by Donna Hamlin

Created on: February 12, 2009

Online surveys - designed well -can be a cost-effective way to learn from your customers and to build a successful business. Getting ideas and feedback from customers helps you to understand what they need, what they like and don't like and what they want in the future. This helps you to define product lines, make service improvements and build customer loyalty.

To design an effective survey, here are some helpful guidelines:

1. Start with open-ended questions first. This allows customers to respond with what is naturally on their minds. It helps you understand how they think or relate to the topic in their own language and style. If you start with fixed choice questions or rated questions, you lose the chance to learn how they approach a topic. It also allows them to raise thoughts you may well have not considered within your own team.

2. Probe key open-ended questions. Psychologists teach us people answer questions on a rational basis first. As a follow-up to the initial question, try adding "Anything else?" or "What else?" The answers people give to a probe tend to be more emotional. These emotional themes are much more important to understand because people make buying decisions based on emotional factors more than they do rational ones. For example, you may ask customers what matters to them is what grocery store the use. Rationally, they will say quality of produce, appearance of the meats, etc. Emotionally, it turns out the real factor is convenience and proximity to the home that determines actual store selection.

3. Use a ratio scale. Many surveys use Lickert scales (always, sometimes, never, type questions), which are not as precise as scales that begin with a zero and use the real number system (e.g., 0-10 scales). Your ability to look at what factors influence others is more accurate if you use math to your advantage. Findings from looking at correlations and other statistical patterns will give you far more insight about how your customers think. It will also lead you to better ideas about how to meet their needs in meaningful ways.

4. Put demographic and sensitive questions at the end. People will be more willing to finish a survey if they have these questions at the end. Demographic questions are easy for people to do but tend to bore them. If they are at the end of a survey, they will zip through them knowing they are almost done. If you put them upfront, the customer can get bored too early which means the drop-off rates (people who quit a survey before finishing) will increase. Similarly, sensitive questions at the beginning increase people's concerns about a survey and make them answer in more guarded ways. If you put them at the end, they will have answered without this concern and are more apt to answer them.

5. Make sure the survey runs less than 20 minutes. Survey fatigue sets in about then and you will lose participants if the survey takes too long. Time test the survey to make sure average completion time is realistic.

6. Get professional help with the survey construction. Designing a good survey is part science and part art. It's worth the investment to work with a professional who does it well so you can learn as much as possible from the effort.

Discovering the latent needs and expectations of customers is what seperates a so-so company from a great one. Learning from customers with a quality survey can help you with creative ideas that will differentiate your company from those of competitors. It can help you build sustainable customer alligiance. After all, who would want a customer if you could have a fan?

Learn more about this author, Donna Hamlin.
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