1 Top Ten Survey Best Practices Webinar Sponsored by SurveyGizmo Ed Halteman and Christian Vanek September 27, 2007

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Top Ten Survey Best Practices

Webinar

Sponsored by SurveyGizmoEd Halteman and Christian Vanek

September 27, 2007

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Christian VanekChristian is a founding partner of SurveyGizmo and the lead software engineer. He comes from an 11-year consulting background focusing on marketing and content management tools. Christian is based out of Cambridge, MA.

See SurveyGizmo.com to sign up for a Survey Gizmo account.

Webinar Survey Experts

Dr. Ed HaltemanEd has a master's degree in applied mathematics, and a Ph.D. in statistics, and he has specialized in survey design for over 10 years. Ed currently heads Survey Design and Analysis founded in January 2003 and is available for comprehensive survey design services. Contact them for help getting more out of your next survey.

For more information go to SurveyDNA.com or call 303-818-3679.

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The Agenda!

Webinar: Top-Ten Best Practices

• Welcome • The Process of Building Surveys• Top-Ten Best Practices• Questions and Answers

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Overview of Survey Process

Design (1)

Creation (7)

Collection (1)

Analysis/Reporting (1)

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Top-Ten Best Survey Practices

Best Practice #1:

Start with your objectives, not questions

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Best Practice #1: Start with your objectives, not questions

Examples – Kwik Phone Telephone Company services small to medium-sized businesses.

• Objective #1: To monitor customer satisfaction so that identify improvement opportunities quickly to maintain our customer base.

• Objective #2: To decide where to focus our limited improvement resources.

• XObjective #3: To improve customer satisfaction.

Think Actions/Decisions

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Best Practice #1: Start with your objectives, not questions

Questions – Overall how satisfied are you with Kwik Phone?

Very satisfied, Satisfied, Neutral, Dissatisfied, Very dissatisfied, Uncertain

Very satisfied

Satisfied

Neutral Dissatisfied

Very dissatisfied

Don’t know / NA

Timeliness in fulfilling requests

Follow through on requests/issues

Accessibility of Kwik Phone staff

Kwik Phone equipment performance

Kwik Phone Invoicing

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Best Practice #2:

Introduce Your Survey & How Long it Will Take

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Best Practice #3:

Include “Not Applicable” and “Don’t Know”(especially on required questions)

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Best Practice #3: Include “Not Applicable” and “Don’t Know”

• How often do you get asked a question where you answer, “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure”? Yet, on surveys many just don’t think to include them.

• The Reason? They are focused on their perspective (I want an answer) and not that of the respondent!

• What about the argument, “ ‘Don’t know’ is a cop out I want to force them to think about it and give me an opinion!”

• Forcing respondents contaminates your good data.

• It creates lack of closure which keeps respondents distracted on subsequent questions.

• Method: For all questions ask yourself, “Will this be applicable to everyone? How would I answer it? Could ‘don’t know’ be a possible answer?

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Best Practice #4: Use clear and concise questions

and options

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VS….

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Best Practice #5: Nice-to-knows Don’t Count

• How often do you hear?– “It would be nice to know what are customers think about such and

such. . . .” or “I’d like to know . . .”

– This usually comes up during question generation but can happen w/ objectives as well. “I’d like to know what customers think of our new product (feature) ideas.”

• The Easy Fix for “Nice-to know”s– Ask “What actions/decisions will it drive?”

• Example– Objective level: What action will it drive? None, our product is already in

development! [Invoicing is someone else’s responsibility – a NTK!]

– Question level: “How satisfied are you with Kwik Phone invoicing?”

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Best Practice #6: Use branching and show/hide to shorten your

survey’s appearance.

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Best Practice #7:

Test your Survey

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Best Practice #8: After testing, do a “conceptual analysis”

• So you’ve followed 1-7 best practices and you have a great survey ready to go.

• STOP! Let’s go one step further.– Imagine you’ve executed the survey and you got date back.

– Think of what the data might look like.

– Actually make up some numbers, take them for a spin.• Now what will I do if these were my results?• Will it allow me to meet my objective (s)?• Do I need all of this information? Or are some just NTK?

• Just thinking about this will stir up ideas about how ready your survey is.

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Best Practice #9:

Use your survey results as an incentive.

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Best Practice #10: Sample whenever your target audience is greater than 500*

*roughly

• Benefits of sampling– Better accuracy– Shows respect for respondent’s time– Builds good will with customers– Saves time and money

• Consider– National Polling– Remember you never get everyone to respond.– What action/decision are you trying to make

• Exceptions– Accuracy needs for breakouts– Customer touchpoint

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Summary – Top Ten Best Practices

1. Start with your objectives, not questions

2. Introduce Your Survey & How Long it Will Take

3. Include “Not Applicable” and “Don’t Know”

4. Use clear and concise questions and options

5. Nice-to-knows Don’t Count

6. Use branching and show/hide to shorten your survey’s appearance.

7. Test your survey.

8. After testing, do a “conceptual analysis”

9. Use your survey results as an incentive.

10. Sample whenever your target audience is greater than 500*

Documents

1 Top Ten Survey Best Practices Webinar Sponsored by SurveyGizmo Ed Halteman and Christian Vanek September 27, 2007