| By Tom O'Leary
Relevant content is a trestle between you and your customers. Without it, you won't convince your market to listen to your message. But whay is relevant? Who determines it? How do you find it? In order to know what is relevant to your customers, you have to engage in dialogue with them. Making assumptions about what they need today based upon what they consumed in the past is misleading and potentially disastrous for your business. One of the most effective ways to keep dialogue open with a large customer or employee base is to use surveys. Surveys give your customers and employees a chance to provide the feedback necessary for you to understand what is important to them. Too often, we sit around boardroom tables strategizing about what our customers will respond to. Well, why don't we just ask our customers? There is no better approach to understanding your customers or employees than asking them questions. With relevant questions, you will find relevant answers.
Designing an Effective Online Survey in 5 Easy Steps
Understanding that your customers are working across various platforms, with unique systems and software; it is important to design a survey that is interoperable across all channels. The most effective way to do that is to have your survey hosted on the Internet. Online services like Infacta's GroupSurveys makes it easy for you to create, securely host and measure the results of your survey. Here are 5 easy steps for designing effective surveys:
1. Define your purpose: What do you want to know from your customers? What actions are pending on the results of the survey? If you put a survey together with unfocused objectives, you will more than likely end up with a survey with unclear results. Define what questions your survey intends to answer. Do you want to measure your markets content delivery preference? Do you want to know what your employees satisfaction levels are? Defining your purpose is essential before determining your survey sample. Before you know who yto ask, you have to understand what you are asking.
2. Define your target: Some samples are more easily defined than others. The sample for an employee satisfaction suvey is evident; but determining a sample to test acceptance of a new product concept is a bit trickier. Using your existing customer base is a good start, but you might want to put some focus on prospects in other markets as well. The size of your sample will be determined largely by your budget and time available to spend on the research. Although small sample sized are statistically relevant when extracted from a representative pool, a larger the sample size will provide more accuracy. The Internet makes getting larger sample sizes easier.
3. Define your questions: Ok. We know why we are asking, we know who we are asking. But what are we asking? The key to a useful survey is down to the questions that we ask on it. Every question on your survey should be relevant to the goals and objectives that you set out for the project. What attitudes, behaviors or information do you want to gather from your customers? What answers will help you to make an informed decision? Always provide a neutral answer for survey takers, especially for opinion questions. Nobody likes to be forced to answer a question that isn't relevant to them, and many will fail to complete a survey that doesn't allow for neutrality. Don't ask more questions than you have to in order to achieve your objectives. The shorter the survey, the better chance for a good response. Keep focused on the objectives and make every question count.
4. Test the survey: Before you announce the survey to your selected sample, test it yourself to make sure that it works and captures the data accurately.
5. Communicate your purpose: When your survey is ready, it is important to communicate its intent and request support. Write a descriptive title for your survey and provide an explanation of why the survey is relevant to the user. Will this survey help the company to better respond to their customers needs? Will it impact new product development? If you are using email to announce the survey to your existing customer base, request cooperation and provide a direct link to the survey. Provide incentives to increase response rates.
Surveys have been around for many years now. But today, conducting a survey with a substantial sample is so much more efficient and affordable with the support of online services such as GroupSurveys. Today, it is unnecessary to assume what your customers’ needs and expectations are. Ask them yourself and find out. You might be surprised by their answers.
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