Friday, July 24, 2015

Best Practices for Designing Consumer Surveys

As discussed in last week's post, your customers are one of the best resources available to you, no matter what size business you have. So, how do you access this resource effectively in order to get useful feedback and reliable data? One way is to design a customer survey, which will allow your consumers to share their experience with your products and services. Here are a few tips to help you get started on designing an engaging survey:

In order to get consumers to respond, you should keep the questions simple. If you ask questions that require multiple lines of texts, your audience may not have time to figure out what you're asking and complete the whole survey. While you're writing the survey questions, keep your end goal in mind. What do you hope to accomplish with these questions?

(Curated from Tech.Co)

"Try to design questions that are short and don't lose their intent. Try to rephrase lengthy and superfluous wordings in order to effectively question consumers without losing their interest in completing the survey. Keep in mind that customers are going to avoid surveys that are long, dull and repetitive. You have to find a way to quickly question them about their preferences, experience, thoughts and references about your product or service. This can only be achieved if you can design an effective survey that is time effective and captivating."

Your survey questions should address a wide demographic of consumers so don't assume anything about your audience. In order to get reliable data, the questions can't be leading. You want to get honest feedback from your customers so you can improve your business so don't try phrasing the questions to get favorable responses each time.

"Don't include words that might describe ego and pride; customers might not agree with you on the same level. Try to keep the format of the questions simple and direct so that they are able to cater to the purpose of your survey. In order to avoid loaded questions, don't include facts and assumptions that are emotionally charged. This is another reason why customers might be put off by completing your customer feedback surveys."

If you're satisfied with the design of your survey and your only problem is participation, try offering discounts and incentives to encourage customers to share their thoughts. Have you ever taken a customer feedback survey? What made you set time aside to complete it?

Image by William Teutoburger

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