Surveys are one of the best ways to track what your customers and members think about your company.
Collecting customer and member views and feedback in an organized way, and then acting on the data that comes in, will increase turnover and your customer’s experience of you as a company or association.
To help with collecting data from your customers and members, we’ve put together a few tips and advice that we hope you’ll find helpful for future survey and market research forms.
1. Define a clear objective for the survey
Identify what information is absolutely most important for you to get from the recipient of the survey. Boil down what it is you want to find out into a few key questions that will give you exactly that information.
For example, if you are creating a survey to be sent to customers after a purchase, you should only ask questions that relate to the purchase itself. It’s easy to add “just one more question” when you create the form. Be sure to figure out exactly what you are looking for in the results before you start working on the questions.
2. Keep the survey short
The surveys with the highest response rates are those that take less than 5 minutes to complete. All surveys that take more than 10 minutes to complete should be rebuilt, or a prize or other incentive should be added to encourage respondents to complete the survey.
Another good thing to consider is to keep the number of response options on the questions down to an absolute maximum of 10 options. Too many answer options will make the respondent dizzy and the survey will take longer to complete. Rather, break the question down into several questions and think of other ways of phrasing the question and answer options.
3. Ask one thing at a time
It’s relatively easy to end up with questions that are double-bottomed, such as “Do you like crisps and soft drinks?”. This question gets ambiguous answers that are hard to keep track of and does split into two separate questions for best results.
4. Avoid leading questions
Phrase questions in a way that does not lead the respondent in any particular direction regarding the answer. A bad example might be “Would you recommend our company to your friends?”.
Instead, use “Would you recommend our company to your friends?”. Leading questions do not provide objective answers. Therefore, always consider how the question can be phrased in a neutral way.
5. The order of the questions is important
The order in which you place the questions has an impact on how committed the respondent will be to completing the survey. Therefore, make sure that the first questions are interesting and easy to answer.
If you need to ask questions about geography, name, shoe size, etc., do so at the end of the form so as not to put the respondent off.
If the respondent has taken the time to answer the questionnaire’s important questions, they are likely to answer these questions at the end of your form as well.
Conclusion
If respondents feel that they are part of the change process in the company, they are always more likely to respond to future surveys.
Good luck with your future surveys through HeyForm!