Why is Online Customer Survey So Important?

Marketing executives, CEOs, and business owners – everyone feels the pressure of retaining customers and growing their revenues in this ever increasing competitive economic environment. The survey questions you use play a crucial role in determining the importance of your online customer surveys.

Surveys Reveal Your Marketing Strategy’s Effectiveness

Do your customers understand your message? Do they visit your site, see your ads, or check your sales brochures? Using the right customer satisfaction survey questions, your customers will tell you which publications they find important. These can indicate the online websites they visit, and whether they value social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or not. Clients will also give you an insight if your site is at par and if they acquired valuable information when they read it. There are times when even the best strategies miss the target due to lack of advanced proper research.

Surveys Tell You What You Do Right and What You Do Wrong

Your marketing survey questions garner answers which can serve as real nuggets of your business operations and areas which need improvement. You might find out the shortcomings of your sales department, or that your company lags when it comes to responding to customer issues. Chances are most of your customers love your sales workforce but there is one bad apple which caused some serious issues. Your products are probably arriving a day or two later than expected. Your technicians could be well versed in certain areas but they lack in others in spite of the training you offer. The information will indicate your overall weaknesses and strengths and help you create a baseline for improved performance.

Surveys Show Your Competitors’ Weaknesses and Strengths

As a business owner, surveys might make you discover that you only get a third of the budget of your customer because of your direct competitor’s perceived strength. You might learn that you are weak in a particular area considered where the other company is perceived as strong when the truth is, you are flanked out by superior marketing and sales by the competition. The survey question wordings you use will help your clients in revealing what your competitors have to say about your company, and if there are measures of credibility in these statements.

Surveys Offer a Sound Game Plan to Help You Move Forward

Your surveys will reveal not only the likes and dislikes of your clients about your company. These will help you in making adjustments, be it in distribution, service, or sales department. The data can be useful for discarding services and products which don’t resonate with the trade market and add brand new items right away or in the near future. Your surveys offer valuable input for your business’s future growth, all from the people that matter the most – none other than your customers.

Surveys Reveal the Demand for New Services and Products

Dozens of new services and products are made from needs voiced out by and new suggestions from your customers. Surveys reflect these needs effectively. The information can provide an impetus for developing, launching, and selling a service or product to meet these demands.

10 Major Reasons Surveys Are Important For Market Research

Online Survey is a powerful tool for conducting marketing research to know the attitudes and opinions about your competition and your company from a wide audience. No matter what the business size is, you can always grow and prosper through the implementation of affordable surveys in developing strategies that attract new customers and keep the ones that you already have.

Marketing researchers often utilize qualitative research methods including focus groups, as well as, quantitative methods including surveys to get insights about the targeted audiences. Both of these methods were expensive for small businesses. For this reason, some opt for online poll for decision making. They take advantage of the online survey tools to get the results they want without the need to spend a big chunk of money.

A lot of online survey service providers provide free version of online poll maker to create a basic survey solution that you may post on your website or blog. If you want more sophisticated solutions, you may have to step-up to a low-cost subscription for approximately twenty-five dollars a month. This subscription will let you conduct and share surveys every month with your audience.

There’s no need to depend solely on your instincts whenever you are making essential strategic decisions. Use online poll to get customer evaluations on their experience when purchasing products or services. Most small business owners will use surveys to look for new customers through the use of the audience databases of the online survey service provider in generating leads. Some resourceful businessmen use online surveys to crowdsource the new product or service ideas during the process of development of the new service and product.

The primary purpose of market research is knowing what your customers like for you to retain them and get new customers. To do this, you will require facts from consumers to gather data that will let you stay ahead in the competition.

With the use of surveys in collecting information, you will be able to get valuable insights into the areas including target markets, customer responsiveness, product feedback, loyalty, understanding the buying habits, brand awareness, and so much more. So, why surveys play a big role for market research?

There are countless reasons why and these include the following:

1. Grow sales
2. Boost conversions
3. Increase traffic
4. Branding and positioning
5. Naming testing
6. Measure the customer awareness and satisfaction
7. Gain detailed insights on customer demographics
8. Update the pricing options and product offerings
9. Know what the customers really want
10. Get more useful information to provide better products and services.

There are many more reasons why you should go for online surveys in carrying out your market research. If you don’t want to end up spending big bucks on other methodologies for market research then you should definitely consider surveys or online polls because these can make a big difference in shaping your next marketing strategy.

5 Reasons Anonymity in Employee Surveys is Important

If the world is perfect, there wouldn’t be a need to conduct employee surveys anonymously. Sadly, majority of the corporate culture doesn't allow complete freedom of expression, making anonymity imperative.

No matter which online survey creator you choose to use for online survey of your employees, anonymity will certainly prove beneficial for you.

Encourage Confidence

Letting your employees complete your poll online anonymously will let those workers who are not that confident to feel more encouraged to provide their own opinions, suggestions, ideas, and comments in a more comfortable manner. There are instances when some employees feel as if their response is going to be ridiculed because of their designation or age. Anonymous free online surveys can give your staff members a chance to share the things they consider important with no fear of ridicule or judgment.

Honest Company Feedback

Another notable benefit of using anonymous online polling is that your employees will feel more honest and open. This anonymity can make employees feel safer psychologically – making them comfortable in something that can really bother them. Without this anonymity, employees could fear that they will be getting into serious trouble. Anonymous employee surveys can make your workers express all their concerns genuinely. They can freely speak their minds without any worries.

Employees Will Feel Listened To

By offering anonymous surveys to employees, you will make them feel that they are being listened to. You will let them know that there is nothing wrong with giving feedback, and they will have a say in anything that happens within the organization. When you make them feel listened to, they will feel more engaged with their work. When your employees are engaged, you can expect them to be more productive.

Eradicate Fear of Retribution

Anonymous employee satisfaction surveys are very important because with them, your respondents will not have to worry about the possibilities of retribution. Thus, you can expect more truthful answers from them. They are going to be more sincere about measures and rules introduced by the employers that don’t enjoy much popularity among the staff.

With no anonymity in employee surveys, respondents will feel worried about expressing their critical or negative opinion, lest this will lead to some negative reactions on the part of their bosses, that is, someone with higher designation or authority. If employees have been directly questioned regarding their opinions about company rules which they do not approve of, there is a definite chance they will come up with lies with evasive replies or even praise the rules. Insincere opinion will never benefit your company or organization.

Improve Employee Retention

When you are acting on the feedback you received from your employees, theoretically, you will make them feel happier, which will then lead to improved employee retention. When it comes to surveys (no matter anonymous or not), one of the biggest mistakes made by companies is that they don’t even respond appropriately or take necessary actions on the feedback collected.

Failure to act on the feedback they receive from employees will have a negative effect, leading to employees getting furious, disengaged, and when the issues persist long enough, they might even end up quitting the company. In a nutshell, anonymous surveys created using an online quiz creator helps improve retention.

8 Important Things To Consider When Designing Surveys

Designing surveys or questionnaires involves more than just framing right questions that you want to ask. There are different factors that can influence the failure or success of your project. So, ensure to consider below mentioned important things whenever you are designing surveys or preparing your survey questions.

Data Collection Mode

Whenever you are gathering data through the phone surveys or in person interviews, the actions and words of the interviewer will create a major impact on the final results. Online surveys, on the contrary, depend heavily on the question design and wording. You will not have the advantage of body language or inflection to help convey the meaning of your questions correctly. Color choice, phrasing, and layout will play the major roles in how the respondents interpret your questions. And these interpretations will majorly influence the final data accumulated.

Effects of Survey Questions Wording

Writing the questions with the right wording is one of the hardest parts of creating surveys. Asking questions does not sound that complicated, yet, take note that collecting data over the internet eliminates the ability to explain the correct meaning and provide additional information. If you’re using esoteric language, jargons or highly technical words, your respondents might not be willing to provide answers. It is also important to avoid combining two questions in one, or writing questions that can bias your respondents toward a certain type of response.

Survey Fatigue

There include those types of questions which include big grids of the radio buttons, thus, placing heavy burden on the respondents and increasing mental fatigue during the survey. There are times when these questions are necessary to ask, yet try to avoid them if you can.

How You Should Set the Flow Of Questions

Every survey question must follow a logical structure. Jumping from one topic to another might confuse your respondents, eventually leading them to skip the questions or abandon the complete survey altogether.

Various Survey Question Formats

Not every survey question is similar. Some of these questions, like the quantitative questions, will provide a limited selection of the available responses. Qualitative questions, on the other hand, enable individuals to answer in their own words. 

Accuracy of Answers

Majority of people do not have a flawless memory. No matter what your intentions are, the respondents won’t always provide you with accurate information. For example, people may answer the questions about their age and gender easily, but when it comes to measuring opinions and attitudes, some may face trouble formulating right answers.

Clear Structure of the Questions

The survey questions have 3 parts and each of these should work in harmony with others to acquire high quality data. These parts include additional instructions, question stem, and response options.

Visual Survey Design

The survey’s verbal part is important. if you are using the survey design elements consistently it may increase the burden on your respondents, as well as, prevent them from understanding the meaning of the survey completely. For example, using a variety of colors, strengths, and font sizes across different questions forces the respondents to relearn the meaning every time they are used.

Let's Agree NOT to Use Agree/Disagree Questions in Online Poll

For some weird reason, human nature seems to have it ingrained to stay agreeable and positive even during the toughest situations. But, did you know that this life virtue is also applicable in surveys? The truth is, this particular virtue might even introduce bias in your online survey.

According to studies, there are several ways on how your agree/disagree questions you use in your poll online can urge your respondents to answer them in such a way that doesn’t necessarily reflect their real opinions.

The Problems with Agree/Disagree Questions for Your Online Surveys

Online polling experts have found out that there are two primary types of problem which can arise when you use the usual agree/disagree questions.

• Straightlining

One of the ways that an agree/disagree question can cause problems is through making it easier to go through several questions of your online polling and choose the same answer each and every time even without really reading the choices you provided. Having several questions in a row with almost the same answer options such as agree or disagree might end up boring your respondents. They could still provide their responses to every question but they don’t carefully consider which response is truly the best and most suitable.

• Acquiescence bias

It is almost again human nature for people to say things such as yes to things or even agree with things even when they don’t feel that way. Try to imagine this: If your coworker asks you do like her new dress, you will feel the need to agree with her, right? Studies have revealed that this tendency is also applicable when people answer survey questions as well.

According to experts, item specific questions have options of response which are specific to a certain question. They claim that instead of sticking to a one size fits all scale which will apply to several agree/disagree questions, you can go for a scale with a wording that has been tailored to match the unique wording of the question.

What It Means for Your Online Surveys

If your online poll makes your respondents feel bored when you ask them a series of agree/disagree questions, chances are they will not be that conscientious or focused when they give their response. After all, what will be the point of asking these questions when you know that your respondents will not really even try to answer them well?

While the item specific questions will require an extra effort to answer as compared to the agree/disagree questions, there is no need to worry because their benefits far outweigh their drawbacks. When people exert more effort, it means that they will have more care and concentration when they make their response. This will then lead to a more carefully considered response which translates to more accurate data for you.

Even if you use the best online survey creator, everything will be useless if you cannot get the data you need. If you want the survey experience to be good not just for your respondents but for you as well, let’s agree not to use agree/disagree questions in your next free online surveys.

Why Pre-Testing Your Online Survey is Important?

Some pre-testing level is a must before you launch a full-scale survey. SSI or Survey Sampling International defines the pre-test as a questionnaire that’s tested on the small sample of the respondents statistically before the full-scale study.

The advantages of pre-testing can’t be overstated whether you go for a soft launch or not. The real problem is, in the industry where time is frequently of the essence as well as findings have to turn around yesterday, it is hard to budget the time into the study to conduct a thorough pre-test. In several cases, one might argue pre-test isn’t necessary for the renewal of a yearly survey or online survey that’s being conducted for a smaller population.

Below are some of the reasons why pre-testing your survey online is necessary. Just remember that some of the advantages will apply also to some methodologies including the phone surveys.

• Estimating the Response Rate

In all likelihood, it’s one of the most common reasons why surveys are pre-tested. Once you send thousands of survey invitations out and acquire thirty-five completes, you know that the response rate will hover around 3.5 percent overall. It helps you guide the future sample purchase and determine the number of invites you have to send to reach the quotas without the need to overspend.

• Estimating the Length of Time in Completing the Survey

Probably, this factor is considered as the second of the two most common reasons why surveys should be pre-tested. Through reviewing time stamps of how long this took the respondent to take surveys, you may determine whether you may add those 2 key questions your clients liked to add or determine once you have to cut back on the scope.

• Fishing Out the Wording Issues or the Questions That Are Hard to Answer

As a survey writer, you must have faced situations where you had spent more time engulfed in the survey that you overlooked or did not catch several minor problems. Through pre-testing your survey, you’re getting a fresh perspective on question language. By doing this on smaller scale, including an email to some colleagues may achieve the same results.

• Understanding the Points of Dropout

You might have discussed about the best engaging survey respondents in the previous blog posts and that advantage speaks directly to this point. You may accomplish it in some different ways. One may look at the data to check the questions which carried the likelihood of dropping out. Another personalized method could be to follow-up with selected survey respondents via phone to discuss their survey experience.

• Enhancing Your Invite Text or Subject Line

Another advantage of the pre-test is testing the subject’s effectiveness of your invite text or subject line. The spam filters are the real concern in terms of online surveys or online poll. Thus, once you have time to pre-test, you might like to think about using some subject lines and see which of these worked flawlessly for you and your surveys.

Why, When and Where Online Survey Respondents Leave?

You prepared your survey questions. You checked the survey question order. You found the best survey software to help you. Then, you started to create survey online. But, even after all the efforts you made, you only found out that your respondents left without you knowing it.

For market research analysts, nothing can beat the disappointment of seeing a high survey dropout rate. They usually end up spending long hours of analyzing the loopholes and causes of this higher dropout rate and thinking of solutions on how to make them lower next time.

By this time, you probably know that it is not just enough to learn how to make survey questions. There are more things required for your survey to really be a success and provide you the results and data you need.

Even if your respondents can answer a specific question, there is a chance that they are not willing to do so. The truth is, there are several reasons why respondents sometimes don’t answer survey questions and leave right there and then.

Unexplained Context

Certain questions might seem inappropriate in specific contexts yet not in others. For instance, questions on leisure activities might be suitable if you conduct a survey for entertainment precincts but not if part of an employee satisfaction survey. Respondents don’t respond to queries which they deem inappropriate for a certain context.

It Needs a Lot of Effort

Many respondents are not willing to devote too much effort to offer information unless you give them an incentive for doing so. For example, the research wants to determine which galleries or museums the respondent visited recently. This is one of the two ways to obtain this information. The researcher can request the respondent to list all things they saw at the gallery or museum or the research can offer a list of exhibitions then ask the respondent to check the applicable ones. The next option is preferred as it needs less effort from the respondents.

Purpose Doesn’t Feel Legitimate

A respondent could be reticent to divulge details they don’t see as serving any legitimate purpose. Why will an organization host a music festival want to know about occupation or income level? Explaining the need for the data can make the request for information look more legitimate and increase the willingness of the respondent to answer.

Too Sensitive Information

There might be an unwillingness on the part of respondents to share any sensitive information since it may cause embarrassment or even threaten their self image. When pressed for an answer, the respondents may provide biased responses, particularly during a personal interview. Sensitive subjects may include religion, money, sexual orientation, family life and involvement in crimes or accidents.

Before you write or prepare your survey, you have to be extra careful about the questions you will include in your survey. Any wrong move with your questions may affect or alienate your respondents and urge them to refuse to give their response or consequently discourage them from completing your survey.

How Can You Make Yourself Customer Sensitive Using Business Polls?

Business polls are no doubt a great way to evaluate your business progress in the competitive world of market. These are also beneficial by helping you determine the other business strategies you may incorporate to meet the needs or requirements of your customers.

Every business poll is needed to have feedback in a form of opinion and it should be structured with the right kind of formats and requires to make it customer sensitive and it might be in the form of questionnaire online or phone calls.

Being a customer sensitive using business polls, you need to remember that customers are sensitive about the cost of any service and product. They always concentrate on getting everything at cheaper rates. Nevertheless, the scenario becomes different when products become popular and demanding. In these cases, the customers concentrate on technological elements instead of the cost alone.

Below are the other tips to make yourself customer sensitive whenever you are using business polls:

• Decide Your Customer Preferences

Before you go to polls, you should ask questions about what customers prefer and what’s the most convenient means of giving opinions is. Depending on the business nature and customer profile, you should decide whether you go social media or count on making the phone calls to have customer engagement and real time feedback.

• Explain Your Purpose

The main purpose of collecting information should be cleared through brief introduction and how information is gathered will be consumed should also be stated to be customer sensitive.

• Update Your Customers

It is important to keep your customers updated so that you will know their opinions on the business polls. You may update them by sending promotional emails or posting some information on social media so that followers are informed of the current situation.

• Consider Using Appropriate Questions

Depending on the business poll’s purpose, you should choose suitable kinds of questions. It may be a closed or open type question, with response in the form of a yes and no question. You can also use multiple type, which will let your customers choose one among the provided options. The scale type once the response comes in a form of rating.

• Consider Incentives

Offering rewards for opinions may be effective for luring customers.

• Assure Your Customers about the Confidentiality of the Information

Guaranteeing the confidentiality of the information that your customers have provided is a way to build confidence and trust. Therefore, people should be assured that there won’t be disclosure of identity.

• Always Stay Relevant

For you to stay customer sensitive when it comes to business polls, you have to take note that relevance is the key. Ask only your customers about relevant questions and never use topics that are not related to what you are servicing or offering.

By keeping those tips in mind, you can guarantee that you will make most of your business polls. When making a business poll, stick with a reliable poll maker.