Survey Builder

I was recently asked to complete a restaurant customer satisfaction survey. Only two questions into the restaurant questionnaire I was asked the following restaurant survey sample question:


None of these answers fit my situation. I simply just don't eat out that often. So to me, none of these answers fit. I suppose technically, after thinking about it for awhile, I could have answered that I think it's too expensive or the value isn't good enough. However, because of the question before this one, to me this restaurant customer satisfaction survey question is asking why don't I eat there over other restaurants more frequently. So in reading the options, I'm thinking the survey builder want to know why I don't visit their restaurant over other restaurants more frequently.

Morale of the story? Survey respondents will not always read your restaurant, market research, employee or retail survey the way you planned. Everyone makes different associations and is influenced by question flow or answer choices. Make sure that if you're going to give a long list of options, you include all the possible answer choices. This question could have been improved simply by not requiring it.

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.

Free.  Just let that word sink in for a minute.  Free.  What comes to mind?  Is it the Buy One Get One Free sale (or BOGO for all you deal enthusiasts) at Payless?  Or maybe it is the proverbial classic your mother used to recite when that new pair of shoes you knew you couldn’t afford got you down; “Sweetheart, the best things in life are free.

Now, I personally believe my good buddy Barrett put it best:

The best things in life are free,
But you can give them to the birds and bees.
I need money.
That’s what I want. 

This Motown classic put into song, and with quite a catchy tune, what so many of us have been thinking for years: What can you actually get for free?  What tangible return do you receive without first offering your life-savings to the money god?   At Payless, nothing.  At Cvent, well, where do I begin?

First, Cvent offers a FREE trial of our online survey tool.  You read that right; a completely free trial, no credit card information necessary to sign-up.  Not one of these ‘Try it 1 month free!” ads that still requires you to give them your bank accounts, children’s names, dog’s favorite snack, etc.  And to add insult to injury, in small, ineligible print at the bottom of the TV screen they have the audacity to tell you that the charge will continue per month unless an explicit cancellation notification is given.  But, I digress.  The free-trial allows you to create a survey and utilize all the functionality Cvent offers before you commit financially.  No offering of your first born child necessary.

For my second point, I have two words: Client Services.  We offer complimentary phone support 24x5, Monday through Friday as well as weekend support available 8:30am – 5:30pm US ET.  Our Client Services team will offer a complimentary survey review with some online survey best practice tips to get you the best and most accurate data possible.  You can also take advantage of the complimentary (notice a pattern?) training classes offered twice a week, not to mention our extensive recorded training session library that can be accessed at any time for no charge.  These classes walk you through every step in the survey process from inception to survey reporting and presentations.  You can have as many people take the class as many times as necessary to learn and retain the information.  And did I mention we are current finalists for the Service Excellence Award?  Enough said.

My final point is this.  Rumpelstiltskin might have required your first-born in exchange for the much sought after ability to spin twine into gold.  But the cost of spinning your paper survey questions into pure web survey gold with Cvent? Priceless.

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.

When creating online surveys, survey writers have the option to select whether the survey should collect respondent information or will be an anonymous survey. This is an extremely helpful feature if you conduct surveys, which at times, require absolute anonymity.

Collect Respondent Contact Information Survey: If during the survey creation wizard a survey designer selects this option, all survey respondents will be required to enter their contact information, such as name, email address, phone number etc. Setting up which contact fields you need collected for your survey takes place when you're designing your survey.

If you need a contact field that doesn't come standard in the survey application, simply create a custom contact field. We typically see custom contact fields created for pieces of information such as employee ID, account name, membership number, etc.

In a survey with identified survey respondents, all respondents must verify their name and email before starting the electronic survey online. This ensures their responses are correctly matched to their contact record in your address book. If the contact is not in your address book their information will be added automatically. An additional plus for the Cvent Contact Database is that even if they do exist in your address book, if they update their information while completing a survey, it will be automatically updated for you.

Anonymous Survey: In an anonymous survey, respondents can begin the web survey without entering their name or email address. No contact information will be added to or updated in your address book - because it's not being collected. As you would expect, the identities of your survey sample are kept anonymous and no survey responses are matched to contacts.

How do you know which type of survey is correct for your survey research project? Here's a few tips:

When it comes to losing weight or saving more money, one of the most daunting aspects is simply wrapping your head around where to start. With hundreds of books and celebrity “experts,” it’s easy to feel overwhelmed before you even begin.

Administering, writing and creating survey questionnaires is no different. Ask questions, send them out and let everybody respond? Sounds easy, right? Not always. What survey questions do you ask? How do you know what’s important to ask versus what’s going to produce a meaningless data point?

Just as people turn to financial advisers and personal trainers, Cvent's Web Survey software tool offers more than 170 expertly crafted survey questions and survey templates to help you overcome the inertia associated with getting the ball rolling on your next survey research projects. Our question library helps users create customer service satisfaction survey forms, write employee questionnaires or staff attitude surveys, design marketing survey templates, and more.

From this extensive library of questions, we have created 20 fully built survey templates including customer satisfaction survey templates, training evaluation samples and employee exit survey templates.

Although Cvent won’t take those first steps on the treadmill for you or stash those first few dollars in your proverbial piggy bank, we are able to leverage our extensive experience to help you initiate your first survey project with pre-built survey templates.

When creating surveys for two sets of respondents, say product users and non-users, the most obvious thing is to create two different surveys and send them out. This is exactly what one of our Web Survey clients in the industrial market thought, until they realized all their contacts were stored in the same file. After importing the file into their Cvent Web Surveys account and adding them to their email survey invitation, they called asking for a solution. They wanted both survey invitations to be sent, but not cause confusion with people in their survey sample were getting two emails.

One option is to insert what our email survey tool calls a survey bridge link. The bridge link allows both links to be in a single survey invitation. It's the same concept as manually finding the two survey URLs, but bridge links saves email survey creator the trouble of having to go into each survey under settings to find the online survey's URL. Using a single email, our client was able to insert two links, one that said Users click here and Non-users click here. This works and using bridge links saves the survey creator time and eliminates confusion for survey respondents.

However, there was an even better solution for our client's survey.

Our Web Surveys team advised the survey designer to merge both internet surveys into a single survey and utilize survey question logic to determine what would be seen by the different types of respondents. A survey question right at the beginning will branch respondents to the appropriate questions. Using branch logic effectively allows survey writers to design and create two surveys in one. One of the numerous advantages of this approach is when designing surveys, you only needed to create a single Welcome Page and Thank You page. You also skip over any possibility of respondents clicking the wrong survey link from the email invitation. When you send survey invitations, all respondents will click on the same email survey link to enter but only answer survey questions relevant to them. To put the icing on the cake, the task of merging existing surveys was made much easier by using the question library. We added the questions from one survey to the question library and quickly inserted them into the other survey without having to retype a single word!

Several of Cvent’s unique online survey technology features like survey bridge links, branch logic and the question library helped this client create a great survey!

Is your employee survey software getting the job done? Having a survey program in place to collect employee feedback and measure employee satisfaction should be a no brainer for human resource departments. Unfortunately, a lot of departments haven't put a program in place yet, or worse, have never conducted an employee job satisfaction survey project.

You may be thinking to yourself, Why do we need to measure employee satisfaction? Our employees are generally happy. My response is, How do you know? I mean really, how can you know if your employees are actually satisfied and happy if you've never conducted a survey to ask them? No one is going to come to your office and tell you they hate working at your organization. Some HR professionals think they can measure employee satisfaction based on employee retention rates. Looking at employee retention rates isn't necessarily the best way to judge how happy your employees are. Employees who don't have high job satisfaction may stay at an organization because they're satisfied with something else, such as the work environment. Or in today's current economic environment, even the most dissatisfied employees will be reluctant to leave an organization because they think the job market looks bleak.

As you can imagine, there are many factors contributing to worker and staff satisfaction such as:


In past posts, I've recommended collecting survey responses using anonymous online employee survey questionnaires generated by an employee survey tool. By periodically conducting surveys organizations can measure employee satisfaction with management, the mission and vision, teamwork and corporate communication.

Don't forget if you use survey creation software to create employee satisfaction surveys, you should also create surveys to conduct exit interviews. After all, most of the time a satisfied employee is not going to leave an organization.

I spoke to a client recently who had made a great online survey for distributors of two distinct products – Widget A & Gadget B. The web survey had attractive graphics and insightful questions. However, there was an issue regarding how the survey function. More specifically, which survey respondents (read: different distributors) should see which questions. Survey questions #3-34 were for distributors of Widget A and survey questions #35-67 were intended for distributors of Gadget B. Seems easy enough, but there was a little catch: some survey respondents distribute both products and were therefore required to answer all questions.

It seemed simple enough at the outset, and the client understood what each type of survey question logic did. The second question asked the respondent whether they distributed Widget A only, Gadget B only or Both Widget A and Gadget B. Depending on how this question was answered, the survey respondent would be shuttled down the correct survey path using branch logic. Widget A only and Both Widget A and Gadget B went to survey question #3 and Gadget B only distributors went to survey question #35. However, at question 34 skip logic is used take survey respondents to the survey website's Thank You page. This was fine for Widget A only distributors, but a major headache for Both Widget A and Gadget B distributors.

This is where Cvent Web Survey's Client Services team can be a life saver for survey creators. I was there to help the survey writer create a survey that met their survey project needs.

The first option I thought of involved Advanced Logic. Once the initial branch logic was used, we simply use advanced survey question logic on the client's survey questions #35-67 to make sure anyone who responded Widget A only to the initial question (Q2) would not see these questions. This achieved the desired user experience but was tedious and time consuming. The client wanted to launch their surveys soon as possible so this was not the ideal solution in this case.

I then suggested a second option: make two separate questions with branch logic. The existing survey question (Q2) would be changed to Do you distribute A? and another survey question would be added before #35 that asked Do you distribute B? If a respondent selected Yes for Q2, they would see survey questions #3-35 and if they responded No, they would see the new survey question. If survey respondents answered Yes on the new survey question, they would see the remaining questions. The client was no on her way to a great survey with an excellent respondent experience. To top it off, it only took a minute!

Cvent offers a varied range of survey question logic, you just need to decide which will work best for your particular survey project. If you need help deciding which question type or logic type will work best for your survey, never hesitate to give our Client Services team a call.

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 read an interesting article posted on Research's website. The over all article talked about the quality of online research and survey samples. However, the part I found most interesting was at the very end. People always assume there's a problem with the quality of survey respondents and survey samples, but really it should be around the quality of the online web survey itself.

People want to believe the issue of low response rates or problems with survey respondents completing the survey have to do with the actual sample. But what if it's a matter of miscommunication from the survey writer translating questions into the survey design then reaching the survey respondent who reads and interprets the survey questions and responses.

Navigating through market research and survey best practices can make you feel like you're lost in a maze, so I can see why market researchers and those creating surveys using survey development software would prefer to place the blame on their survey sample, but ultimately they're prolonging the problem.

So the question becomes: What are you doing to prevent a miscommunication as a result of your online survey? One answer that should be pretty obvious is to select a web based survey company who offers question-response survey consultations. Cvent's Professional Services group is always happy to help you improve your online surveys and help you develop survey questions that get you the data you need for your survey analysis. Contact us to learn more about how our Survey Professional Services group can help you build better surveys,

In the past, we've given you reasons to use progress bars and suggestions for when to avoid them in your online survey design. Fortunately (or unfortunately - sometimes I'm not sure which), everyone needs to make their own decisions about the use of a progress bar in their web survey project. When you're answering a paper survey created with paper questionnaire software (sometimes this is just Microsoft Word), your survey respondents can see all the questions at one time and make the decision to complete the survey or throw it in the trash.

However, online survey respondents don't have the same luxury, but survey development software gives survey creators the ability to add in a progress bar. Progress bars give respondents some indication of the survey questionnaire's length. Depending how it's set up, you can show them the percentage of the survey completed, number of pages completed compared to the total number of pages or a simple bar that fills up as they go.

Unfortunately, some survey layouts "abuse" the progress bar. I say abuse because I personally do not like it when someone with a longer survey has one question per page and a progress bar. When the questionnaire is longer, the progress bar never moves - making me want to abandon the survey after just a few questions. There's just a lot of clicking and waiting for pages to load when each question is on it's own page, particularly when the progress bar is laughing at you calling out, There's no end in sight! You suuuucka!

I'm sure you can guess what's coming next: my online survey tip for using progress bars. Always consider the user experience. It is arguably one of the most important parts of your survey design. If survey respondents feel they're not getting any closer to the end of your survey and have to wait for each page to load may cause them to feel it's not worth it.

I'm not saying don't ever use progress bars. When used effectively, they're a great online survey software feature to encourage survey participants to finish your survey. I'm just urging you to seriously think about your entire web survey layout before checking that option when creating surveys online.

Yesterday I gave you some tips for what to include in your next survey report. The first tip was Set the Stage. Of course this is meant to remind you that you cannot just launch into the survey responses and the data collection results but need to start at the beginning and walk down the survey report creation path. You need to provide the report reader with some general background information about the survey project. It's unfair to expect those reading your report, these are probably the decision makers, to just understand what the survey research was about, let alone the goals of the project. Writing a survey report is not that much different than other types of reports. It's important to give the reader an executive summary in the beginning. In many cases, the executive summary may be the only thing management reads so it's important it exists - and that it makes a strong case.

To get you started Setting the Stage, here are a few pieces to include:

• What caused you to want to create a survey? It's a good idea to explain to your audience (aka the decision makers) what prompted you or your team to create a survey. Shedding light on your motivation will help readers understand the importance of the results because they understand why an online survey was needed in the first place.

• What were the goals and objectives? This is a pretty easy task. I'm sure that you wrote down goals and objectives when you began planning your survey - it is the first step in the market research process. It may be a good idea to create an itemized list and separate out those goals that were met, and those that were not.

• What was your survey methodology? Let your readers know what data collection techniques were used - online survey, in-person interviews, paper questionnaires, telephone surveys, etc. Be sure to include if a data collection service was used or which data collection software system you chose. This is a good time to include information about your sample size such as how many email invitations were sent, did you send email survey reminders, who were you targeting? Consider including information about your survey analysis techniques.

• What did you find out? Briefly explain some of the findings from the survey research. You don't need to give away the farm here just highlight a few important, unusual or surprising results. There will be the time and the place for an in-depth discussion of the survey results later in the report.

• What should we do now? Even though a more in-depth section should be dedicated to summarizing the survey results and making recommendations should take place at the end of your survey report, it's also a good idea to briefly let your readers (aka the decision makers) what your recommendations are up front.

At the end of the day, the executive summary should be given just as much attention as the survey itself. You created a survey to help you make changes; you need to share the information you found out with decision makers. I said it in the beginning, but I'll say it again, the executive summary may be the only part of your survey report people read.

As I've mentioned plenty of times before, a critical step in the survey research process is taking the time to analyze data (check out these tips on how to analyze survey data) and presenting your survey findings. If you're like most people, the thought of having to create a survey report makes you cringe - perhaps even hide out under your desk until you think everyone has forgotten about the survey research project. Shame on you if you're under your desk! Why did you even bother spending all that time on the market research or employee questionnaire or customer satisfaction marketing survey in the first place if you didn't want to share the findings?

I do understand, despite my sarcasm. Creating a survey report can be daunting. After all, where do you even start? In past posts, I've mentioned how great Cvent presentations and reports are for post data collection survey analysis and report creation. It's awesome that our online survey software can do a lot of the heavy lifting with the graphical representation of your survey, but you still need to structure the report and provide recommendations.

After you finish analyzing survey results, here's a quick guide to what should be included in your survey report:


Even with these survey tips for creating survey reports, you may still not have the extra time to allocate to building reports and presentations. If this is your situation, let our Survey Professional Services Group help. Our talented team created countless custom, professional reports for our clients to share with their management teams and decision makers. Contact us to learn more about our Professional Services.

Scales are an important part of any survey questionnaire, whether it's an online survey or a paper survey. Often new survey writers try to create their own survey scales instead of using standard scales. This is part of the reason why you see so many unbalanced scales in surveys where they dont always make sense. It can be difficult to design survey scales, Why reinvent the wheel?

My suggestion to all survey writers, particularly those who are new to writing surveys, is to word your survey questions so you can use common scales. Cvent's response library comes pre-populated with many common scales survey authors can use when designing surveys. Here are a list of common scales:

Acceptability	Totally unacceptable, Unacceptable, Slightly unacceptable, Neutral, Slightly acceptable, Acceptable, Perfectly acceptable
Agreement	Strongly disagree, Disagree, Somewhat disagree, Neither agree or disagree, Somewhat agree, Agree, Strongly agree
Amount of Use	Never use, Almost never, Occasionally/Sometimes, Almost every time, Frequently use
Appropriateness	Absolutely inappropriate, Inappropriate, Slightly inappropriate, Neutral, Slightly appropriate, Appropriate, Absolutely appropriate
Awareness	Not at all aware, Slightly aware, Somewhat aware, Moderately aware, Extremely aware
Beliefs	Very untrue of what I believe, Untrue of what I believe, Somewhat untrue of what I believe, Neutral, Somewhat true of what I believe, True of what I believe, Very true of what I believe
Concern	Not at all concerned, Slightly concerned, Somewhat concerned, Moderately concerned, Extremely concerned
Familiarity	Not at all familiar, Slightly familiar, Somewhat familiar, Moderately familiar, Extremely familiar
Frequency	Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Often, Always
Importance	Not at all importance, Slightly important, Somewhat important, Very important, Extremely important
Likelihood	Not at all likely, Slightly likely, Somewhat likely, Moderately likely, Very likely
Priority	Not a priority, Low priority, Medium priority, High priority, Essential
Probability	Not probable, Somewhat improbable, Neutral, Somewhat probable, Very probable
Quality	Very poor, Poor, Fair, Good, Excellent
Reflective	Very untrue of me, Untrue of me, Somewhat untrue of me, Neutral, Somewhat true of me, True of me, Very true of me
Satisfaction	Completely dissatisfied, Mostly dissatisfied, Somewhat dissatisfied, Neither satisfied or dissatisfied, Somewhat satisfied, Mostly satisfied, Completely satisfied
Satisfaction	Not at all satisfied, Slightly satisfied, Moderately satisfied, Very satisfied, Extremely satisfied

Are there other types of survey scales you like to use missing from this list? If you already use Cvent Web Surveys, are there responses you'd like to see added to our response library?

Do you listen to customer complaints? Who do the come from? If I had to guess, I would say they're probably coming from the user. In the B2B world, the user is not always the same person that signed the agreement and purchased your product or service. So when you review your customer feedback procedures and customer survey best practices, make sure you consider who you're surveying: the purchaser, the user or both?

Both groups will have a different perspective. Those who hold the purse strings are often going to focus on results: is your offering saving them money; is it producing measurable results; is it solving the problem? On the other hand, while the end user may share some of these concerns, they're more likely to be focused on the usability: is it hard to use; do I need a lot of help from product support; is customer service responsive and helpful; is it making my job easier?

Organizations should seek customer feedback through user surveys, particularly if they do not have a way to pass feedback through the organization from sales and customer service to product development to management. Even though the purchaser may be happy and seeing high ROI from your offering, the user may bang their head against the wall to make it achieve those results. Soon as a competitor enters the market, the user is likely to push for a change.

Depending on your survey goals, a customer feedback survey form may look very similar to a user survey, including similar goals. The key is who your survey respondents are. That's information you should have in your customer database. Collecting names, emails and additional contact information is sometimes the biggest hurdle for survey programs. From there, writing survey questions and building questionnaires in online survey software tools should all be downhill.

I recently finished reading Company by Max Barry. The short version of the story is someone had the idea to create a "fake" company to test out management theories. However, due to a variety of factors, worker satisfaction is practically non-existent and employee morale is in the toilet (although the group of "researchers," called Alpha, claim it makes them more productive). Barry gives a great employee satisfaction survey example of what not to do as an organization. At one point in the story, the main character initiates an employee satisfaction survey. Unfortunately, employees don't believe the survey is anonymous or Senior Management plans to make any changes based on survey results. Instead, employees believe if they answer "in correctly" they may be terminated.

If you're beginning to think about putting an HR survey program in place to conduct job satisfaction questionnaires or employee morale surveys, here's a hint: make sure employees believe the survey is anonymous and they will not be investigated as a result of their feedback. In my opinion when it comes to staff surveys, nothing is more important than preserving the survey respondent's anonymity. Barry took it to an extreme having employees look for tiny, hidden watermarks on the paper survey with markings of employee numbers.

Another important lesson for survey writers and survey project managers is if your employees do not believe the organization plans to make improvements based on feedback, your survey is probably worthless. Employees wont spend time thinking about their answers and providing constructive feedback. More likely than not, they will breeze through the questionnaire giving "correct" answers. Why bother?

While the last lesson is something that must be addressed with organizational culture and building trust between management and employees, the anonymity issue is easily solved with a web survey tool. Most online survey software has the option to build surveys that are anonymous. Take advantage of that feature when creating surveys to collect employee feedback.

When you sit down to because the survey writing and question creating, take a minute to review these tips for what types of questions to avoid.

One type of online survey questionnaire we don't talk about a lot is website marketing research and web usability surveys for your web pages. Often times we narrow in on market surveys, customer surveys and employee surveys leaving out a wide range of other types of surveys. Web site survey tools can help you quickly build surveys and polls to gather visitors feedback to help you improve your website. According to an article published in the current issue of BtoB Magazine, websites rank at the top for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketers when it comes to online marketing tactics. If websites are so important, how can you not take the time to gather feedback about your web pages?

You can use the website feedback survey questions below as a site survey template for gathering user feedback. For many of these questions, you will need to change the options so it makes sense for your particular website.

I just created a survey to gauge Cvent employee interest in playing in a local softball league this fall. It got me thinking after yesterday's post where I suggested using online surveys to collect employee feedback for product enhancements. Perhaps it's not obvious how human resource departments or any other department can use online questionnaires to survey employees.

One of our sales team members has been trying to organize a company sponsored softball team for years. This year, it looks like it might finally happen - if there's enough people who want to play. But how do you easily find out in a company with over 475 employees who wants to play, when they're available and what positions they can play? It could be a lot of emails to manage and spreadsheets to keep track of responses. Or you could build an online survey in ten minutes and email the survey to employees. Much less work to manage data collection via an electronic survey than responses via email. If you want to know every time an employee completes your survey or online poll, you can set up triggered email alerts within the survey software to receive all the survey responses or just the ones that meet certain criteria. In this case, I might want to set up a triggered alert when an employee says they want to play.

My survey example is only one use of web surveys for collecting feedback from employees. You can do a quick employee poll to get suggestions for happy hour events or even lunch orders. Not every survey project needs a lot of planning. When you need to quickly poll employees on a topic, surveys will do the job there as well.

How else have you used surveys to gather employee feedback quickly other than formal job satisfaction or employee performance appraisals?

Data is boring. No one wants to read through long survey reports to try to glean bits of information. Perhaps this is why so often findings from online survey research goes unread and undiscussed - causing organizations to fail to act on their data collection results. As a surveyor you need to dig through the survey responses to find the insights and important findings for them. The best way to do this is by creating a solid survey report that easily calls out the significant data in an easy to read and absorb way.

Someone invented graphical representations of data, such as charts and graphs, for this very reason: to make data easily understood.

It can be difficult to easily spot trends and important figures when looking at a list of responses. But if you're using online software survey technology, such as Cvent, the time it takes you to create charts and graphs to spot the important data is cut down considerably.

Unlike with paper surveys, all the answers are already collected and stored in an electronic format. Cvent's Web Survey solution will create survey presentation reports for you. But if our survey software system doesn't automatically create the exact graph you want, it's easy to download the data, or response summaries, to create your own charts in excel.