Survey Builder

Communication is a very important part of conducting a survey online. How to inform the invitees about the survey, how to make sure they read the email survey invitation and respond to the survey. This totally depends upon what kind of email is sent to the invitee so they respond to your call to action (aka answer the survey). Here are a few online survey tips that will be helpful when you create survey invitation emails.

Send your invitations out automatically: After you have tested the email invitation, you are ready to send it out in bulk to all of your invitees. We recommend you switch the How to Send option on the Edit Settings page to the Send By Date.

Making No responses or Visited respondents take the survey: send reminder emails. Some people will take your survey right away. You will get increased responses, however, if you send follow-up email reminders with the survey link included. We recommend sending a minimum of two reminder emails depending on how long your survey will be running. Be sure to use our Partial Response reminders in addition to the No Response reminders.

Use HTML emails instead of plain text emails. To send an HTML email, go to the email you are sending out and then click on the HTML Email tab. Click on the Edit button, and you can create your HTML email, adding any images you want to include and formatting the text to emphasize your main points. Make sure to click on the Save and Update Plain Text Email button, so that your HTML email message and your plain text email message both convey the same information.

Feedback: Seek advice & suggestions from your respondents. If you are new to conducting surveys or have surveyed the same people for years, ask them what they like and do not like about participating in your surveys. Add a question or two to ask why they take the surveys and what would improve the questionnaires.

Thank your respondents. At the end of the survey, be courteous and thank your respondents for taking time out of their busy schedule to complete the survey. Also, if the survey is a collect respondent contact information survey, turn on the completion email and thank your respondents for their time in an email as well.

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.

Last time we discussed in detail about the Graphical Survey Templates offered to Cvent Web Survey software users. Today, I wanted to share with you another marvelous feature available in Cvent’s online survey tool: Cvent Web Surveys Question Library. The question library is home to a list of customer service, demographics, event, HR/training, and marketing/sales survey questions you can utilize when creating surveys online.

Here’s a Sneak Preview:

Customer Service Survey Questions:
1. Did the representative answer your question adequately?
2. Did the representative respond to your phone call or email in a timely fashion?
3. How likely will you be to continue service with our company?

HR Survey Questions and Training Survey Questions:
1. Did this training meet your expectations?
2. Do you have all of the necessary resources available to you to perform your job?
3. Do you have any comments about what might improve your work experience at the company in the coming year?

Marketing Survey Questions and Sales Survey Questions:
1. How does this product's pricing compare to other similar products?
2. How likely are you to return to our site in the next 30 days?
3. How often do you use this product?

If you are new to the survey tool and need help with designing online surveys, I certainly recommend you to make use of these wonderful features. You can also call our award winning Client Services Team at 866-318-4357 for additional help.

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

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

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

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

What are your other sample employee opinion survey examples?

I realized it only after the emails had been sent.  It was a test survey that wasn’t intended for entry level employees and senior management.  It was an employee evaluation that had initially been slated to go out only to our newest batch of hires.  Only last minute did we discover we could use logic to create one interactive survey online for senior management to evaluate the progress of new hire training, and new hire survey questions for them to evaluate the training process.  The wording, the slang, everything was wrong!  What did I do…

Hopefully, this scenario has appeared solely in a nightmare (and yes, survey nightmares are very real and very terrifying).  But a similar, less daunting situation is common among many: You have an online web survey that will go out to two groups of respondents, the wording in the two would ideally be completely different, and you do not have the time to go into the two templates you’ve created and select the different audiences then manually send the emails.  Not to mention, this method would require using Cvent’s email survey tool's default templates and the Custom Messages.  What if I told you it was possible to create entirely separate email marketing campaigns, set the emails up to go out automatically AND keep the both default templates and custom messages for each group of respondents? 

The multiple email marketing campaigns feature allows you to do just this!  You can select the number of separate email blasts you intend on sending, you can add entirely different contact groups to each campaign, and you can set up your emails to go out automatically. 

1. This feature is perfect if you have a multilingual survey.  You can translate your message into as many languages as you like to ensure maximum comprehension. 

2. Multiple email campaigns is also great for newsletters that are tied to a generic instant survey.  Instead of copying your survey and creating a new email blast every month, you can add an email campaign for the October '09 Newsletter, November '09 Newsletter, December '09 Newsletter and so forth.  You can then get an aggregate view of the data collected across all months.

3. The nightmare scenario outlined above.  It is likely that emails sent to your senior management are not worded the same as emails sent to entry-level new hires.  The formality of the verbiage aside, your new hires might be a bit disconcerted to know that the bosses of the bosses are watching them and evaluating their decisions. 

We all know creating surveys and designing questionnaires can be a bit overwhelming.  Why put yourself through that again just so different people can receive the same questionnaire?

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.

Cvent offers a variety of Pre-Designed Survey Templates you can choose from for your first online web survey. These internet survey templates contain default questions, email, welcome and thank you text which you can utilize when designing a questionnaire. You can also choose from over 50 different graphical templates to suit the look and feel of your survey forms. Here’s a list of the different pre-created survey templates that you can use to build the base of your survey:


Besides this vast list of pre-designed questionnaires and graphical survey templates, Cvent also offers you a Question Library, which is filled with Customer Service, Demographics, Event, HR/Training, Marketing/Sales questions that you can utilize in your survey.

So! Go ahead and Sign up for an online web survey free trial account now and enjoy these á-la-carte features absolutely free.

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.

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.

When working with a client who has already built a strong customer base, market researchers are often called upon to create surveys to aid with customer retention programs.

Customer retention surveys are a bit different than a new product or service launch survey because the survey respondent sample must consist of product users. There are several things you need to ask this group so your client can formulate the best customer retention strategies, including:


The recommendation sample customer questionnaire question is important. Often, this can be a company’s bread-and-butter when it comes to retaining customers and gaining new ones. If a good amount of current customers would recommend the product to a friend, that speaks volumes about the quality.

It is also wise to include some open-ended questions. Find out why people use the product, and would continue to do so. If they wouldn’t recommend the product, or use it again, it is important to know why. Your client can use the information to persuade customers on the fence, and keep current customers coming back.

Before creating a poll online for your client survey, sit down and gauge initial opinions and move forward from there. If there were original product launch studies done, it may be helpful to revisit those results as well, just for comparison purposes. Approach the questionnaire research with care and the resulting data analysis will provide information to create customer retention techniques and marketing strategies.

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!

A good survey includes both qualitative and quantitative data, but when gathering qualitative data it is important to gather the right kind of answers. Go too open-ended with your question, and you may end up with answers that do not help you with your study at all.

Consumer insights into a new product or service are important to a market research study, and open-ended questions are the way to get them. When conducting consumer surveys, there are several online survey tips you can follow to get the right mix of closed and open-ended question:

1. Determine if it is a question that you cannot ask in any other way. For example, if you were asking consumers how often they purchased a product, it would be difficult to analyze data if that question were left open-ended. Group responses into categories like once a month, twice a month, more than three times a month.

2. If the question must be open-ended, make it narrow. Sounds contradictory, but if you ask too much, you’ll get too much. Don’t ask if they like your product and if they share it with friends in one breath. Ask simple questions like: Why do you purchase the product?

3. Allow expansion on closed-ended questions. If you are unsure about something, leave room for comments on close-ended questions. This is a good compromise that can help you get the responses you need.

These are just a few best practices for survey writing, but it goes without saying that when creating a survey, you need to put as much, if not more, effort into writing the questions as you will analyzing the data.

Here at Cvent, we get asked for survey templates all the time. That's why we've created a bank of survey questions and pre-created questionnaires for all clients to utilize within their account. But it never seems to be enough. Sample employee motivation surveys, employee evaluation survey examples, sample employee questionnaire, employee satisfaction survey templates, the list goes on, and on, and on...

While this post may not give you all the answers or the complete employee survey template you're looking for, it definitely is a start. Below are some sample survey questions for employee questionnaires.


While not all of these questions are necessary (or appropriate) in any given employee engagement survey or job satisfaction questionnaire, you should see how some of them will fit into your next employee satisfaction survey template.

Creating a survey is a lot like taking a trip: there's a definite start, and there's always a finish.  Before you even start to write that first question of your survey, here's a few things you might want to consider.

1) Who will see the results of this survey?  Often times, those who are expecting to see clear and concise results from your survey are not even considered when writing survey questions.  Will your data stay within a particular department, or will it be run up the flagpole to directors or C-level employees?  Perhaps the results will even be the basis of a publication or news article?

2) Who will work with the survey data?  These days, almost anyone can put an online survey together, but have you considered the person responsible for analysis of the data after it has been collected?  Do they have an understanding of charts, tables, percentages and frequencies? 

3) What is the basis for conducting this survey?  What is the survey's business driver, and how will the data be used in your business?

4) What data points will satisfy that business purpose you've identified?  Ensure that answer choices, particularly survey rating scales, are providing enough data points to clearly provide insight into your objective.

5) What are the best ways to ask about and to measure those data points?  Have you crafted the appropriate questions to collect the desired data points to satisfy your goal?

Maintaining a "begin at the end" thought process is crucial to crafting an effective survey.  If you ask yourself these five questions before, you'll see vast improvements in the performance of your surveys.

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.

Yesterday, I discussed a simple way to establish a Facebook group for market research uses. Today I will outline some easy ways you can use the group to aid you in market research.

Now that you’ve got your Facebook group established, be sure to update it fairly frequently to keep participants interested and engaged. If the group relates to an established product line, include updates and information on the line, promotions and developments relating to the line.

In keeping with the running shoe market research example from yesterday, you might include links to articles where the running shoe is featured or mentioned, marathon or race tips, and the like. Also post items for response on the discussion boards for the group.

You can even begin a pre-screening process for a survey or focus group on the discussion boards. Post a call for participants and a link to an online pre-screening survey to determine if respondents qualify for your poll or focus group. Facebook group participants will provide an interested, more enthusiastic audience as they are already invested in your product or company, but you still must be careful to ensure you get the right target demographic for any official studies.

You can use the group in a less official capacity to get qualitative data and “buzz” about the product. For example, if the running shoe company launched a new product six months ago, you could ask for general feedback on the product – who is using it, their thoughts, etc. The responses will be helpful when creating survey questions later.

Facebook is an inexpensive and not very time-consuming way to get additional customer feedback and potential survey participants. If you exercise caution, you can really make it work for you.

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.

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?

I have always been told that shortcuts have a negative connotation.  “You can’t take a shortcut through life,” was a common phrase in my household whenever my parents caught me scheming the best way to get the dishes unloaded.   But let’s be honest: Who actually likes to load or unload the dishwasher?  It takes time and you always feel like there must be an easier way once the task is finished.  Well, the advice bestowed upon me was seldom heeded and to this day I am a huge fan of shortcuts.  When traffic has me down, I will take a "shortcut" through back roads.   Even if that route takes me ten more minutes than had I remained in traffic, I feel a sense of jubilation; I am the road warrior.  

But, to me, shortcuts are invaluable resources in any respect.  Who coined the phrase "Time is Money?"  And doesn’t the calculation of opportunity cost, the foundation of economics, factor in the lost time you exchange to reach a separate goal?  (It does.  The all-knowing Wikipedia concurs). 

I have used this logic for years to justify shortcuts I have made; the results of those decisions beside the point.  And I do have a point which is this; if a shortcut will get you to the same end point, with the same results, just in a few less clicks, why not take full advantage?

Cvent agrees and has added 3 helpful shortcuts to our feedback software that will save you time and shield you from the dreaded hand cramp. 

The first is the Quick Links displayed on the left of your screen.  The 4 links allow you to:  
Another great shortcut is the Quick Add Respondent section link.  This is located under the Manage Respondents tab and allows you to add someone to your targeted list AND send them a survey invitation email in one click.  If you sent out your email survey and realize a few people were left off the distribution list, this is an easy way to combine 4 steps into 1.  

There is a grab bag of goodies located under the Administration tab, from Parked Reports to Account Users and everything in between.  This is also where our Customer Support tab is located.  This tab has all the important information you will ever need to know: it has our contact information, is home to the comprehensive User’s Guide, and is also where you go to register for our training classes.  However, I realize that in the midst of a panic, clicking into the Administration tab, then selecting Customer Support then clicking the appropriate Section Link is probably not the path most taken.  If only tears had directional powers… to simplify this process for you, while we work to complete the sob recognition feature that will automatically direct clients to the support page, we have added a Support hyperlink at the top right of the page.  This link will take you immediately into the Customer Support page where you are free to bask in the support glow.   

To sum it up, there are things that will be missed and things that will be overlooked when using shortcuts.  That is an inevitable consequence of the sheer purpose of shortcuts.  However, when you know what you need and the path to get there seems daunting, use one of these shortcuts.  You too will feel like a road warrior.