Planning to Execution: An End to End Survey Guide

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The Time Has Come
You know you have to, your management team is nudging you, your product and service folks are begging you – even your customers and prospects are hinting that you should ask for their opinions… here’s your safety net:



Step I) Define Objectives – You’ll probably have three to five objectives for conducting your survey… some of the more popular include 1) learning about recipient behavior and their opinions of your program/ offers; 2) gaining perspective on customer satisfaction or site usability; 3) finding ways to break through the clutter and grab the recipient’s attention; 4) gathering opinions for future investments or campaigns; 5) showing your boss what a good job you are doing. Regardless of the reason, state your objectives and engage the groups involved by having them validate the objectives.

Step II) Define Recipients – You could ask everybody but its better to focus your questions to certain segments – the more targeted you are, the better your responses. Some of the best populations to target are those who had to wait at your store/ branch or on the phone, another group could be those that timed out while doing something online. Post-order surveys are excellent places to start as are non-responder surveys.

Step III) Define the Channel(s) – How are you deploying the survey? Will it be the same across all channels? Multi-channel deployment is great for longer surveys (when broken up into smaller sections), the multi-channel strategy reinforces the importance, helps determine respondent patterns and is an attention getter.

Step IV) Determine Incentive – Are you planning to offer something to inspire response – a coupon, free shipping or simply access to the results of the survey. Never forget the value of better service or sincere thanks.


Step V) Define the Timeframe – Determine your survey end date and periodically remind people to take the survey before the expiration.

Step VI) Define Questions – Any writer knows that you start with your base, then edit and polish to strengthen. Beginning with twelve ideas is a great start, just prune response options and tighten your questions to facilitate honest responses.

Step VII): Define Success Criteria – Document the number of respondents you need to feel comfortable with your results and set aside a team of folks to review the results.

Flash forward to your deployment phase, responses are being submitted – now what? The best strategy is to have a couple versions of thank you emails ready to fire off based on the type of responses received.