Thankfully for everyone, the days of paper surveys are all but gone. In the past, surveys were conducted primarily via mail or telephone. These surveys were necessary for businesses to obtain pertinent customer experience information, but the attempt to carry out the survey was often met with an uninterested or annoyed recipient.
Conducting surveys is still just as important as ever, but thankfully, the internet opens up a plethora of far more convenient and less painful surveying possibilities. It’s now easier than ever to create highly informative questionnaires with good survey questions to help you to better cultivate your business. Below, we will go over the reasons that this is a worthwhile practice.
Crafting your brand’s image
If you have narrowed down a set of name and logo combinations for your company, you can use surveys to gauge which image elicits the best response from consumers. Decisions like these can be tough, so allowing them to be made based on survey data is actually one of the most pragmatic routes you can take.
Subjective stances on things like color scheme, logo, or company names can sometimes be a point of contention amongst employees and management, so using a survey can provide you with a larger swath of info on which to firmly base the decision.
Seeing what type of image and content resonates with customers is also a great way to establish consistency in your branding. Red Bull’s fast-paced, high-octane web content is a great example of engaging material that is consistent with the product. It’s safe to say the reach of the brand would be far more narrow had it been inconsistent with its product.
Learning what you’re doing right and wrong
You can effectively get a gauge on your customer satisfaction rate with surveys that you simply will not get via other methodologies. Research confirms a direct correlation between customer satisfaction and profitability, which means you should be striving for positive lasting impressions at all costs.
You may think you have thought out every area of the business thoroughly, but a customer’s perspective can make certain problems apparent that would otherwise go unnoticed. Any critiques that customers offer are gifts that can be used to sharpen your practice, especially if you receive the same critique repeatedly.
Employee feedback
While focusing on customer satisfaction is immensely important, it’s also important to tend to the satisfaction of your employees. Providing employees with a voice via periodic surveys is a good way to keep everyone dignified and empowered.
Surveys can also give you an idea of whether employees are satisfied with their current roles versus longing for different duties. If the survey data indicates dissatisfaction, it could indicate an opportunity to put them in another role and allow them to cultivate a broader skill set. A company comprised of jacks of all trades is far more dynamic than one run by static and inflexible employees.
Learning from inventory analysis
By employing surveys about retail at the end of each workday, pertinent data from the day’s transactions can be consolidated into one report. Doing so can provide insight into future decisions, like which products to buy and which deserve less priority.
Streamline recruiting
Setting up a comprehensive survey or two can help streamline the hiring process immensely. Since this is painless for both the recruiter and the job applicant, it’s a convenient way to gauge who is fit for the job and who is not. Open-ended questions can be especially helpful in getting a read on an applicant’s aptitude and personality.
More accurate timesheets
Human memory is notoriously fallible, so issuing a timesheet at the end of each day allows for more reliable record keeping. When the company’s funds are in jeopardy, it’s best to be as systematic and precise as possible in regard to clocking employees.
Keeping track of projects
When multiple employees are working on constituent parts of a large project, having certain tasks done repeatedly while others ignored is fairly common. Issuing surveys periodically can help ensure that the project is progressing as planned and that no area of the project is being ignored.
At the completion of the project, surveys can help reflect whether or not the endeavor was a success, or if these individuals have the potential to work as a group in the future. Certain sides of someone’s personality can emerge in a team environment, so measuring compatibility is highly advised.
More effective use of man-hours
Online surveys can allow data collection while employees are at work on other tasks. In years past, manually conducting surveys was a time-consuming commitment that might require hours of an employee’s time. If survey issuance is made automatic or done via mass emails, little to no time commitment is required of the employee.
Accessing unique populations
One of the major advantages of modern online survey techniques involves accessing highly specific or unusual sectors of the population. Unique groups and communities exist only in cyberspace, allowing for optimal survey targeting. Meeting face-to-face to discuss specific topics like online dating or stock trading could be an otherwise tedious or impossible undertaking, yet the diversity of internet communities offers groups of people ready and willing to discuss such topics.
In addition, many people find the anonymity of online surveys comforting and are thus more likely to provide candid input on embarrassing or taboo topics.
