Each month The Conference Board (an independent economic research organization) surveys 5,000 U.S. households. The survey consists of five questions that ask the respondents’ opinions about the following:

1. Current business conditions
2. Business conditions for the next six months
3. Current employment conditions
4. Employment conditions for the next six months
5. Total family income for the next six months

Survey participants are asked to answer each question as “positive, negative or neutral.” The preliminary results from the Consumer Confidence Survey are released on the last Tuesday of each month at 10am EST.

Through a complex system of analysis and weighting of answers, the CCI is calculated, and this helps to formulate major economic policy for the US and for the world. These results affect everything from jobs, production and warehousing of goods, right down to how much a bushel of corn may cost. All this from one simple five question survey.

The CCI can be used as a “leading indicator” or an indicator that influences other fiscal decisions. If the CCI is trending upward, manufacturers make more cars.

The ultimate VOC survey? Maybe. 

Now lets take this down to a more personal level. Could your loyalty, satisfaction and engagement surveys also behave as sort of “leading indicators” that affect performance in other areas of your company?

If customers are more engaged, will they buy more product? Will they recommend you? Will this have any bearing on inventory, staffing or R&D?

Making this data real, and applying it to the bottom line aspects of your company is vital. Using tools such as Quad Charts, Correlation Analysis and trend charts, help you do what the US Government does with the CCI survey.

A 5000-response survey helps to dictate major US economic policy. Think about designing your VOC program with the intent that the data can trickle down to show relevance in your day-to-day operations and business outcomes. Otherwise, its just another survey.

When your customers are surveyed in a disjointed, illogical and inconsistent manner, both your VOC initiative and your customer relationships suffer. Some examples include:

Over-Contact

• With no method of controlling the frequency of contact, customers are overburdened with survey invites, especially highly sought-after research participants.
• Furthermore, lack of a survey contact strategy can lead to over-representation of certain respondents or response segments, skewing results.

 Poor Design

• When non-researchers send surveys, they may unfortunately make rookie mistakes that reflect badly on your company and weaken your brand. These missteps may include:
  • Simple operational mistakes like lack of quality assurance review that lead to dead-end links and spelling errors.
  • Use of a rudimentary survey design tool or lack of access to graphics and branding expertise, resulting in a survey that looks “cheap” and doesn’t positively promote the brand.

 Questionable, Scattered Data

• Lack of survey design experience can result in methodologically weak surveys that yield data of suspicious validity and water down overall VOC data quality.
• Variations in survey design, for instance differences in scale, mean results across the organization are incomparable and sometimes contradictory.
• Data stored throughout multiple databases is difficult to locate, share and leverage.

 It’s frustrating for a VOC expert to know rogue surveys are compromising your VOC initiative and your brand voice. You may feel helpless in countering these negative forces, but you’re not. 

Here are two methods you can employ to bring this matter under control.

Central Command

If unsanctioned surveys are a serious detriment to your VOC initiative in particular and your relationship to the customer overall, it may be time to announce “no more Mr. Nice Guy” and take control with a firm hand. Establish ground rules for surveying customers (who, what, when, where and why) and communicate these rules. Let it be known that your team and your team alone owns the process of gathering feedback from your customers and that all surveys, no matter the size or scope, need to be approved by your team to ensure adherence to your VOC strategy, methodology and sampling plan.

Best Practices Consultation

Perhaps resource constraints or corporate culture make a collaborative, consultative approach more appropriate. Proactively offer your expert services of survey design, survey media/method selection and sampling and contact frequency planning to your coworkers. Communicate to them that you have a VOC strategy in place that you would like them to follow and work with them in a positive, constructive fashion as internal clients to guide them to feedback program design excellence.

A good VOC initiative has set objectives in place and a plan to meet these objectives.  Rogue surveys undermine your strategy by squandering valuable customer feedback opportunities, collecting data that does not map back to VOC objectives and polluting your data. While the approach taken to control wayward feedback initiatives will vary from one organization to the next, there is no better time than the present to bring rogue surveys to heel.

Why?

Allegiance has been a thought leader in the use of social media to gather feedback and respond to customers.  The release of  Allegiance Engage7 was a big step into the arena of using social media as a building block in an overall VOC program. With that in mind, Allegiance is also reaching out proactively to provide thought leadership and training on a variety of topics.  With the advent of internet “talk radio,” Allegiance is using the tried and true medium of communication and linking it through social media to provide ongoing idea forums and discussions on many topics such as:

• Survey Design Best Practices
• Use of Incentives
• 5 Steps to Building Great Survey Questions
• Text Analytics
• And the list keeps growing…

How it works

Every week, Allegiance will announce the weekly topic and time along with the URL to connect to the live broadcasts.  These will come as tweets on the Allegiance Twitter account or Allegiance on Facebook. You are invited to “call in” to chat live on the air, or you can listen after the airing of the broadcast via podcast on iTunes or any other audio playback device.  As you listen to each broadcast, you can choose to “mark as favorite” the Allegiance Talk Radio site, and you will be automatically notified of upcoming broadcasts. 

 This healthy blend of Mr. Marconi’s innovation, coupled with an up and coming medium like blogtalkradio, is designed to keep you informed and connected to Allegiance, while benefitting from our ideas and expertise. We hope you will tune in 2011!

However, there are a few actions you can take as you create your survey invitations that will help you increase your response rates, legitimize your survey and ensure that you are CAN-SPAM compliant.

1. Accurate Header Information This is the first information that the respondent will see. Be sure that the “From” field has a legitimate company name. Do not use personal names.
2. Clear Reply-To Information Always include a valid email address. It is recommended that the email address include the company name.
3. Direct Subject The subject should be direct and reflect that this is an invitation to an online survey. Including the name of the company in the subject is also a good idea. For instance, “Allegiance survey now available!”
4. Opening Information Create a compelling greeting.
   • Identify the recipient by name
   • Explain the purpose of the survey
   • Express the reason that you are asking them to take the survey (We need your expertise…)
   • Use an appealing layout and include your company branding.
5. Informational Main Body The main body of the survey is where you deliver the key information and logistics with the survey. 
   • Clear links to the survey (rename lengthy url’s)
   • Obvious survey launch link
   • Survey time estimate
   • Incentives for taking the survey
   • Deadline for taking the survey
   • Research goals for the survey
6. Good Closing Information The closing area of the invitation is where you can make or break it as to whether they will complete the survey, make an honest effort, or agree to take other surveys in the future. Your closing information should include: 
   • Genuine appreciation/ Thanks
   • Researcher information/ note from high ranking official
   • Method of contacting a human being
   • Link to privacy policy
   • Street address of headquarters
   • Opt out link

I hope these suggestions will help you to create powerful survey invitations that will increase your response rates.

This is also true for Voice of the Customer champions who try to convey a similar sense to their customers through surveys, analysis and the action thereafter.  By acquiring knowledge to understand the needs of the customer and communicating care, VOC experts strive to deliver improved products and services and create happier customers.

Hence, we undertake this exercise to learn and explore the skills harnessed by top chefs in the kitchen to drive best practice in survey creation.

Have a vision

The master chef plans before execution.

Before the survey creation process, a few things should be accomplished:

• Identify the purpose and business objectives of the project .
• Determine what you are planning to measure. Your questions will differ accordingly.
• Include all internal and external stakeholders and determine that you are not asking customers for duplicate information.
• Plan your touch point rules across the organization to increase response rates and decrease survey fatigue.

Keep it simple

The master chef knows that simplicity is the secret to making ingredients sing.

In the Power of Survey Design Iarossi states, “The survey should use language that is simple in both words and phrases.”

• Use words and expressions that are simple, direct and familiar.
• Avoid buzz words, abbreviations and acronyms. Provide help text if buzz words cannot be avoided.
• Use simple sentences to avoid ambiguity or confusion.

Taste test

The master chef creates the well-balanced dish by tasting at every step of the creation process.

“Taste test” the survey for readability, usability and accurate data collection.

Source: Jakob Nielsen’s AlertBox

According to leading usability specialist Jakob Nielsen, just five users would reveal about 85% of all problems with your website. Only two test users would likely find the majority of usability problems.

Don’t be afraid of doing a little; any testing is better than none!

Serve it hot!

Freshness is key! The master chef always serves the meal up hot.

• Send transactional survey when the incident or event is still fresh in your respondents mind.
• React to survey results when your findings are hot.

The chart on the left indicates that faster response time has a significant impact on the probability that the customer will return and buy again.

Tools for success

The right tool for the job is a key to success for the culinary master.  A selection of knives is a chef’s best friend.

• Wield the advanced, user-friendly filters in Allegiance Engage7 to slice and dice your data.
• As all data is not created equal, it is vital to filter your data based on attributes and customer segments.
• Analyze the data as a whole and in subsets to concentrate on the metrics that matter the most to help prioritize activities that address the hottest issues of your high value customers.

Then, refine your survey based on what you’ve learned from prior deployments. The result will be a survey that your customers will relish.

Allez cuisine!

You have a well-designed, comprehensive feedback program in place, with several gigabytes of data on employee and customer satisfaction, loyalty and engagement. You have identified the key drivers of customer engagement and trended employee loyalty and satisfaction over time.  In response, action plans have been drafted and executed in a constant effort to move the needle toward increased customer and employee satisfaction, loyalty and engagement. What’s next?

Your data is worth more!

Now is the time to maximize the actionability of your VOC (Voice of the Customer) and VOE (Voice of the Employee) initiatives and optimize the ROI realized from your feedback program. To take your feedback program to the next level, you will want to link strategically-selected operational data with your valuable survey data.

These operational data variables are uploaded to your survey database as part of the invitation process (or such variables may be back-augmented after data collection has taken place). These variables remain hidden to the survey taker and are pre-populated at the record-level (meaning each survey invite record contains unique values for each variable for maximum reporting flexibility). 

Segmentation Variables

A typical customer or employee database contains variables that can be used to segment survey respondent data. Pre-populating survey records with information already available frees up valuable and limited “survey real estate,” enabling a shorter survey focused on capturing customer or employee feedback. Operational variables can be used to drive survey logic, producing a brief and targeted survey. They can even be used to guide data collection soft quotas. Finally, by pre-populating “known “values, the surveyor can avoid annoying the survey taker with questions they think researchers should know the answer to (e.g. if you really valued me as a customer, you would know that I purchased my Jeep Rubicon from Rudy on September 8, 2010 at 6:27 PM…I should not have to remind you!)

Here are a few examples of segmentation variables that add value to a survey database:

Drive Operational Excellence

Now you have a shorter, more targeted survey with data amped up by the integration of operational data. From this, you can make simple customer or employee segment comparisons. This arms decision makers with the results of these segment comparisons, backed by correlation analysis, to drive action.  Here are some examples:

Customer
Finding: The West Coast call center has much shorter hold times than the East Coast call center. Shorter hold times are correlated with higher satisfaction with the support experience.

Action: Investigate what factors are driving shorter West Coast hold times and replicate these conditions (e.g. staffing, technology, training, culture, etc.) at the East Coast call center.

Employee
Finding:  The Operations Team has much higher PTO (Paid Time Off) utilization rates than other departments. Higher PTO utilization is correlated with greater employee engagement.

Action:  Encourage employees in all departments to utilize their PTO through a corporate communications effort. Empower departmental leadership to foster a culture conducive to taking time away from work to “recharge the batteries” and hold management accountable for increased PTO utilization.

Operational Intelligence Mother Lode

Like un-mined gold sitting right under your nose, you can use these new variables linked to customer and employee feedback to drive strategic decision support and continuing operational improvement. Segment comparisons fueled by this data augmentation can guide targeted marking and communications efforts. These insights drive lasting, positive change in the organization, increase operating efficiency and cost savings, and drive increased satisfaction, loyalty and engagement for both customers and employees.

Still looking to up your game? Stay tuned for another blog post on Linking Business Performance Metrics with Operational & Survey Data.

And here is a seven-step process that you can use to ensure you create a high-quality survey that will produce more accurate and informative insights:

1. Establish your goals and objectives – A good survey research project must start with clearly defined goals and objectives. Create project goals and answer the questions: what is unknown?; what has already been done; what decisions will be made based on the result?; what do you think the results will look like?’ and what if you’re wrong? What if the results are inconclusive?
2. Determine your audience – Contacting the right mix of respondents is critical to an accurate outcome – just as important as asking the right questions.
3. Design your questions – Use question design best practices to minimize bias and optimize the quality of response.
4. Do a pilot test of your survey – Always conduct a pilot test with a small group prior to launching the survey. Look for misunderstandings, extremely unexpected results, technology problems, and also evaluate the time it takes a typical person to complete the survey. Update and improve your survey. This process will help you catch problems before they become costly mistakes.
5. Launch the survey – Many modern survey projects are launched via email and completed online. Above all, make sure your email invitations are accurate, genuine and compelling. Even the best survey will fall flat if people don’t bother to take it.
6. Analyze the results – Prepare to analyze the data when you are developing the questions. Use techniques such as cross-tabbing and weighting to understand and contextualize data.
7. Communicate the results to others – Action may never be taken unless others know about your survey discoveries. Communicating results clearly and efficiently is the key to a compelling argument for taking action.

Kyle LaMalfa, Best Practices Manager and Loyalty Expert, Allegiance

I recently stayed at a hotel in southern Utah. Two days after my stay, I received a survey request from them. I like this particular hotel chain, so I had no problem opening the survey and giving them my feedback. They had a nice little progress bar on the screen so I knew exactly how far into the survey I had gone. After three or four pages of multiple ranking pages, however, I was still only 40% complete. The next page had 15 ranking questions on everything from their toiletries, to the beds, to the TVs, etc. I bailed out of the survey.

There are two issues in how the hotel should have designed their survey:

1.  The hotel knew who I was and from my profile, should already have known whether or not I was a frequent business traveler or a pleasure/family traveler. Knowing that, they should realize that getting frequent survey responses from me would be very valuable to their business, but also knowing that I am a business person with very little time, they should ask, at most, no more than 5 questions. They could have easily asked me 5 questions out of a set of 20 and by doing this randomly across all their business travelers, still have received the feedback they desired. This would especially be true since their abandonment rate would probably drop by a factor of two or three.

2.  Even if the hotel did not know I was a business traveler, they still should have done the same process outlined above because hotel stays are generally a repeated service. This means unlike, for instance, a car purchase, you are likely to repeat business with them more often than once every few years. Common sense says that recipients of surveys who have made higher dollar, more infrequent purchases will be more likely to tolerate a longer survey. If you are a provider of a more frequent service, you want to design a survey that is quick and easy for the recipient to take so that you will get feedback EVERY time you deliver that service.

So, use common sense when surveying. Understand your recipient. Spread the feedback items across the audience, especially when the sample size and frequencies are high. Know your key goals and cut questions that are not absolutely necessary to meet them.

Terence Fugazzi, VP Demand Marketing, Allegiance