Thursday, January 31, 2008
Categorized | Survey
Survey Insight
Posted by Reagan Taylor | Thursday, January 31, 2008
Seems like customer insight is a big trend in ’08; so far I’ve received surveys from one of my magazines, a car rental company, an online retailer and the folks who made my coffee maker. Be it my marketer’s curiosity, brand loyalty or being in need of a blog post – I took the four surveys, all were sent via email and none offered an incentive.
Overall the rental car company had the best format; it was a six question ranking survey regarding my most recent experience. I received the survey about six hours after I turned in the car and was given the opportunity to add comments for each of the multiple choice questions. In all it took less than five minutes to complete.
I thought the survey about my coffee maker was the worst; I bought it back in June (received survey yesterday.) The survey asked all kinds of questions about when I use it, the number of cups I drink and what type of coffee maker I had before this one – all good. However, there was also a set of five (LONG) statements that repeated for various scenarios, I was asked to respond on a sliding scale that ranged from strongly disagree to strongly agree (which made me strongly disagreeable.) I won’t even discuss the typo, poor phrasing, formatting or use of a serif font; but this hideous survey lost me about three questions into the 15-plus minutes needed to complete.
The other two surveys fell somewhere in between, the magazine survey was too long (approx 25 minutes) and was obviously trying to gather info on what to attract/ charge potential advertisers. The retailer was a product ranking opportunity that allowed comments, it was very easy to complete asked for me to rank (in stars) my purchase in five categories and then provided an open-ended response – this one took about five minutes to complete.
So lessons to be learned here:
1) Keep the survey short
2) Send it quickly (be relevant)
3) Don’t complicate the answers
4) Allow text input
5) Remember the aesthetics – especially when you have picky people responding (like me).
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2 Responses to “Survey Insight”
January 31, 2008 9:07:00 PM EST
Using scenarios to get people to share opinion can be done so much better on the web. You can almost set the tone by having a real person read the question - quickly and appropriately. This survey style feels a little too harsh for a company that serves a perk up in the morning.
February 1, 2008 8:30:00 AM EST
Couldn’t agree more, I got to the point where I mentally was editing their content rather than looking to respond. Something that is completely to the contrary of what they were hoping. I think it has changed my relationship with my coffee maker – and not for the better.
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