Scott W
Project Manager, The Nielsen Media Company; Proprietor, That Software Guy
What is the optimal length of a customer satisfaction survey?
I recently stayed in a Holiday Inn, and after I got home, I received a customer satisfaction survey. It was over 15 pages long - I actually stopped doing it at page 3 and just paged ahead so I could see how long the whole thing was.
What is the maximum length of a survey that will both produce useful data and be tolerated by your customers? Can you greatly increase this using a dangling carrot? What about the theory postulated by Fred Reichheld that the only important question is, "Was my product or service of sufficiently high quality that you would recommend me to a friend?"
Good Answers (3)
One. There is one question that best compiles everything: "would you recommend our product/services to your family & friends?"
You can take it a step further and ask them why or why not.
The more questions you ask, the more likely you are going to sway them. Changing one word can cause a different answer.
Guy Kawasaki recently blogged about this similar topic. The link below is from his post that discusses this topic exactly. I totally agree with it as well.
Links:
Darren S
Engineer at T-VIPS
Best Answers in: Software Development (6), Computers and Software (2), Certification and Licenses (1), Wireless (1)
Best one I ever saw was a business card with one side containing 8 questions with checkboxes for 1-5. On the other side, it left some room for your name, contact number and a sentence.
Dr. Jacqueline T
Owner, Health Care Consulting
Best Answers in: Regulation and Compliance (1), Job Search (1), Business Analytics (1), Planning (1), Professional Organizations (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
One page, easy multiple choice or rating scale...since less than 30% respond to these surveys, the data must be useful and reliable...Dr J
More Answers (2)
Scott,
My observation: only 10 minutes of the valuable time of our customers.
This can be established with a dynamic "self-learning" adoptive online questionnaire.
Yes, Fred Reichheld is very right. But what about the answers given to that question? Does that provide you with new business?
Basjan,
Specialist in disclose information at customers.
aka The Secret CEO.
Customer Surveys I believe should not be more than 2/3 pages long.
Customers are prone to answer longer questionnaires when they are really not happy with a service they have received or they are overjoyed with a service they have received. More often than not though, customer’s views are neither here nor there!
Depending on how important the returned data is to the company, I would recommend an incentive to the person completing the survey – this works quite well, or link the survey response into a competition.
I personally would not complete a 15 page long survey I had received through the post, as I would complain there and then if I was not happy about something or follow up with a letter direct to customer services.
