Lessons from a late night survey

Posted on Tue, 10/23/2007 - 15:04 by Steve Oriola
I sat down to put together a survey the other night and thought my experience might be of interest. As I often do, I just launched myself into the activity. I wanted to understand why and how Constant Contact customers are using our new ListenUp! Survey product, so I wrote: 1. “How often have you…” 2. “For what reasons have you…” 3. “How frequently do you…” and so on. I came to work the next morning and read through an outline I had written for an online survey tutorial for our website. I quickly realized that I had wasted an hour and half the night before. In the tutorial outline, I had laid out the following prescriptions for writing an effective survey:

First, establish a clear and specific objective related to some business challenge. Second, ask questions that will help you resolve that business challenge. I had not followed either one of these objectives the night before.

So I took some time and focused in on what I was trying to achieve. I wanted to understand why some of our customers are using the survey product more than others. With that clarity, I looked at the questions I had written the night before. Only two of them would provide information useful for solving my problem. The others would only give me “nice to know” information.

Now that I rewrote my survey based on my objective, I’m confident I’ll get the answers I need. And, of equal importance, I’ll avoid wasting my customers’ valuable time.

Best,

Steve Oriola

P.S. If you want some help building a survey, read my article,
7 Steps for Creating Successful Online Surveys.

 

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