survey

8 Excellent Ways To Track Customer Satisfaction

Survey Tips

We live in a super-charged world today. It’s one in which your customer will let you know immediately if they are unhappy with your product or service because they’ll share it on social media or write you a bad Google review.

But, what about all of your happy customers? Or, the customers who might benefit from your product, but aren’t sure how to use it?

In this article, we look at eight excellent ways to track customer satisfaction so you not only learn when customers are unhappy, but you learn what they like and how you can improve.

If you want to stay on top of the competition, you want to actively track customer satisfaction every day.

#1: Customer Feedback Surveys

Perhaps the easiest way of all to track customer satisfaction is through the online survey.

Create a succinct, three-five question survey to send to your customers. Don’t ask leading, loaded or biased questions and include an open-ended question or two as well.

Decide what results you’re looking for when crafting the survey. Only ask the questions that are actionable. In other words, don’t ask questions if you don’t intend to take an action on the answer.

Online customer feedback surveys work, and they’re a terrific way to track customer satisfaction.

#2: Email

Tracking customer satisfaction through email is a valuable way to monitor your customer satisfaction rates.

When sending email, be personal and to the point. Don’t ask too much and use open-ended questions to elicit a response.

Always follow up if the customer is unhappy.

One of the best times to solicit feedback is right after your customer signs up to join your email list.

You can then send an automated email asking a single question. Here are some ideas:

What are you struggling with (in regards to your products/services)?
What feature would you like us to add?
Why did you join our list?
How can we make your life easier?

You can use email to send out your online surveys as well.

#3: Usability Tests

Usability tests are terrific because you have a captive audience trying out your product or service. They are dedicated to giving your test their all, and they are willing to be serious about providing feedback.

Just imagine that you developed a new iPhone accessory, and you give it to 50 people to try for a month.

You ask them to record their observations every day for the whole 30 days. You ask them what they like, what they don’t like and what they don’t understand.

After the 30 days are up, your trial users can give you a wealth of information about your product.

By tracking customer satisfaction through usability tests, you’re better able to anticipate further satisfaction when you launch your product.

#4: Customer Conversation

Another excellent way to track customer satisfaction is with the direct interview – one-on-one and person-to-person.

Understanding your customers and their wants and needs is done easily when it’s done face-to-face.

When you conduct personal interviews in conjunction with your electronic customer surveys, you’ll end up with a wealth of information.

Focus on your customers’ attitudes towards your product or service. Be specific and ask open-ended questions. You aren’t after a yes or no answer here.

Ask your customers about their usage habits. For example, how often do they use your product/service, in what instance and for how long. Uncover if there are other products they use as well.

If you want to really understand your customer and dive deeper into the level of their customer satisfaction, interview them in person. (tweet this)

#5: Website Feedback Boxes

You can track customer satisfaction through feedback boxes on your website or with one question website surveys.

Grab your customers while you are top of mind. For example, if you want to know what they thought of your checkout process, put a feedback box on your shopping cart page.

Offering customers a quick chance to let you know how they feel is a great way to catch minor problems before they get broadcast all over social media.

#6: Social Media

Monitoring social media is an untapped arena for many businesses, but one you should be using.

Social media is a wide open world where you have the ability to create a huge impact on your customer base. This is where you do your heavy relationship building.

Social media is also where you’ll learn if people are happy or unhappy with your service.

In fact, the amount of customer feedback on social media is unprecedented. Never before have people been able to express their opinions so vocally.

Be sure to monitor your social media conversations and attend to comments immediately, especially if they’re negative.

To help you track your customer satisfaction on social media, you can use the following tools:

Google Alerts – set these, and for free Google notifies you when your brand has been mentioned online.
Mention – this tool also lets you know when your business gets mentioned online. It works much better for social media monitoring. (This tool is not free.)
Socialmention – this free tool analyzes your social mentions and shows your range of influence, your ratio of positive to negative mentions and much more.

#7: Website Analytics

Some businesses neglect their Google Analytics, which is unfortunate because it’s a treasure trove of information.

By checking your analytics, you can glean what part of your website gets the most traffic, when and how often. You can also get a good look at user behavior while visitors are on your website.

Using your analytics is a passive way to track customer satisfaction as it doesn’t directly involve their input, but it’s still a good way to gauge customer traffic on your website.

Through your analytics, you’ll find areas of your site that need improvement, and you can learn how to better guide website visitors through your sales funnel.

#8: Focus Groups

Finally, one last way to track customer satisfaction is through focus groups. These are an excellent and relaxed way to talk to your customers.

Getting a group of people together encourages interaction and discussion. They might even provide some ideas for moving forward.

To Conclude

Now that you have eight excellent ways to track customer satisfaction, it’s time to get to work. Once you’ve picked a couple strategies for learning more about your customers, put someone in charge and set the ball rolling.

When you’ve completed your customer satisfaction surveys, tally your data, and then take action.

Let your customers know what you learned and what you’re going to do about it. This lets them know you value not only their input, but their time.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: Binit Sharma

How To Manage Admin Roles For Company Surveys

Survey Tips

Did you know you can manage admin roles for your company surveys?

It’s quite similar to how you’d manage admin roles in WordPress, Google Analytics or another online program.

You can give different people in your organization special roles on certain surveys.

Why is this good?

By assigning different roles, you allow everyone to work together in your account, while keeping the overall management to yourself.

This helps in the information gathering and decision making processes. It also allows your team access to the pieces of your survey that pertain to them.

For example, your writers can add and edit questions, while your analysts can do the analysis while monitoring the results.

Or, if you are an agency, you can easily manage all of your accounts. This allows multi-user accounts the ability to collaborate together on their surveys.

Let’s look at how to manage admin roles in Survey Town.

Manage Admin Roles

At the top of your account, click Settings.
Then, click on Users.
In the top right hand side, click on Create User.
In the box, add your employee’s user name.
Enter a password for them.
If you want them to have permission for everything, you can click the box in the upper right hand side that says +Give All Permissions.
If not, choose the permissions you want to allow. You have a wide choice with regarding to giving permissions.
Under Surveys, you can choose to give permission for any of the following:
- Create/Edit Surveys
- Create/Edit Event Registrations
- Start/Stop Surveys
- Create/Edit Survey Templates
- View Survey Reports
Under Settings, you can choose to give permission for any of the following:
- Edit General Settings
- Edit Account Settings
- Change Username/Password
- Create/Edit Users
- Create/Edit External Fields
Under Tags, you can choose to give permission for any of the following:
- Create/Edit Tags
- Add/Remove Tags

In addition, you can choose whether or not to give someone permission to view all of your surveys and/or manage all of your surveys.

At any time, you can modify or change survey permissions for each individual user.

Survey Permissions

Let’s look at the permissions you might give members of your team pertaining specifically to your surveys.

Perhaps you’d like another team member to be able to manage an entire survey. If so, you’d give them permission for the entire Survey block.

Then, if you have another staff member who handles event registrations, perhaps you’d only give them access to this category.

You might give your designer the ability to create and edit your survey templates.

While giving your employees access to certain parts of your survey, you can ensure that everyone is part of the process, yet no one has complete access.

How Many Users?

Now that you know the roles available, you might be wondering how many users you can have in your Survey Town account.

With the Basic, Standard and Professional accounts, you can have one user. With the Enterprise account, you can have more than one user and multiple roles and permissions.

Why choose the Enterprise account? First, you can send an unlimited number of surveys with an unlimited number of questions. Second, you can collaborate on your surveys.

Finally, you also have access to integrations, report filters, API access and more.

The Take-Away

Sending surveys is good for your business. You can gain insight from your customers by asking the important questions that matter.

With Survey Town, you can choose from different question types to craft the perfect survey.

When it comes to developing your survey, it helps to have more than one person involved in its design and creation. (tweet this) This is where admin roles come into play.

By assigning different team members different roles for your company surveys, you enable group collaboration. This helps ensure you send out the best possible survey to your customers.

Often it takes a group of dedicated employees to design the perfect survey to get the results you need to improve your business or your products and services.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: Thomas Lefebvre

Have You Used Allocation Questions In Surveys?

Survey Tips

Choosing the right types of survey questions is critical to the design of your survey. The type of question you ask determines not only the type of data you generate, but the quality of it.

Have you used allocation questions in surveys? If not, or if you’d like some more information on them, we’re going to look at allocation questions and their usefulness in your survey.

What is an Allocation Question?

Allocate means to distribute something for a particular purpose or reason.

When it comes to your survey, you’re looking for respondents to tell you how much they’ll allocate.

For example, you might ask this question, “You have $100 to spend on three areas – marketing, operations and software. How do you allocate the $100?”

Allocation questions allow respondents to tell you things like how much time or money they’ll give to something.

You can pose questions across multiple categories. Consider this question, “How much time in a 24-hour day do you allocate to family fun, work, eating, sleep and chores?”

Again, you’re asking respondents to allocate something.

Good Allocation Surveys

When creating a survey with allocation questions, you’ll want to follow this basic design:

Limit your categories to three-five. After this, your data won’t be as reliable because you are asking respondents to think too much.
Your categories must be completely independent of one another. In other words, you don’t want to overlap them as this skews your data.

Final Thoughts

Online surveys open a wide world of actionable data. It’s always important to develop a survey that meets your needs as well as those of your respondents.

It’s your goal to ask the right types of questions at the right time to keep respondents engaged. (tweet this)

When you use allocation questions in a survey, you give your respondents freedom to choose and allocate their responses. The only requirement is that their answers add up to the number you specified – for example, $100 or 100 points.

Respondents will appreciate the freedom and flexibility to allocate their answers, while you’ll find your data is easily summarized and interpreted.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: Elizabeth Lies

7 Survey Incentives That Get Respondents Every Time

Survey Tips

According to a survey by the American Statistical Association, surveys with incentives have a better response rate.

They tested a control group with no incentive, a group that was given $5 as an incentive upfront and a group that was told they’d receive $5 at the end of the survey.

Their data showed that the use of prepaid incentives not only increases response rates, but it increases the quality of the survey data.

What’s more, when offered the prepaid incentive, survey respondents were less likely to ignore a question and more likely to offer longer answers.

What does this tell us? It suggests that offering incentives is a valuable way to increase your response rates and the quality of your answers. (tweet this)

In this article, we look at seven survey incentives that get respondents every time.

#1: The Monetary Incentive

Have you ever been asked to take a survey that offered you money for doing so?

This is one of the most common types of incentives and the most successful.

When using a monetary incentive, it can come in several forms:

Cash (think PayPal)
Check (either mailed or e-Check)
Gift card

You’ll often find a higher completion rate when respondents are offered a cash reward.

Why is the return better? Survey respondents who are offered a cash incentive are more likely to complete your survey because there is a monetary reward. What’s more, they are more likely to feel compelled to take their time when responding to your survey because they feel obligated to do so.

How do you find the right amount of money to offer? First, look at your survey length. How long will it take to complete?

Then, think about your audience. If it’s college students, and it’s a five-minute survey, anywhere from $1-5 should suffice.

On the other hand, if the survey is sent to a professional group like doctors, and your survey takes 30 minutes to complete, your price should be significantly more – around $25-100.

#2: The Sample Product or Service

Knowing your audience is key to deciding what type of incentive you want to provide.

While cash is always a great idea, offering respondents a sample product or service is another way to give them what they want.

Let’s say you want to survey people to find out how they feel about your sports drinks. You’ve just developed a new flavor, and for completing the survey, you offer them a sample of the new flavor.

This can work if your respondents are your current sports drink customers, and they’re interested in trying new flavors.

Likewise, if you offer computer-type services, you might offer respondents a beta version of your newest software.

With this type of incentive, make it relevant to your company so it encourages your respondent’s continued business.

#3: The Coupon

Coupons are another often successful way to incentivize respondents.

Many businesses have success offering a 25% discount to people completing their surveys. This is often enough to encourage and grow your response rates.

The coupon or discount costs you less than offering a straight cash reward. Why? With a coupon, you are still driving business.

#4: The Charitable Donation

Again, you’ve got to know your target audience. For example, pick a charity that ties into your product line.

Let your customers know that for each survey returned, you’ll donate X amount to your favorite charity.

Your customers will feel good knowing that by completing your survey they did something good for the world.

In addition, you’ll provide a good feeling for your customers. In today’s world, people are more charitable than ever before, and they want to feel a part of something bigger than themselves.

This can be a good way to build good feelings for your brand while helping others.

#5: The Drawing

Another type of incentive is the drawing or raffle.

With this incentive, you tell survey respondents that for completing your survey they’ll be entered into a drawing to win something.

Popular items include gift cards, cash and iPads.

Just be sure the lottery incentive won’t break your marketing budget.

#6: The Whitepaper

You can also offer your survey respondents something tangible. For example, you can offer them something of value.

Let’s say you run a marketing business, and you are sending your survey to all of your retainer customers.

You might offer them a how-to manual, video or whitepaper that you aren’t offering anyone else for free.

While not the most enticing incentive, it can work for the right audience.

#7: The Giveaway

This type of incentive includes branded giveaways. We’re talking pens, cups, notebooks, etc. with your company’s logo.

You want to know your target audience well, and if you’re giving away something they find useful, this can work.

Things to Consider

Now that we’ve looked at survey incentives that get respondents every time, we’re going to provide you with a few more things to think about.

Know your budget. This is the most important thing to consider when deciding on an incentive. Make sure you can afford to give away the item you promised.
Decide if every respondent gets your incentive. You can also offer the first 200 respondents the incentive or even the lottery option giving them a chance to win the incentive.
Know your audience. When choosing your incentive, it’s vital that you can define this group of people. Offering an incentive that’s valuable is of utmost importance. If they don’t care about the incentive, it won’t matter.
Decide on your delivery method. You want to provide an incentive that is easy to redeem and one that doesn’t eat up your manpower.
Pick the time you’ll offer the incentive. Will you offer it before they complete the survey or after? Upfront surveys have been known to increase response rates because survey takers feel obligated to complete the survey.
Set up some form of quality control. This is especially true if your survey incentive is really valuable. You don’t want people completing it more than once.

To Conclude

If you aren’t sure where to start, you can begin with testing a few different incentives.

Begin with a small group of respondents and see if they respond. For example, if you decide to offer cash, test this out with half of your respondents. Then compare it to your control group and see if it made a difference.

Through testing you’ll know what works and what doesn’t. You might have to test a few times to find out which one works best for your target audience.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: Annie Spratt

10 Great Questions To Ask In An Employee Survey

Survey Tips

Did you know that globally only one in eight employees are actively engaged in the workplace? According to a Gallup poll, that’s only 13% of workers worldwide.

This has led to an increased commitment by businesses the world over to increase employee engagement through retention and morale boosting activities. It also begs the question, “Why the low engagement?”

To answer that question for your business, you’ll want to conduct an employee survey to find out. This is the only way to find out if your employees are satisfied at their job, and if not, what they’d like to see changed.

Now that you’re on board with sending surveys to your workforce, we’re going to look at 10 great questions to ask in an employee survey. First, let’s look at the important things you want to gather.

What You Want to Know

Your basic goal is to find out if your employees are happy and content with their job. You want to know if they are engaged and will continue to be so. And, finally, you want to increase their on-the-job performance and productivity.

To gather this kind of information, it’s a good idea to keep a three things in mind.

First, you want to know if your employees understand and connect with your company’s mission and goals. Just going about their business to get a paycheck doesn’t equate to an engaged employee.

Engaged workers are more productive, so you want to know if your employees are aligned with your company’s goals. (tweet this) Do they believe in your vision?

Bottom line – you want to know if they understand the link between your goals and their goals.

Second, you want to know how they feel about their co-workers. Are they committed to a team atmosphere?

Third, are your employees capable of doing their job, and do they feel they have the necessary competencies?

While your employees may feel like they are part of the team and adhere to your vision, if they don’t believe in themselves or need extra training, they are less likely to be engaged.

Now that you know to keep these things in mind when crafting your survey, let’s look at 10 great questions to ask in an employee survey.

#1: Question About Mission and Goals

Your employees are your best advocates, and to be engaged, they need to believe in your vision. You want to know if they are in it for the paycheck, or if they truly buy in to the products and services you offer.

Questions you might ask include:

Do you understand the mission and goals of the company? What are they?
Would you recommend our company’s products or services to a friend? Why or why not?
What do you think of our customer service?

#2: Question About Team Work

Team work is big in the 21^st century. Driven by the Millennial generation and their desire to collaborate, you’ll find that employees thrive in a team atmosphere.

When your employees work together with a healthy team, you’ll also find that each team member will go the extra mile to complete the project.

Tied into team work is your employees’ satisfaction with their peers. This is a good place to find out if they are all getting along and sharing the workload.

You want to know if your employees respect each other and manage conflict well. These questions help you gauge employee morale.

Questions you might ask include:

Are you a proud member of your team?
Does your team inspire you to work better and harder?
Do you think your team helps you get your work done?

#3: Question About Supervisors

A bad boss is the number one reason people quit a job. This is why including a question about your managers and supervisors is a good idea.

You want your managers to be supportive, not oppressive. Ask your employees how they feel and if they have any suggestions.

Questions you might ask include:

On a scale of 1 to 10, how comfortable do you feel giving feedback to your supervisor?
What are the strengths of your supervisor?
What are the weaknesses of your supervisor?

#4: Question About Appreciation

Engaged employees feel valued and appreciated. Yet, more often than not, employees feel underappreciated in the workplace.

You’ll encourage productivity among your employees if they feel appreciated and recognized for their hard work, so find out if they do.

Questions you might ask include:

Has your supervisor thanked you for a job well done in the last month?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how valued do you feel at work?
Have you received any recognition in the last month?

#5: Question About Growth

Another big reason, especially among the Millennial population, that people leave jobs is because they don’t feel there is an opportunity for growth.

So, ask your employees if they feel stuck.

Questions you might ask include:

On a scale of 1 to 10, do you feel there are growth opportunities?
Have you received training on a new skill this year?

#6: Question About Long-Term Goals

To help you plan for the future, you want to understand your employees’ career goals. This can also help you motivate your workforce and provide them with opportunities.

Questions you might ask include:

What do you want to be doing two years from now?
Do you see yourself working in the same position in two years?

#7: Question About Accomplishments

Along with growth and long-term goals, this question can help you see into the minds of your employees. Plus, it gives them a chance to toot their own horn.

Questions you might ask include:

What was your greatest accomplishment this year?
Was there anything you wanted to achieve but didn’t?

#8: Question About Job Specifics

Employees aren’t always comfortable voicing their concerns, so this can be a helpful question.

Questions you might ask include:

Which part of your job do you like best?
Which part of your job do you like least?

#9: Question About Help

Are you creating obstacles for your employees? If you don’t ask, you won’t ever know.

Question you might ask include:

How can the company help make your job easier?

#10: Question About Morale

Your employees want to enjoy the workplace, so a little fun each week is a good idea. Find out what their idea of fun is.

Questions you might ask include:

How can we make work more fun?
Do you like team-building activities?

Final Thoughts

When planning for your employee feedback surveys, you want to think of these surveys as a long-range plan. (tweet this)

We don’t recommend sending just one survey and thinking it will fix all of the problems at your company. One survey should be followed several months later, and then again a few months after that.

This allows you to gauge the change in response. Hopefully with enough time in-between surveys (but not too much), you’ll see some change in the answers.

Lastly, when crafting your survey questions, stick with a mix of closed-ended and open-ended survey questions. Take care not to lead your employees down a particular path, and ensure your questions aren’t biased.

Keep your surveys short and on target. Finally, once you’ve received feedback, be sure to act on it. Let your employees know the feedback you received, and what you’re doing to remedy any issues.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: Jonathan Simcoe and Gilles Lambert

How To Get Survey Responses From Restaurant Customers

Survey Tips

Keeping your current restaurant customers happy is one of the keys to your success.

This is especially true, because according to LinkedIn, it costs between four and 10 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing one.

Knowing that keeping your customers loyal and returning to your restaurant is pivotal to your profit margins, how do you know what they like and don’t like? How can you improve?

The best way to know if your customers are happy, or unhappy, is to ask for their feedback. One of the easiest ways to do this is with a customer feedback survey.

But, how do you get them to complete it?

In this article, we look at how to get survey responses from restaurant customers.

Incentivize the Survey

Consider offering your customers an incentive for completing your survey. You might offer a discount coupon, free appetizer, dessert or drink.

Your best bet is to provide them something of value so they’ll want to complete your survey. Don’t provide it until the end of the survey, though.

By offering a discount, you encourage survey responses from restaurant customers and give them a reason to complete the survey in its entirety.

Make It Easy to Complete

Your customers are busy people. This is why it’s important to make your survey easy to complete. This helps ensure you get responses from restaurant customers. Here are a few tips:

Send your survey to your restaurant’s email list.
Post it on your website.
Link to the survey through your social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter.
Hand them a card with your survey’s URL address after they’ve eaten, or let them take it through the iPads at your table if you have them.
Don’t make it too long. Anything more than 10 questions is too long.
Have a purpose for your survey, don’t just ask a bunch of random questions.
Ask only the questions you will use.
Fine tune your survey questions. Don’t be biased or leading.
Ask only one thing in each question so it’s easy to answer. For example, “Tell us what you liked and didn’t like about our new décor.” Separate these into two questions.

Act on the Data

If you want your customers to respond to your survey, show them you care. (tweet this) For example, let’s say you plan to send two surveys per year.

On survey number one, you gather your responses, but you don’t do anything with your data. Then, when it’s time for survey number two, no one responds because they don’t think you really care.

A great way to get survey responses from restaurant customers is to do something with the data. This lets your customers know that not only do you care about what they have to say, but they can see you’ll take an action.

If you fail to act on your survey responses, you show that you disrespect the opinions of your restaurant customers. This sends a strong message to your customers that improving your restaurant really isn’t a priority.

Consider sending an email to your restaurant customers and highlighting the feedback and the changes you plan to make.

This encourages future survey takes to send you their responses.

Final Thoughts

Survey your customers on a consistent basis to help you know if your restaurant is headed in the right direction.

Craft short, to-the-point surveys to get survey responses from restaurant customers. And, always process your feedback and report back to your clientele.

One final suggestion for encouraging feedback is to offer a mixture of question types. Give your customers a chance to check boxes, but also give them the opportunity to use their own words.

When they have a chance to jot down their ideas, you just might be surprised at the wealth of information you can learn.

This can help you improve things about your restaurant and ultimately increase your bottom line.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your restaurant. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: Jay Wennington

How Many Questions Your Online Survey Should Have

Survey Tips

You’re working hard on your survey, and you want to be as thorough as possible.

But, suddenly, you notice you’ve created a lot of questions. Have you ever wondered how many are too many?

In this article, we look at how many questions your online survey should have for great results.

We’re going to highlight some tips for keeping your surveys short and focused while getting you the information you need.

Focus on One Objective

To get the best results for your survey, focus on one objective. (tweet this) Know exactly what you want to learn before crafting your questions.

For example, let’s say you want to know what customers think about your website because you’re thinking about building a new one. This would not be the time to throw in product questions.

Make sure your questions are specific and easily answerable. Keep away from biased, misleading or confusing questions.

If you want to know about other things, make another survey.

Keep Your Survey Short

With your clear objective in hand, craft your survey with as few questions as possible.

While there isn’t a one-size-fits-all number of questions a survey should have, a good rule of thumb is to keep your survey short enough that the average person can complete it 5-10 minutes. This usually amounts to 10 questions or less.

Most of your customers will abandon surveys with too many questions – think more than 10. This is especially true if your questions are long and detailed. If they’re short and focused, you can often get away with a few more.

We do recommend keeping your questions short as respondents tend to abandon long-winded, complicated surveys.

Final Thoughts

Consider letting your respondents know upfront how many questions they can expect and how long you estimate it will take them to finish.

This lets them know your value not only their opinions, but their time.

Tell them why you are conducting your survey and let them know their opinions count.

No matter how many ultra-focused questions you decide to ask, offer survey respondents a small incentive for taking your survey, and you’ll find you just might have fewer dropouts.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

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The Top 7 Survey Question Mistakes

Survey Tips

Sending surveys is a great tool to help you gather feedback about your business, products or services and your staff.

With the availability of online software to send your surveys, it’s never been easier and more cost effective to gather data about your audience.

While you can create and distribute online surveys quite easily, you’ve got to put some thought into how you design and write a successful survey. It requires careful planning and thoughtfulness.

To help you create the most productive and data-rich surveys, we’ve put together the top 7 survey question mistakes to avoid.

#1: You Missed the Target

For the most accurate surveys, you want to select and sample the right target audience. If you don’t understand your target audience, it’s very hard to design an effective survey.

For example, let’s say your survey is about swimming lessons for children, and you randomly send the survey to your customers. You might hit childless people, the elderly or those whose kids are too old for swimming lessons.

You want to target the right audience, so you’d want to send the survey to people with young children. In other words, you need to send the survey to the decisions makers, otherwise the data you collect won’t mean much.

When you understand your target audience, you are more familiar with their basic attitudes and beliefs. This can assist you in steering clear of offensive or even biased questions and help you pose the right ones.

Not only do you want to be cognizant of the data you are trying to collect, but you want to know enough to understand what information your respondents are capable of providing you.

#2: The Survey is Too Long

One study says humans have a shorter attention span than the common goldfish. While goldfish remain attentive for nine seconds, this study shows the average human attention span has fallen from 12 seconds in 2000 to around eight seconds now.

Why? You can probably blame the mobile phone.

We tell you this to encourage you to keep your survey short. Consider the respondent completing your survey on his phone while checking his Facebook feed at the same time on his laptop.

You want to maximize your responses, so you want to get right to the point quickly and in as few steps as possible.

Know what you want to learn from your survey respondents and ask only the information you absolutely need and will definitely use. Try and keep your surveys to just about five minutes. If you go over that time-frame, think about offering an incentive or reward.

#3: The Survey Questions are Biased

A survey that contains bias is basically useless when it comes to analyzing data.

What are biased questions? These are questions that lead your respondents to a particular answer. Most often, survey creators don’t intend to write leading questions, and this is a quite common mistake.

Biased questions can even prompt an answer that doesn’t reflect your respondent’s true feelings or opinions. (tweet this) When you ask loaded questions, they can confuse the respondent and often cause them to abandon a survey because they don’t want to provide the answer for fear it will give away personal data.

Biased questions can also be found in the double-barreled question. This is when you force your respondent to answer two questions at once. You want to write survey questions that measure only one thing.

#4: You Included Too Many Demographics

Another mistake is to begin your survey with too many demographic questions such as age, sex, income, education, number of children, email address and more.

You only want to ask demographic questions if your survey depends on it. For example, as in the survey we mentioned above, it would be important to know if your respondents had children.

In addition, if you are using logic in your survey, you can pose multiple demographic questions because you’ll take respondents to other areas of the survey based on their answer, and they won’t have to answer all of them.

Just be sure, again, that you really need the information. For example, if someone answered “no” to the “Do you have children question,” you could take them to another question that asks if they “care” for children (such as a grandparent).

Too many intrusive demographic questions can make your respondents uncomfortable and cause survey drop-out. Try asking your questions at the end of the survey. They’ll be more likely to answer after they’ve spent the time completing your survey.

#5: The Questions Include Negative Wording

Avoid posing questions with the word “not” in them. Your respondents may have trouble knowing what to answer if you use negative wording.

For example, you ask this question: “Do you agree or disagree that swimming lessons are not important for children?” Your possible answers are: agree, disagree, don’t know.

This is a difficult question to answer because first, it can’t be answered quickly, and second, it’s confusing.

You’re better off posing a question like this: “Do you think swimming lessons are important for children? Possible answers: yes, no, don’t know.

This question is easier on the eye and easier for your respondents to answer quickly.

#6: You Ask Unnecessary Questions

It’s incredibly easy when designing a survey to throw in every question for which you think you might need an answer. This is a huge mistake.

For example, if you really only need to know if your respondents think swimming lessons are important, just ask that question or a few related to it.

This might be the case if you’re trying to gauge your target market for their willingness to support a new swimming facility in the area.

Pose only the questions from which you’ll use the data to make a decision or take an action. (tweet this) Don’t ask questions that you won’t act on or don’t have the ability to act on.

#7: You Offer Too Many Choices

While it’s good to offer choices when asking multiple choice questions, you want to keep the possible answers to a realistic number.

Too many choices will confuse your respondents and complicate your data analysis. Keep your list of choices short and succinct.

Plan on offering people the ability to check the Other, please specify box. You might also include the option of don’t know, uncertain, or not applicable. Offering these choices keeps your respondents from getting frustrated when they don’t see their response in the multiple choice list.

To Conclude

If you avoid the top 7 survey question mistakes mentioned here, you’ll design a better survey.

You will find that you’ll receive more accurate data. Plus, your respondents will walk away from your survey feeling good about helping you and your company. They won’t feel frustrated at a poorly-designed survey.

Your respondents will be glad they took the time to answer your survey properly.

Surveys help you make the best decisions for your business. Are you ready to get started with your free Survey Town trial? Start with your free account today, and you can upgrade at any time.

Image: Benjamin Child