I’m still amazed at this day and age why more companies are not surveying their customers, professionals and suppliers. It has never been so inexpensive to conduct your very own research. With the abundance of free and inexpensive tools such as:

• surveygizmo.com
• surveymonkey.com
• zoomerang.com

to name a few.  Type “free survey tools” into your browser search bar and you will get a wealth of choices. I tend to be familiar with these three.

Here are a few survey tips:

• Keep it short. The shorter the survey the higher the response rate.
• Only ask what you truly want to know.
• Target the survey at the single audience that knows the answers to what you want to know.
• Questions should be clear and short. No fluff words allowed. (In other words lose the adjectives, many times they tend to bias the question anyway.)
• Make sure you are not asking for more than one answer in a single question. (In other words be careful of questions that have the word “and” in them. Make it two separate questions.)
• Only conduct surveys that you are willing to take action on. Don’t waste your time and especially your constituents’ time on things that you’re not willing to do something about.
• It may seem obvious but test the survey internally before sending it to the targeted audience.

These are the basics. The more you do the better you will get. If you would prefer assistance there are plenty of veterans including AmeriStride that would be willing to provide expertise for a nominal fee.

Don’t enter 2010 blind. Survey your constituents!

by: Terry L. Massey

Filed under: Blog by admin