You have questions. Your customers, prospects, and colleagues have the answers. So the only thing you have to do is figure out a way to ASK them for that information.
I love simple solutions. It’s even better when I stumble across them in my everyday internet meaderings. I am one of those people that reads the comments on blog posts (I have a feeling I may be in the minority) and last Thursday’s Copyblogger post from Pace Smith is the reason why. I got a tip on a cool tool that I didn’t even know existed.
When we identify an action that we need to do, we start poking around for ways to do it. We need these things to be simple and easy to use because quite franky, we don’t have time for complex stuff. Give me easy and make my day.
I like asking people what they think (I’m a bit of a data geek) so I was delighted to find a no-hassle survey tool that incorporated an account that I was already using on a daily basis.
If you want to start asking for info from your customers, Google Docs offers an easy solution. (Note: you need to login to your Gmail account to start):
1) Go to Documents
2) Select Create New and then Form from the left side bar
3) You are ported into a simple survey form. You have the option to change the theme, add items, or change the item types, and then save your form.
4) When you have all your items entered, you click the More Actions tab in the top right hand corner and Embed to get the code to embed on your website.
5) Alternatively, you can copy/paste the URL link at the bottom of the screen into an email.
Once people start clicking and responding to your survey, you can view results from your Google Documents main screen. The thing that I really like is that survey responses are automatically dropped into an Excel spreadsheet for easy viewing/sorting.
I used Google Docs for a survey that I created to gather data on why we think our customers leave us and I loved that I had it up and running in less than 30 minutes. (Have you taken it yet? If not, click here.)
Have you used Google docs for your survey needs? I’d love to hear your feedback.
