Over the last couple of weeks, we have discussed our view on how to create surveys, both for on-site use and general customer satisfaction, and what we believe is the key to making them successful. However, all of these advices mostly regard the actual survey in terms of questions and survey design. It shouldn’t be forgotten that the very purpose of creating a survey is the primary consideration for anyone that want to collect feedback of any kind. Hence, in this post we want to share with you our thoughts on having the right survey mindset.
Visualize the Big Picture
Everyone that creates a survey has some purpose or goal with it. It can be to measure everyday customer satisfaction in a store, get employee feedback once in a month, or get attendee feedback during an event. No matter what type of survey you are planning on creating, you should always have a clear purpose and goal with it. Ask yourself:
What do I want to achieve with this survey? What am I looking for from the respondents? What result can I prepare for? What result will I not be prepared for?
The more you think through the whole life cycle of your survey, from survey creation, data collection, data analysis and conclusions, the better you will find that your survey will be.
Put Yourself in the Shoes of the Respondents
Your survey won’t be anything without the respondents. It is therefore important that you put yourself in the shoes of the respondent when creating the questions in your survey. We wrote an article about customer satisfaction surveys that customers will complete here. In this article, you’ll find some great examples of question formulations that appeal to customers. This will also give you some general inspiration for how to formulate questions that respondents actually will answer, including employees, event attendees amongst others.
Act Quickly
We can’t stress enough how important it is to act quickly on the feedback that is collected. This should be one of the top priorities when you create a survey. When you ask for feedback from customers or employees, you’re doing so to discover what you do good and what you do bad, and make changes to your organization thereafter. If you aren’t prepared to act on your respondents’ feedback in a timely manner, you should consider not asking them for feedback at all. That is the hard truth and something you should consider from the very beginning.
Sharing is Caring
No matter for what reason you’re creating your survey, it is important that you share the results with everyone in your team. First and foremost those who are closest to the respondent, like the customer-facing staff in a staff. However, the results should also be shared with others, since the odds are high that more people in your team are dependent on the results of your survey, and also play a part in improving your organization based on the feedback. Whether you send a daily email with a summary of the statistics of the day or print a PDF report for the next team meeting, your colleagues will always benefit from seeing the results.
Get back to the Respondent
Nothing fulfills your survey goal more than actually getting back to your respondents when you have made changes to your organization based on their feedback. Closing this loop shows your respondents that you care for their feedback and that you actually are dependent on them to make necessary improvement.
Measure Over Time
You know what they say: Rome wasn’t built in a day. This actually also applies to your survey, you need to collect a lot of data to be able to draw correct conclusions. Furthermore, after making changes to your organization based on collected feedback you have to measure the result of it over time using a new survey.
Having numbers showing your improvement over time is really valuable for your business in many ways, since it can help you make important business decisions.
We hope you’ve got some ideas for what you should keep in mind before creating your survey. Remember that having a clear goal and survey mindset will save you a lot of time in the end.
Take care,
Ludvig