Workforce Management Featured Article
Proven Techniques to Engage Survey Respondents
Most businesses rely on surveys to gauge the opinions and needs of their customers, and many are finding a decline in survey response rates and low respondent engagement. Anecdotal evidence shows in the last 20 years, the response rate for Market Research surveys in general has dropped from 20 percent to just 2 percent. It’s a growing struggle to figure out how to combat these challenges effectively.
In today’s fast-moving world, it’s extremely important to create surveys that are fun, engaging, and reduce mid-survey respondent fatigue. It is equally imperative that survey designers have the necessary tools to create highly engaging surveys, quickly and easily.
Survey Design
The first proactive step in engaging with survey respondents happens before the survey is ever pushed out; within the design phase. In the past, using a cookie-cutter approach to requesting feedback was acceptable, however, this is no longer the case. Consumer inboxes are constantly flooded, asking for feedback from their favorite brands. According to a recent study from Campaigner,nearly half (49 percent) of consumers say they receive too many emails from business owners and marketers. Effective respondent engagement requires a more tailored and user-friendly experience that includes relevant questions and intentional survey design. Here are some questions to ask yourself when designing a survey:
Would you want to answer this survey?Put yourself in the respondents’ shoes and ask yourself: is the survey appealing? What would I enjoy answering? Is the font easy to read and is the overall survey easy to navigate? Your survey should have an effective, welcoming design, making it effortless for respondents to complete
I’m not reading this long question!With the average attention span shrinking, it’s important to be mindful of people’s time. According to TIME, people have a shorter attention span than a goldfish. A study found that the average attention span of a goldfish is nine seconds, and people now generally lose concentration after eight seconds. Therefore, it’s important to keep the questions short and only include what is necessary. Having too many, or too long of a question sets you up for a risk: your respondent may just click out before they’ve finished.
Can you hear me now?Audio and video help survey respondents understand questions quickly, and lead to increased engagement. If possible, use multimedia to replace open text answers, or even to read questions aloud. As the electronically inclined population grows and the professional world moves to digital, consumers are pushing for multi-media communication and feedback channels. Millennials and Gen-Z openly express their complaints, views, and needs across multiple social platforms and using various media, especially video.
Testing, 1-2-3!One of the most important things to do before distributing the survey, is to test it. Poorly functioning surveys are inconvenient for the respondent and ultimately, reflect poorly on the company. Your questions should be displayed properly and have a logical route for the survey taker. Without testing, you risk losing access to valuable data from your customers that they probably would have shared if your survey was properly tested before distributing.
Tools to Help You Succeed
Survey design is a proven technique to engage with survey respondents. It’s important for a company to identify the end goal of a given survey and create the survey with only the one specific goal in mind. If a company has trouble designing a good survey, there are tools, such as online programs,that can make the task easier.
For example, take Be the Match®, operated by the National Marrow Donor Program® (NMDP). Be The Match manages the largest and most diverse marrow registry in the world to help save lives every day through marrow transplants. Be The Match values hearing from donors but wanted to expand from just transactional surveys to surveys that build relationships, and did so with the help of an online program. The surveys were able to identify donor commitment levels, and determine how donors felt about the quality of information provided about the process, the value of educational materials and the level of medical care and personal experience throughout the donation process.
The program has enhanced the ability to manage ongoing relationships with their members and donors and identify opportunities for improvement. Overall satisfaction remains above 96% and results from the survey are increases response rates and donations, showing the importance of taking the time to create a survey that will engage the respondents.
Final Thoughts
There is an extremely high volume of surveys distributed on a daily basis. To stand out, companies should be creative in designing their survey, overly test the many routes, and most important, keep the survey respondents in mind. If you were in their shoes, would you be interested, would you stay and answer each question? If the answer is no, then it’s time to get creative.
About the Author
Holly Carter is a Product Marketing Director with Confirmit (News - Alert), the world’s leading SaaS vendor for customer experience, Voice of the Employee, and Market Research solutions. In this role, Holly works closely with the Product Management team, ensuring that Confirmit’s latest innovations are communicated to customers. Holly is a regular webinar presenter and speaker at Market Research events, regularly providing guidance on key MR topics such as creating engaging surveys, generating ROI, and the role of automation.
Edited by Maurice Nagle
