Part 2: Find out what your audience is really telling you

Last time, we established a baseline so you can quickly and easily measure the effects of changes you make to your business. But do you know what your audience's message really is?

Analyze your online survey results to identify actions that will improve your baseline numbers. Here are some suggestions for how to do that:

• Use the charts for a quick overall view. See which answer options were the most popular, least popular. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your business. How likely are your customers to spread the good word about you? What did people rank as most important when choosing to do business with you? Is price an issue? Identify unmet needs. What are the concerns or dissatisfiers? Identify trends in the data that will help you make decisions related to your objectives.
  
  For example, one thing that stands out in these overall results is that the majority of the audience dines out weekly, but they only dine at this restaurant monthly. So if I was the owner I would want to uncover what I could do to get customers to dine with us more regularly.


• Use the filtering tool to see even more value with your results. Go beyond the high overall view by applying filters to isolate information so it’s more useful for your business decisions. With a click of a button you can say, "I only want to see how females responded to a particular question." Perhaps there are gender biases about certain products or programs.
  
  Note: You can only filter on gender, for example, if you asked respondents to tell you their gender. So if you haven’t already, you may want to add questions to your survey that so you can look at the results in a certain way. You also may want to filter by areas or zip codes if you are opening or considering opening in a new area. How is that audience different from the location you are currently in? Do you need to add a filter question to your next survey to help you get a better understanding?   


• Use the open-ended text responses to get new ideas and pick up on new trends. Since your customers aren’t limited by answer choices, you get their opinions in their own words, which can be very valuable. Your audience can tell you exactly what they think, and it will become clear how to improve your offerings.


• Use the individual results if you have dominant customers or opinion leaders. You can see exactly how any individual answered the entire survey, and you may want to put more weight on any responses that stand out with these influencers.

Next time, we will take a look at how to best use your findings to have a significant impact on your organization and its success. Until next time, happy growing!

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