Planning survey projects

Here are resources related to managing survey projects.


 

The Crucial Importance of Conducting a Survey Pilot

Conducting a survey pilot is a critical step in the research process, ensuring the validity and effectiveness of the survey.

What is the Purpose of a Survey? Why Conduct a Survey?

Ever wondered about the real purpose of a survey? We often fill out surveys without really thinking too much about the real survey purpose.

Are you Getting the Most Out of Your Surveys?

Surveys

Get your finger on the pulse!

As business leaders, having your finger on the pulse of everything around you is essential. But how often do we let our perception get in the way of seeing how things really are? It’s a common mistake for business owners and leaders to focus too heavily on the bottom line. If the profits are coming in, everything must be fine, right? Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case, which is why surveys are such a powerful business tool.

Most people have participated in surveys before, whether it be customer surveys or even as an employee. But from a business perspective, there’s a whole lot more to it than sending out a generic set of questions. Capturing information is one thing, but ensuring it’s the right information is a whole other kettle of fish.

Furthermore, how do you best take action on survey results? Let’s explore how you can get the most out of your surveys.

Be Clear on What You Hope to Achieve

Surveys are a great source of information; however, they only turn into a powerful business tool when their goals are well defined. Planning your surveys carefully is an integral part of the process, because you need to know what you’re looking for.

For example, if conducting a staff survey, do you just want to know if people are happy with their wages, or do you want to delve deeper into all aspects of their employment. For customer surveys, do you have specific feedback you’re looking for? Perhaps you only want to find out how happy your customers are with product quality. Or alternatively, your goal may be to capture information about the entire customer experience.

Whatever your goals, make sure they’re clearly defined and tailor your questions to extract the right information.

Increase Survey Participation

You could have the most well designed and structured survey project in the world, but without participants, you won’t get far. It can be a challenge to get people interested in surveys. Everyone is busy, with competing priorities, and surveys often don’t sit too high on their to-do list. So how do you increase survey participation?

Even for internal staff engagement surveys, it isn’t a widely accepted practice to make them compulsory. But you can come up with participation strategies no matter what your survey type. For employees, they need to understand the reason for the survey, and that real change will come from it. Ensuring anonymity is also important.

For customer surveys, they may need to be further incentivised. Think about how you can do this. It may be by offering a reward – if not for all participants, a chance to go into the draw to win a prize. If you have a customer loyalty program, perhaps offering ‘points’ for survey participation would work well. Think outside the box, and there’s always ways to increase participation.

Thoroughly Analyse the Results

Analysing the results can often be the hardest part of running a survey project. This is where expert guidance from a survey consulting service can really help. The main thing to remember is that a survey isn’t supposed to fix every little problem your business has. It’s about determining trends and major areas of improvement.

If your goals have been clearly defined, and your questions well-written, the process of analysing results is much easier. If you haven’t planned your survey well, this is where results can be open to interpretation, and that’s what a survey consultant will work to minimise.

Once you’ve got a clear snapshot of what participants are telling you, it’s time to develop genuine action plans.

Make Clear Action Plans

The most frustrating thing for survey participants is seeing no change as a result of their answers. This is magnified for employee engagement surveys because they’re living and breathing your company every day. People talk about surveys too, and the grapevine tends to spread its own common themes and concerns. As such, if no actions are put in place, it leads to further staff dissatisfaction.

With key areas of improvement identified, you must carefully develop actions plans to address them. Without this step, you may have wasted your time conducting a survey in the first place. The other important aspect to this is communication, and acting quickly. Don’t let months go past before sharing results with participants, and don’t wait too long to implement your action plans. A dynamic company works quickly to address areas of concern, and starts implementing change for the better.

Consider a Survey Consulting Service

Knowing what to ask is easier said than done. There are plenty of generic surveys out there, but if your goals are well defined, there’s a chance that basic surveys won’t do the trick. Each survey project has clearly defined goals, demographics, and policies for how responses will be interpreted and rated. That’s why it’s so important to get the questions right.

One of the best ways to get the most out of your survey projects is to seek help from a professional survey consultant. A consultant will expertly guide you through the process from start to finish. This includes goal setting, selecting target audiences, designing the survey itself, and perhaps most importantly, help you analyse the results.

Also, in larger organisations with many leaders, there can be differing opinions about what survey results really mean. By working with an external survey consultant, you can minimise this tension by having clearly defined processes for each step of the project.

Surveys get Teams and Leaders Focused

Using surveys can arm you with exactly the information you need to improve your business. From measuring staff engagement to conducting customer satisfaction surveys, the power is in your hands. But it’s crucial that you plan surveys carefully, and design them to obtain the information you really need. Furthermore, analysis of results and action is the only way you will maximise the benefits of surveys. Our survey consulting experts are always on hand to help you plan, design and analyse your next survey, and we’d love to hear from you!

How to Grow Consulting Revenue with SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis is a tool to help clients and grow consulting revenue. Quality information is crucial, or you’re working in the dark.

The Ultimate Survey Guide

Use this comprehensive survey guide to learn how to deliver a successful survey project, design surveys, get responses, analyse results, present results and plan action.

Automate survey tasks with 1,500+ apps

Automate survey tasks and work flows. Connect Spark Chart with 1,500+ apps using Zapier.

GDPR Compliance and Spark Chart

Spark Chart will comply with the EU GDPR. Data protection and privacy are critically important.

Use feedback to get teams engaged and aligned

There is an important link between feedback and teamwork. Teams and leaders quickly get engaged with survey results.

Why are survey goals and objectives important?

Establishing clear survey goals and objectives is essential to get valid and valuable data. The objectives should guide your survey design.

The importance of clear survey policies

Clearly communicated polices guide the actions of those who manage survey projects and also protect respondents.

Tips to conduct a survey pilot

Conducting a survey pilot helps confirm the validity of your questions and the effectiveness of the messages in your communication.

How to deliver a successful survey project

A successful survey project depends upon having 1) a robust process and 2) expertise in designing surveys.

Quick guide to making a great employee survey

In this guide we discuss some principles to apply in order to create an effective employee survey.

Customer survey? Follow these 10 easy tips!

Creating a useful customer survey can be challenging, but the investment is worthwhile and can give a lot of data quickly.

6 simple ways to make your survey incentives effective

When you issue a survey, it’s vital to give your audience good motivation for doing it. Incentives can help.

Informed survey consent: some guidelines

What is informed consent? When should you get it? When do you have to get it? How do you collect it?

Common survey pitfalls to avoid

It’s common to focus on writing engaging questions. The piece that is often missed is the all-important pre-launch work.

Introduction to survey writing: goals and objectives

Survey writing that gets you good data is almost impossible without establishing clear survey goals and objectives.