MANAGEMENT

TOP FIVE MISTAKES MADE IN DESIGNING SURVEYS

By Laura Olvera, owner, eAutoFeedback

Customer service is one of the biggest contributors to business, organizations and event success. In fact, 96% of customers1 will base their brand loyalty off the level of customer service provided to them. Surveys are a useful tool to help ensure companies are providing a helpful or necessary service and experience.

As an association, you might think you have a handle on how your members feel about the services provided to them as a part of their overall “membership benefits.” However, when one actually asks them directly – it will uncover their true thoughts, opinions and recommendations.

There are a variety of areas when surveying its membership can be valuable:

• Annual Membership Survey – determine why members are a part of the particular association; have the ability to evaluate the board of directors or executive director; ask what events they would like to see occur; obtain feedback on events that have occurred; and obtain testimonials for marketing purposes. • Voting or Legislative Session Questions – to obtain an anonymous consensus vote on an issue for delegates to present as a chapter up to an international association meeting or to recommend an individual member for a

Recognition program. • Expo/Conference – this can be done during the event or as a post-event review to include evaluations on sales/event manager services, speakers, food and beverage, audio visual, internet service, security, parking, location, etc. • Continuing Education (CE) Training – survey for attendees to give feedback on overall training provided and serve as a document for completed CE training to obtain CE credits.

Once the area to survey has been determined, and before jumping into determining the questions to use, take into consideration these top five survey design mistakes.

1. Neglecting to define a clear goal

Defining a clear goal is one of the most essential steps in creating an effective survey. Survey goals should be determined by what exactly is going to be most important

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continued from page 30 when analyzing results. Focusing on a clear objective can help eliminate unnecessary questions, allowing businesses to gain useful, applicable feedback.

2. Asking too many vague questions

Vague questions are often counterproductive, as the responses received are too broad to effectively analyze. For example, only asking a respondent how their overall experience was doesn’t allow them to explain why they chose a given rating. Asking more detailed questions with descriptive-type answer choices will allow you to obtain information on areas of strength or where enhancements could be made.

Language within each survey should be conversational and easily digestible. Ultimately, customers are more likely to provide honest feedback when they understand what’s being asked.

3. Asking too many questions

When creating feedback surveys, it can be easy to go down a rabbit hole of asking too many questions. Although asking users many questions may seem like the most efficient way to gather information, respondents are actually less likely to complete the survey. To ensure the desired results are received, it’s recommended to keep the number of survey questions at a practical level by utilizing branching type questions, which will allow the respondent to skip sections of a survey that do not apply to them.

4. Questions are confusing or too technical

Each survey should be written to compliment your business or organization’s branding. Write each question as if you are asking someone face-to-face. Language within each survey should be conversational and easily digestible. Ultimately, customers are more likely to provide honest feedback when they understand what’s being asked.

5. Failing to analyze results or doing something with them

A company’s customer feedback survey has been posted or sent, so now what? It is “Time to Analyze!” One commonly overlooked step in surveying is aggregating and understanding the survey results. This can be done on an individual basis or by looking for trends.

The next step is actually doing something with the results! This can include reaching back out to the respondent if there are issues to be addressed; conducting staff evaluations with feedback received; making changes to internal workflows; following up with additional information that has been requested; and most importantly, to celebrate successes! F

Reference

1. EN-CNTNT-Report-DynService-2017-global-statecustomer-service-en-au.pdf

Laura Olvera is the owner of eAutoFeedback, an online survey service vendor. eAutoFeedback provides personalized service, helping create the applicable survey questions to ask, adding them to the customer’s profile on its cloud-based system, and then training staff on how to easily send out the survey requests via email or using a kiosk/iPad model. For a “touchless experience,” Olvera a Smart-QR Code model is also available. For more information, visit www.eautofeedback.com or contact 816.207.9965 to schedule a no-obligation demo.

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