Start by telling the story. How would you tell an executive in 30 seconds or less what a “7.78 average satisfaction rating” means? On the other hand, executives should react if we tell them that only 38% of the company’s customers are Promoters, and that the differential annual value between a Promoter and a Detractor is $162 (as a real-world example of a B2C company we recently worked with). Armed with this knowledge and with understanding of what creates Promoters and Detractors, executives can make good decisions and also gain a leading indicator of progress by watching the % of promoters grow in their segment.

The background research for Net Promoter was based on a series of longitudinal studies that examined actual customer behaviors associated with their feedback (documented in Reichheld’s book, The Ultimate Question, and in dozens of case studies over the years). The beauty of Net Promoter isn’t in the score – its strength lies in its ability to easily communicate action plans based on a proven segmentation strategy. It turns out that customers who rate you as less than 9 (on a 0 to 10 scale) are actually not with you (i.e. they aren’t “Promoters”), and they are prone to go elsewhere with their money. Prior to the research in Fred’s book, conventional wisdom found that a score of 5 on an overall satisfaction or recommend question was “neutral” and therefore “ok” and so an average score of 7.78 was generally perceived as good.

However, we all know that a focus on a score, including NPS, is missing the point. A single metric always focuses the discussion on scores, while a focus on improvement and the resulting financial metrics would better serve the business. Reporting averages makes action even more difficult. Take the first step by simply reporting “top box” scoring (% of customers that score a 9 or 10) and see what dialogs result. What percent of your customers are really with you?

Steve is a founder and Principal Consultant with Waypoint Group.  Contact Steve at steveb@waypointgroup.ORG

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.

Needless to say, the goal of any survey builder or analyst is to get respondents to clean their plate or, in this case, finish the conversation. After all, isn’t a survey just a conversation?  You ask engaging questions and expect the respondent to answer with the intent of giving you a full, satisfying response. Here are some basic best practices for keeping respondents engaged in the dinner/survey conversation:

1. Keep it as short as possible

Your survey needs to capture the information you need. But the longer you stretch it out, the higher the risk of the “I’m tired of this survey, I’m done” syndrome, more commonly known as “drop out.” 

2. Warm them up

Most of us aren’t able to dive into a Shakespearean play the moment we step out of bed in the morning.  Don’t dive into the difficult questions right off the bat.  Start by taking them through the experience you are surveying them for.   Get them thinking about their interaction with you.

3. Keep your questions brief and clear

No one likes to have to read a survey question twice because it’s too long or because they don’t understand what you’re asking.  Avoid using compound and ambiguous questions. “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers; A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked; If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?”  Um, yeah, not a good survey question.

4. Keep your list of answer options short

A respondent can experience fatigue not just by a marathon-like survey, but also by too many answer options to select from in one question.  Too many options can cause a respondent to select just the first or last option and not read your entire list of options. 

5. Keep it interesting

Though data collection is serious business, and you need to ensure you are gathering valuable, actionable information, remember that you’ll get better data if your respondent enjoys taking your survey.  That doesn’t mean you have to “fluff it up,” but make sure it’s relevant to your respondent.

6. And finally. . . . be considerate, keep your respondent informed

Tell them why they are taking the survey, what you discovered and what kind of actions you’re going to take with the results of the analysis.
 
While this article has a bit of a lighter side to it, I hope it conveys the seriousness of creating a good survey.  Contemplate and plan a better survey to keep your respondents participating in the conversation.

This fact means that you have very few lines for them to read before they make a decision. Make those lines count! Consider carefully that top 10% of your email. Is your company logo, a piece of stock photography or some puffy copy really the most important communication you want to have with that 69 percent?

I know it’s hard to do (I have fought designers on this issue for years). But you have to hold your ground and fight for that 10% of real estate. Let them do whatever they want in the bottom 10%, but you absolutely must make your first impression space matter. Tell your readers right there why their feedback matters to your company and how much you value it. Tell them exactly how much time it will take them to do your survey. You are fighting for that next action and that next click. And at this point, that’s all that matters.

Terence Fugazzi, VP Demand Marketing, Allegiance

What is happening to those hapless survey takers?

Life insurance actuaries, the Census Bureau, and the Social Security Administration use a tool to understand mortality: life tables. Life tables measure the odds of dying at a particular age. Age 0 to 1 has a higher risk of death than age 1 to 5. Past age 5, our odds of death steadily climb.

One might assume that a similar pattern would be true for online surveys, and that the odds of abandoning a survey increase with each increasing page. So, I decided to check it out. Do survey abandonment curves match similar patterns to human mortality tables? I used one of Allegiance’s client surveys to examine the trends.

In the chart below I used one axis to plot the number of survey takers who had completed each page. On the secondary axis, the red line, I plotted the odds of abandonment. The odds of abandonment is the number of survey takers lost to page x+1 divided by the survey takers remaining at page x.

Turns out, survey abandonment curves are not quite as smooth as human mortality curves. Survey abandonment curves are spiky. It’s like the Grim Reaper inhabits certain pages but not others.

Clearly, one can see where the problem pages are, where abandonment spikes. It turns out that this survey has a bunch of open-ended questions on pages 2, 3 and 10. Answering open-ended questions is a lot of work. Rather than work, people abandon the survey altogether.

There is no way this client will get rid of their open-ended questions. There is nothing I can do to make the questions less prone to abandonment. However, what we can do is re-order the pages and put the low-abandonment pages at the front of the survey and the high-abandonment pages at the back. The thought is that with more survey takers sticking around for longer, we may get to gather more data.

We can measure the increased data the same way the census bureau measures “life-years.” I’ll call this measurement “page-completes.” If we accumulate more page-completes by the end of the survey then we’ve made an improvement. Below is a simulation of re-ordering the pages to put the high-abandonment pages at the end.

Sure, the same number of respondents made it to the end of the survey, 1910. However by re-ordering the survey, the page-completes grow from 28,828 before to 32,319 after. Re-ordering may help me capture more survey data overall.

Kyle LaMalfa, Best Practices Manager and Loyalty Expert, Allegiance