your reminders, let respondents know that they previously received an invitation from you because their opinions are valuable, and they were selected as part of your survey sample for a good reason.  Restate the incentive if you're offering one. 

As we all know, however, there is a delicate line between reminding and nagging.  If you drift toward the latter, chances are your respondents will become annoyed and reactively delete emails from you (surveys or otherwise).  In general, send a maximum of three or four survey emails to your respondents after they’ve received the original invitation and survey poll link.  If they've deleted or lost your previous emails, they may respond to one of the reminders, and who knows… even if they’re ambivalent toward completing your internet survey, you might catch them at a better time and get a completion.

When I was being trained here at Cvent, I remember Chuck Ghoorah, the Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, telling all the new hires that we were henceforth in the business of "alleviating pain." I immediately thought Chuck was a really smart guy. Cvent Web Surveys software application takes away our clients' "pain" because it makes their lives easier. While I obviously think the online survey platform as a whole will save you time (and thus "alleviate your pain"), email alerts is one feature you should definitely be aware of.

Email alerts are just cool. You should familiarize yourself with them in particular because they will help you tremendously in a variety of situations, including any of the following:

1) You are the Director of Marketing at your organization. You are currently targeting a certain age group (say, 18-24 year olds) with your marketing initiatives. Every time someone indicates they are 18-24 years old in an online survey, you want to be notified automatically via email. You can set up a trigger-based email alerts to do just this!

2) As the Senior Vice President of Client Services and Relationship Management, your job is essentially to make sure that your clients are happy. As such, you would like to set up an email alert so that you receive a notification each time a client indicates that they are "very dissatisfied" with your services. This way, you can personally follow up with unhappy clients as soon as possible.

3) You are in charge of training a large group of new hires at your organization. At the end of the training period, all of the trainees will take be tested on what they have learned. You build the quiz in the online survey application and apply scoring to all of the questions. Being as busy as you are, you don’t have time to review everyone’s test responses! However, you want to know if someone does not receive a passing score. So, you set up a score-based email alert that will be sent to you automatically each time someone receives a score below a certain benchmark!

As you can see, email alerts are beneficial for a wide variety of people in lots of different situations. They will alleviate your proverbial pain, allowing you to save both time and money!

According to The Center for an Accessible Society there are over 49 million Americans living with a disability of some type, with over 30 million between the ages of 21 and 64. That's nearly 20% of the population or 1 out of every 5 people.

Cvent Web Surveys provides federal, state and local government entities with an on demand, feedback management solution. As a web based survey company, our online polling tool enables government officials to quickly and easily gather feedback and analyze the opinions of constituents, while increasing survey response rates and ensuring data protection and security.

Section 508 refers to a statutory section in the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (found at 29 U.S.C. 794d). Congress significantly strengthened section 508 in the Workforce Investment Act of 1998. Its primary purpose is to provide access to and use of Federal executive agencies’ electronic and information technology (EIT) by individuals with disabilities. The statutory language of section 508 can be found at www.section508.gov.

Section 508 requirements are separate from, but complementary to, requirements in sections 501 and 504 of the Rehabilitation Act that require, among other things, that agencies provide reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities, provide program access to members of the public with disabilities, and take other actions necessary to prevent discrimination on the basis of disability in their programs.

Why should you use Cvent's online survey application?

“Well, you see… I just don’t have the time.” A frustrating excuse heard every day all over the world, because everyone knows that you can and will make the time for anything important enough. Obviously time is valuable, but you choose to spend your time as you see it benefiting you most, or as you see yourself enjoying it most.

I hear the “time excuse” almost every day from our survey clients, especially when it pertains to uploading contacts into the Cvent Address Book and sending emails through our email survey tool. “But, we’re just really busy over here at XYZ Company, and we have an internal database where we store all of our contacts. I think I’m just going to use the website link to distribute my survey.” At this point, I usually make one last attempt to showcase the benefits of emailing through Cvent, and then I give up.

I’m not going to give up this time though. Because I do recognize the many benefits of sending emails through Cvent, my goal in this post is to convince you that you should make the time to take the necessary steps to do this. I will make my argument in two simple points below. As you read through it, hopefully I will change some of your minds, especially those of you who are constantly “too busy.”

1) One word: Pre-Population. People are selfish. If they feel like an email has been personally written to them, they are much more likely to read it and respond than if they realize it is a mass email that has gone out to 50,000 recipients. If you upload your contacts into the Cvent Address Book and send your survey invitations through Cvent, you can pre-populate various contact fields in the email. For example, instead of opening with “Dear Valued Employee,” you can send personalized email surve invitations that say “Dear Suzie.” This makes people feel good and will thus increase your survey response rates!

2) I bet you didn’t know taking the time to upload your contacts into Cvent's online survey management software application will ultimately save you time in the future! As you know, you can display whichever contact fields you like in the Contact Profile for any given survey. If your respondents are accessing the survey from a Cvent email, this information will be pre-populated for them. However, they can update it if something changes. For example, if one of your contacts get a promotion (and their title changes), when they update this in the Contact Profile for one of your surveys, this change will be reflected in your Address Book as well!

As you can see, sending your survey emails through the Cvent survey application will increase your survey response rates, and it will also ultimately save you time. If that doesn’t convince you this is the best way to distribute your surveys, I don’t know what will!

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?

“Knowledge is power.” Again, a statement that I frequently heard from my parents and teachers growing up. When I was 10, I was probably told this because I was complaining about doing my fifth grade homework. These days, I still say this silently to myself from time to time. This is because knowledge is power not only to the fifth grader who is trying to get A’s in school, but also to anyone trying to make a profit in the business world.

There is no way around it; Cvent Web Surveys software provides you with business knowledge. By surveying your client pool, you will learn about their likes and dislikes, and you can thus enhance your products or services to meet the needs of those who matter. The web survey application also provides you with another kind of knowledge though, through the recent addition of click tracking reports.

Whereas the actual act of surveying customers allows you to learn more about them “from the horse’s mouth”, click tracking reports give you insight into which links people are clicking on in your survey emails, which can be extremely beneficial as well. For example, if you send your monthly e-newsletters out through the Cvent online survey platform (as many of our clients do), then you can run click tracking reports to view which links to outside websites your recipients are clicking on. Who is clicking on which links? Which URLs are the most popular?

Cvent email marketing click tracking reports include graphs that are easy to read and interpret. You can export them into Microsoft Word, Excel, or PDF. Most importantly, however, click tracking reports teach you how to place information and links in your emails. If you use emails to market your organization at all, then click tracking reports will help you leverage your ability to format those emails in order to generate the maximum possible business (and money!) for you.

Although question order effects are believed to be stronger for interviews than for online research surveys, it is still important to take a look at your market survey format and how the questions are ordered throughout your survey questionnaire.  By following the general guidelines listed below, you can reduce possible order effects and response bias from your customer survey samples.

Start broad, then get more specific.  Ask your customers or respondents general questions about your organization and the concepts you are interested in first, then get down to the more detailed questions you want them to answer (such as those about individual products, specific preferences and how to improve customer service).

Ideally, you’d like to find out if the order of your questions can induce biases before you send it to your entire survey population.  Use online survey software that allows you to randomize parts of your online survey, and compare the results with those from predefined orders.  This is an excellent way to pretest your survey questionnaire for possible order effects.

Devote some time and effort to making your survey “flow.”  You want the overall survey instrument to be cohesive, not disjointed or seemingly all over the place.  A big part of allowing for a logical flow throughout a survey comes from writing smooth transitions.  Let your respondents know that you want them to change gears.

Ask demographic questions at the end of your survey.

If you are asking sensitive questions (about topics like income, personal behaviors, etc.) try to place these toward the latter parts of your survey as well.  That way you get at least partial completions in the event that respondents change their mind and exit your survey before full completion.

No matter what kind of business you are in, you are looking to make a profit. Money may not be everything, but to those of us in the professional world, it certainly counts for a lot. We are all always looking for new ways to increase our revenue and decrease our expenses, and those of us who are smart know that time wasted is the greatest expense of all.

I am not saying this just because Cvent writes me a paycheck twice a month, but rather I am saying it because I know that it’s true: Cvent Web Surveys software is a time-saver. Our clients may pay us to license our online survey application, but in the end, the time they save thanks to the web surveys tool allows them to profit in the long run.

One of our primary goals here on the Cvent Web Surveys Client Services team is to educate clients on the best ways to use the Cvent survey tool in order to save time (and money!). In my opinion, there are a couple of features in particular with which you should familiarize yourself if you want to maximize the time that you save using our system:


If you make use of all 5 of the features listed above, not only will you get out of the office earlier, but you will also bring more money in for your company or organization. Always remember that “time is money,” and familiarize yourself with the Cvent Web Surveys tool so that we can help you save both.

If there's one thing that can be frustrating about building surveys online, it's putting together the appropriate questions and responses that will give you the survey data you're looking for.  Furthermore, manually inputting questions you re-use in different surveys can be tedious at best.  But you don't have to continue this repetitive task.

Cvent's feedback management solution comes equipped with both question and response libraries designed specifically to save you time and energy when building out your surveys.  Once you've crafted that perfect question or set of answer choices, simply save them to your libraries for future use.  Take it one step further and categorize them so you can find them quickly and easily.

In addition, Cvent's online web survey system provides standard questions in multiple categories, including Customer Service, Demographics, Marketing and Sales, HR, and Training.  Standard responses range from demographic questions, income levels, frequency and survey rating scales.

Here's my plea: Don't get bogged down in adding the same questions and responses over and over again.  Utilize robust question and response libraries in your survey software tools to springboard your thinking and streamline your survey creation processes.

In the past, if one of your customers had a bad customer experience with your product or service, it certainly wasn’t good for you business but in most cases the potential impact was limited to an extremely small audience. Today, the reality is much different thanks to Web 2.0 applications including Yelp, Facebook and of course, Twitter. These websites, and others like them, expand the reach of a single customer’s opinion, effectively giving them an oversize soapbox to espouse their opinion on your product, service or employees. If these cries are ignored, or more cries of the same creep up, you have a problem. The customer complaints will gather momentum and begin to spiral, that is if you're not doing anything about it. Monitoring and measuring customer experiences and satisfaction ratings is definitely one step business can take so they don't have an explosion of bad buzz.

In order to protect themselves against these unilateral attacks, businesses need a robust partner to help them improve customer relationships. Cvent’s web based survey software and enterprise feedback management solution can be one of these invaluable protectors. Cvent’s real-time email alerts leverage the effectiveness of conducting surveys. Take the following sample customer satisfaction survey question, “How satisfied are you with our latest product upgrade?” you can have an email sent to your Director of Client Services whenever somebody responds that they are unhappy or dissatisfied.

By proactively reaching out to clients, you are able to simultaneously improve relationships with customers and protect the value of your corporate brand. Even better than simply helping everybody breathe easier, these types of customer satisfaction initiatives can fatten the organization's "wallet," as research indicates increasing customer loyalty and customer retention by 5% can increase profits by 75%!