Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

Here is some additional input on the project goals.
Goal 1: Attempt to understand what value the customer sees in us and our solutions.
Goal 2: Identify where we are perceived as weak or losing an advantage…processes, value, technology, competence, etc.

Hi Victoria,

As general tips, you should look at respondent motivation, survey questions order, content and response options.

1) how do you motivate the respondent to make time to respond? You should "market" the survey, eg by clarifying how the answers will help your company give better services to the client. Moreover, I aim for a foot-in-the-door approach: make your survey scalable so you can promise to take only eg 5-10 minutes, but also to dig deeper if the respondent allows. You would be surprised how many business respondents can expand for 30-45 minutes when they really get into it, even though they only 'could spend 5 minutes' at the start.

2) order of the questions: the first questions should be broad and raise respondent interest and trust this is a survey instead of a sales pitch (eg you can ask about their needs and what keeps them up at night). More specific questions go in the middle, and I only raise 'firmographic' questions at the end: they tend to be either boring or confidential, so the respondent needs to have developed trust in the survey's intentions

3) content: you should aim to cover all major posiive and negative aspects for the business from the respondent's and your company's perspective

4) response options/format: open-ended questions work best, especially if you know relatively little about what will come up. Closed response formats tend to limit the respondents and drive them to the 'middle' options, so use the only when you have enough knowledge to construct the response options accurately

hope this helps

koen

Koen obviously knows his stuff when it comes to survey design. He's nailed it in his response above.

I would add that I've rarely seen a good study design that wasn't developed by a market research professional. Even a marketer with great training and credentials won't do as good a job as a market research specialist. This is very technical stuff.

Tools like Survey Monkey make implementation easy, but they don't give you the valuable lessons on what questions to ask, what order to ask them in, or which response options/formats are best for each question. And they certainly don't help you establish clear objectives and action standards.

So I applaud you for taking the first step in asking the right strategic questions and setting appropriate goals. What you want to do can be very important to your company. That's why it's important to get expert advice on the specific design elements of your research from a professional who knows the pitfalls and can make this a productive and meaningful project for your company.

And make sure you have up-front buy-in from senior management to acting on the findings, conclusions and indicated action steps once you've delivered the research results. If this is just a "feel good" exercise, you will spend a lot of time, money and emotional energy for nothing. And you could really alienate the customers who participate. It's an insult to be asked for your opinion and then be ignored.

Mgoodman and koen, these are great answers. I do have buy-in from leadership and am hoping to uncover what are strengths are so we can really capitalize on them. I agree with mgoodman, if you ask peoples opinions you need to be prepared to listen and change!
This will be a phone survey so survey monkey is not an option. Any advice on how to track results? I agree with open-ended questions but wonder if some multiple choice or yes/no questions may be good starter questions....

thank you for all of the input.