Thursday 8 May 2014

How to Reach a Maximum Number of Respondents in Online Survey Data Collection



In the conduction of online surveys there are several important parameters you as an investigator need to specify, such as the content, design and phrasing of the questionnaire, the scheduling of your survey and how to reach your respondents. The decisions you take about these parameters should be wisely matched with the target group you are planning to study as well as to the topic you are going to explore. In regards to the distribution of your online survey you can choose from a range of different data collection methods.

Online data collection if you don’t have a register to send out the survey to

  1. Public link: First of all you can simply create a public link of your survey and place it onto all possible virtual public spaces that you know your target group visits frequently, for example, your homepage, social media, related homepages and blogs or the intranet of your organisation. Make sure you cover all possible sites where your target group might be around.

    Tip: To attract more respondents you should hide the survey link visually behind an eye-catching button or sentence that says, for example, “Take the online survey now!” It is also highly recommended to provide a nice incentive, such as a prize drawing.

  2.  QR-code: In order to spread your public link not only in virtual places you can use a QR-code to publish it in paper magazines, brochures or other haptic material that you know will be read by your target group. Respondents can simply scan the code with their smartphones and complete the survey via their smartphone browser. In case you do not have a specified target group but would like the broad public to answer your survey you can even put the code onto outdoor advertisement.

    Tip: On paper material you should give a short instruction on how to install a QR-code scanner on a smartphone to raise your response rate.

  3. Tablet survey: An innovative method that has become very popular over the recent years is the tablet survey that gives you instant feedback. Tablet surveys work best for short questionnaires and are most effective in locations where your target group will pass by during the time of your survey. This is especially the case for the evaluation of events, congresses or management trainings etc., where you can locate tablets right at the exit points of the function. Also for in-store surveys in retail shops as well as for employee surveys in organisations, the tablet method is a very efficient alternative.

    Tip:
    In order to raise your response rate you can also employ friendly and outgoing people to motivate potential respondents to take part in your survey. This way you can also influence and narrow down your target group to certain characteristics like age group etc.

Online data collection with a register and contact details

  1. E-mail survey: If you have a very specific target group and have a list of their e-mail addresses your way to go is the e-mail survey. You can personally address your respondents with their name and an individual cover letter. You can also include the survey into one of your regular newsletters, but make sure it attracts visual attention (in case people do not read the whole newsletter…).

    Tip:
    For higher response rates make sure you keep your cover letter short, let readers know of how much worth their time is to you and that their results will be kept anonymous – this is really important since you have reached them via their e-mail address.

  2. Mobile survey: If you have the mobile phone number of all members of your target group, you can conduct a mobile survey. Simply write an SMS that contains the survey link. This is most effective for regular surveys that people are comfortable with. This method should not be applied when you need to give important information as you only have very limited possibilities to make the invitation look appealing.

    Tip:
    The same rules apply here, for a higher response rate make sure people know that it is anonymous.


   

 


Laura Buchholz
MA International Development
Customer Support and Training Manager, Webropol Germany

Friday 11 April 2014

4 Tips to a Better Customer Satisfaction Survey


Whether we are talking about a small family-operated business, a national company or an international corporation, they all share one priority: satisfied customers! Customer experience management and high customer satisfaction play an important role for the success of a company. 

Not only for turnover reasons you should know your customers and what makes them happy. A satisfied customer does free marketing for you. Their positive word of mouth can emotionally and cognitively affect other potential customers and lead them to prefer your service or product over others. Moreover, a satisfied customer can contribute greatly to the satisfaction and motivation of your employees. This creates a positive circle because only a motivated employee can really satisfy your customer, especially in the service sector. Through measuring customer experience you will get a lot of valuable information in the first place. A significant side effect is that your customer will feel important and worthy because you appreciate their opinion. This can essentially foster their loyalty.

To carry out a successful customer satisfaction survey, make sure you remember the following: 
  1. Be clear and specific – Do not let your customers guess what you mean with a question. Tell them in detail. So instead of asking “How was the service?” ask “Was the service on time?” or instead of “good”, use words like “efficient” or “helpful”. Ask only one thing in one question, for instance the question: ”Was the service on time and friendly?” should be divided in two separate questions.
  2. Ask enough questions – You will have much greater outcome if you in addition to some general customer satisfaction questions also ask questions about other factors affecting the customer experience. And remember to include enough demographical questions, so that you can compare different customer groups when you analyse the results.
  3. Keep it short –Even though it is important to ask enough questions, you should create a layout that makes the customer satisfaction survey questionnaire look short for the respondent. For example use horizontal answer options instead of vertical ones. You can also easily import certain demographical information into Webropol, so that the respondents don’t have to type in information you already know about them.
  4. Have an action plan – Have an action plan describing how you are going to use the insights you got through your customer survey to create a better customer experience. That is why it is very important to do continual surveys instead of only once or twice a year. This way you can also control whether your implementations are fruitful or you might need to change your direction.
So far you might have thought that measuring customer satisfaction is a time consuming and complicated task. No! There are some really professional tools on the market that make this process easy, fast and fun to do! Imagine an online software that only needs a few seconds to create illustrative charts of your customers’ feedback and even a PowerPoint presentation for you. All you have to do is put in the questions you would like to ask and send them to your customers.
It is at least worth a thought, if not essential for you to start engaging in online customer satisfaction surveys today. Asking for the opinion of your customer brings along lots of valuable information, free marketing, staff motivation, higher turnover and long term success! 

 
   


Laura Buchholz
MA International Development
Customer Support and Training Manager
Webropol Germany


Monday 10 February 2014

Quality Management: a powerful transformational philosophy to success



Today, leaders are under pressure to create “super-enterprises” with the ability to react intuitively and where creativity, learning and collaboration are the cornerstones for enhancing the staying power of growth organizations. If today’s leaders are required to be strong, inspiring, and effective then the dilemma, corporations are faced with is, how are tomorrow’s leaders groomed? Focusing on quality seems to gain ground in the significance list in the answer to that question.

The implementation of a quality management system can bring beneficial results to a company; superior financial and non-financial performance, improved competitiveness and effectively realizing business strategies. When properly deployed, a company has productive and relatively happy employees, increased efficiency, on-time deliveries and all sorts of other desirable outcomes.

Quality should be adopted as a mind-set and not as a complex and difficult to understand methodology with many rules. This is why creating and adopting a culture based on quality within the company is the starting point. The target should be the abortion of old way of thinking and focusing on building up new habits based on quality management principles and practices. In a quality based working environment, every organization must address the following 3Ps: purpose, processes and people.

  • Purpose: People just do the things that are “given” or they act in a similar way with other employees. They do not realize the reason for doing so or if there is an alternative to what they are doing. So the answer to the question “why is this getting done in this way”, the most probable answer will be “because this is the way we do things around here”. It is essential to match individual values with organizational culture because a culture of “shared meaning or purpose” results in actions that help the organization achieve collective goals. An organization will operate more productively as a whole when key values are shared among the majority of its members and visions and goals are clearly defined and communicated.
  • Processes are a set of procedures which are followed within a company and ensure that the deliverables fit with the purpose. Once the purpose is defined the processes are undertaken in order to measure and report the quality of the outcome. Processes need to be clearly specified, even better documented, and continuously monitored and improved.
  • People:  The development and deployment of a human resource plan within the organization aims in meeting its goals and achieving excellence through people. Business owners should, by all means, foster and support an environment that encourages and enables people to reach their full potential so as to ensure that their employees are productive and eager to do the best job possible--this is especially true during today's challenging economic times. Yet every industry and every organization has people who simply do not produce work in the quality that they are capable of providing. When it comes to evaluating potential contributors keep in mind these two important things; selecting for attitude and training for skills.
Quality measurement and control is of particular importance to be considered by all managers and ways for the quality to be measured is through customer, employee or evaluation surveys and end-use customers´ complaints so as to ensure the fulfillment of given requirements. At this point, the presence of management control systems (MCS) needs to be stressed out along with their ability to produce the data required for the analysis.  

Athanasia Athanasopoulou  
M.Sc. Total Quality Management
Operations Project Manager/Analyst
Webropol Sweden