Why Do Companies Conduct Market Surveys?

Many organizations conduct market surveys to collect information to gain insight into: product feedback, target markets, customer loyalty, and responsiveness.  This information can be useful in understanding brand awareness and the purchasing habits of the customers.

The main goal of a market survey is to help an organization to take an informed decisions regarding: innovation, growth, products, pricing, promotion, and place. Your organization can improve its services and products based on the information collected from such a survey.

Reasons for Conducting Market Research Surveys:

Customer Feedback: One of the main reasons for conducting surveys is to get the feedback and other important information from customers. They can help you to gain insight into the demographics of your customers. Surveys can also uncovered factors that motivate buyers. From your customers, you can obtain valuable comments, suggestions, and opinions.

Decision-Making: Surveys contribute greatly to decision-making. You can communicate with your customers during a survey and get in-depth knowledge of how your customers feel about your products. On the basis of the survey, you can make important decisions relating to: upgrading, pricing, positioning, or branding your product.

Objective Information: Surveys can help to acquire unbiased data. You can make well-informed decisions based on the objective information obtained from a survey.  You can analyze the data to address important issues rather than wasting resources or time on areas of little concern.

Benchmark: These surveys offer an insight into the behaviors and attitudes of the customers. From these surveys, you get to measure the usage, customer awareness, and product satisfaction of customers over time. You can make use of this valuable feedback from the customers to act as a baseline, based on which you can set your benchmark to compare the results over a period of time.

Thus, by making use of effective market research software, you can conduct surveys productively to get accurate data. This can, in turn, help you to increase customers and boost conversions and sales.

How to Keep Your Customers Satisfied

1. Encourage face-to-face meetings. Customers find it easier to relate to people they have met or can meet in person compared to people they simply deal with via email and telephone. If you plan to do a customer satisfaction survey, meeting face-to-face can be very helpful. You can gain insight into information to include in your survey. Face-to-face meetings can also be used after your customer satisfaction survey to get more detailed answers about topics that came up in your survey.
   
   
2. Be prompt in responding to customer messages. When you are responding to customer questions or feedback, be prompt. If you cannot investigate and respond to all matters within day, let customers knows that you are working on their issues. 
    
3. Be friendly and approachable. Even when on phone calls, maintain a smile. Make customers feel like you are their friend. Even if frustrated, remain calm, polite and courteous. 
    
4. Have a good customer service policy. With a good customer service policy, you can keep customers happy. Ensure that you have key point of contacts for billing inquiries and technical issues. 
    
5. Personalize your communications. Send out holiday emails and birthday cards. Rather than making them generic, personalize them with customer names and things the customer would like. These actions demonstrate that the customers are important. 
    
6. Exceed expectations. Rather than just meeting expectations, exceed them. Go above and beyond to make your customers happy. Listen to their feedback from customer satisfaction surveys and go the extra mile.
   
   
7. Honor your promises. If you make a promise to your customer, follow through. This shows that you can be trusted. In turn, customers will have more confidence in your company. 
    
8. Ask for feedback. Even if you think you are doing everything right, always ask customers for feedback. A great way to do this is with a customer satisfaction survey. There is always room for improvement.

Pulse Surveys in the Workplace

Pulse surveys are brief assessments that are designed to provide feedback on a regular basis. They can be conducted weekly, bi weekly, monthly, bi monthly, quarterly, or at any other intervals. They typically are very short including less than 20 questions. They should only take the respondent 4-5 minutes to complete.

Pulse surveys can be very useful in the workplace. Here are some of the key benefits of using pulse surveys in the workplace:

• Frequent feedback. Companies are constantly evolving and growing. Feedback from employees is necessary for overall improvement of a company. While annual surveys provide feedback, they do not do so often enough. Pulse surveys allow for more frequent feedback. Because of this, you can more quickly implement changes based on the feedback in the surveys.

• Deal with small issues. More often than not, many of the issues that arise in the workplace are minor ones. Pulse surveys are the best way to deal with these smaller issues. Using feedback from pulse surveys, these issues can be nipped in the bud before they grow into major issues.

• Recognizing employee outlook. Pulse surveys in the workplace give employees a voice. They allow employees to express their sentiment. These surveys show employees that higher-ups are listening to employee grievances and are working towards eliminating or reducing them.

How to Find the Best Survey Tools in the Market

It is a difficult and painstaking task to research all kinds of survey software in order to obtain the best survey software in the market. However, you can apply simple logic so as to choose the most appropriate survey tool online.

Let us discuss three important points that can help you as an employer or provider to make an ideal choice on survey tools:

• Make a list – Try and create a list of candidates and also search major search engines and online directories for quality survey tool providers. You can even ask your friends and partners to suggest some popular survey tools. You may have to use the most significant keyword phrases that match with your company products or services. For example, use lengthy keyword phrases such as ‘employee engagement software survey’ to find a good survey tool that focuses on improving employee workplace experience. It is advisable to include all types of options so that you have a fair idea of the main options and also the least important ones.
• Make comparison for product attributes – It is best to design a product-based spreadsheet to compare features like price, customer support options, delivery preferences, query types, other advanced features, reports, user management preferences and much more. You can underline each and every attribute that is vital to your company projects. Most survey software online sites offer exhaustive information that can be used to engage your grid.
• Restrict your research and study top candidates in detail – It is better to arrive at a final conclusion after in-depth analysis of the top class candidates. You can compare the best attributes and also short-list the best survey tools. If you plan to use the software products occasionally, then go for a less expensive tool. But, you may have to compensate with more tools if there are chances of additional surveys, therefore it is best to purchase a higher priced survey software that gives superior results and unlimited performance guarantee.

While survey tools are literally scattered around the market, it is up to you to exercise discretion and get the best survey tools suitable for your projects.

Choosing the Best Software for Online Market Research and Customer Satisfaction Surveys

It can be difficult to choose appropriate market research software to conduct your online customer satisfaction survey. There are so many choices out there. For those that are new to online surveys, it can be extremely overwhelming. Here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Start with free products. Free products are the best for beginners. Because they lack certain functionality, free online platforms tend to me simple, intuitive, and user-friendly. It gives you the opportunity to learn your way around online survey technology. You are create short and simple surveys without being too overwhelmed.

2. Consider paid software for increased functionality. If a free product does not offer all the functionality that you need, it is time to consider paid software. Assess all your needs and the functionality of all paid options. Larger businesses may require more detailed and customizable surveys, advanced skip logic, filters, and multimedia support. Do your research!

3. Get a free trial of any paid software you are considering. Instead of investing upfront, try to get a trial of the software you are considering. It will allow you to get familiar with the software before committing. The trial will help you determine if it is what you really want. It’s also a good idea to allow other employees to spend time getting familiar with the software during the trial period—especially if they will be using it. They can also provide feedback on the software.

The Importance of the Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a useful tool to assess customer loyalty to your brand. It is becoming extremely popular today particularity with Fortune 1000 companies. In fact, two-thirds of all Fortune 1000 companies use this metric.

A Net Promoter Score (NPS) is calculated based on the results from the net promoter survey question. The question asks customers “How likely is it that you would recommend this [product/brand/company] to a friend or colleague?” Respondents are given response options ranging from 1 = not at all likely to 10 = extremely likely.

How a person responds determines whether they are a Promoter, Passive, or Detractor. Promoters are individuals who answer the aforementioned question with a 9 or 10. These individuals are loyal enthusiasts. They will continue to buy products and/or services from your company. They also would refer others, thereby promoting growth of your company. Passives respond to the survey question with a 7 or 8. These consumers are satisfied with your products and/or services, but they are unenthusiastic. They are not necessarily loyal to your brand or company and may pursue business with your competitors. Detractors answer the question with a response of 6 or below. These individuals are unhappy customers. They can ruin the reputation of your company or brand via negative word-of-mouth.

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is calculated by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters. Scores can range from -100 (if every respondent is a Detractor) to 100 (if every respondent is a Promoter). A positive score (anything over zero) is considered to be a good score. A score of over 50 is considered to be outstanding.

Tips on Creating Effective Employee Engagement Surveys

Today’s companies are very interested in hearing about the attitudes, feelings, and behaviors of their employees. In other words, they like to give employees a voice. Organizations are also interested in engagement and/or disengagement of employees. This is why many organizations are interested in conducting employee engagement surveys. They are becoming an incredibly popular tool.

Why should organizations consider conducting employee engagement surveys? First, it makes employees feel valued. Employee engagement surveys allow employees to express their opinions, problems, and feedback related to the work environment. It is a way that employees can confidentially communicate with top-level management and provide insight to improve the business.

If you would like to conduct an employee engagement survey, there are various questions you must first ask:

1. Do you know what you will do with the feedback? When employee engagement surveys are administered, respondents often have expectations that their feedback will be taken into account by upper management and ultimately be used for the betterment of the organization. If the feedback will not be used, it becomes a futile effort.

2. Do you need professional assistance with the survey? Many people feel as if they can handle the administration of an employee engagement survey by themselves. However, having a professional help with the survey campaign can be incredibly beneficial. Having an external organization can ensure confidentiality given that this company does not have a personal relationship with employees. A professional survey-consulting firm can also help with questionnaire design to ensure that the survey accurately measures what you are trying to uncover.

3. Who will review the survey results? Sometimes its best to have multiple individuals review the findings from an employee feedback survey. Establishing a committee to review the feedback can be very beneficial. This committee can include both respective individuals from lower as well as upper management.