10 Steps to Create Effective Customer Surveys Part 1

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Synopsis: Understanding and tackling the elements needed to produce an effective customer survey can be tricky. Here, we break down the most important aspects.

In a previous blog post, we established why it’s critical to survey your customers and respond to feedback. However, don’t forget that you also need to plan, create and administer your survey. Now that you understand why it is beneficial to survey, you need to develop the process so that you gather the most accurate data from your customers.

Creating an effective survey requires planning, time, effort and resources, though employing user-friendly survey software can make the process much easier.

Today, we’ll examine five steps to get you started on planning your survey, beginning with establishing goals and objectives. Be sure to check out our subsequent post, where we reveal further steps to help you create an effective customer survey.

1. Establish goals & objectives

   Before you dive into designing your survey, you need to ascertain why you are surveying – the specific intent. Clearly define the purpose and the scope of the survey along with how the collected data will be used. At this stage, ask yourself: ‘what do I want to know?’ ‘How will I use the feedback, for what purposes?’ Answering these questions will give you a clear purpose and actionable goals. This can range from short term company objectives, to charting the customer journey, to laying the groundwork for a more holistic, employee-focused Experience Management (XM) strategy.

2. Decide approach

   You need to determine what kind of data you are trying to capture and from which population. Are you performing research to gather qualitative or quantitative data? Will your survey seek to obtain a combination of both types? You need to be specific with your approach so that you can design the survey questions effectively. What aspects of customer satisfaction are you seeking? At this stage you also need to decide the number of people you are going to survey.

3. Choose survey type

   Now that you’ve decided what kind of data you want to collect, you need to choose the survey format. It is important that you select a format that works best for you, your business and your customers. You need to consider this carefully as the survey type directly affects the cost, timeline and resources. Survey formats can include face-to-face interviews, telephone surveys, direct mail surveys, email surveys, focus groups, website surveys, etc.

4. Write questions

   A lot of work goes into designing the survey and writing the questions. Basically, your survey results will not be beneficial unless you ask the right questions at the outset. A good rule of thumb is to not include any questions that do not fulfill your specific survey purpose. There should be a strategic reason for every question you include. If there isn’t a strong reason to include a question omit it from the survey. Types of questions you can include are multiple choice questions with scale ratings, open-ended questions and yes/no questions. Solutions like BlueX, Explorance’s powerful survey solution, offers ease-of-use with an extensive range of question types.

5. Design Survey

   The most important thing to remember in designing your survey is brevity. Keeping your survey short and simple will engage customer interactions with it and increase completion rates. Make sure that your survey questions are succinct and clear and that your overall survey length is optimal. You need to be appreciative of your customers’ time and develop a survey that can be completed quickly and easily. It is recommended that you accurately state the time commitment up front. Research shows that surveys that take 20 minutes or less to complete have the highest engagement and response rates. Be sure to remember this when designing your survey.

Do you follow a similar approach when planning your customer surveys? What insights have you discovered from adopting a surveying culture at your business or organization? Share with us!

Learn how to create effective, engaging surveys that provide real insight