Customer surveys are all about building a stronger relationship with your clients as well as gathering valuable first-hand information from your most important business partners – your customers. However, conducting a survey is not an easy thing. It is costly in times of man hours and actual cost of setting up and analyzing the results. Similarly, if you have problems reaching the survey response target then either the results are not going to be as meaningful as possible or you will have to spend more money until you reach your target.
Following are some ways to improve your response rate when conducting a survey:
Make your Interviewers Presentable – ensure that your interviewers are well spoken and presentable; after all, they are representing your company and consequently are a reflection on the company. Interviewers who represent themselves well will have a better survey response rate.
Taking it to the Streets – forget phone and door-to-door surveys, mobile survey apps are the way to go to maximize survey response rates. Android survey software is easy to install and operate. It is cheaper than the old school forms of survey to both configure and analyze. It is cloud based enabling scalability, stability, real-time analysis capability, and the ability to quickly amend the survey. You can also better target interviewees in a non-threatening, public arena where the interviewer can judge whether they will be amenable to participating in a survey.
Properly Formulating the Survey – you can have the best software in the world and the greatest surveyor in the world, however if the survey has not been properly configured, the responses themselves and the response rates will be poor. Start off with easy questions so that the interviewee feels at ease and slowly build up until they will feel comfortable answering the more “meaty” questions.
A Quick Survey is a Good Survey – one of the first questions an interviewer will be asked when requesting a survey from someone is how long it will take. If they answer it will take 10 minutes, their response rate will be much better than if they answer that it will take 20 or 30 minutes. So keep it quick as people don’t have time to spare in this busy world.
Timing is Everything – you are not going to get many positive responses for a survey during the peak hour rush. Be mindful of when people will have time to answer your questions and only conduct the survey during those times.
