Managers know that when they have the results from a questionnaire they’re getting the feedback from customers and can use that in future projects. But this information can be gathered in many different ways from respondents. This is why some business leaders choose other methods, other than surveys, of collecting feedback.
However, surveys are the
most beneficial for businesses. There are numerous advantages that many don’t
realize and therefore don’t capitalize on. Here are those benefits that you
might not know about.
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1. They Can Be Used Over A Protracted Length Of Time
One of the best advantages of a survey is that they can be used to question an audience over a protracted period of time. Using an online service you can easily create a set of queries and just continue to collect responses.
The longer the period you can collect responses, the more you’re going to acquire. At the same time, this will reduce bias and allow you to make better business decisions from this information. Thus the value of the questionnaire is significantly increased while at the same time there is limited cost to the business.
2. They Can Be Changed Easily To Meet New Market Environments
Another great advantage of surveys is that they can be adjusted according to the new market environment without too much hassle. With other types of feedback collection tools, you might need to train staff and re-engineer the whole feedback process. This can be a frustrating and long process which ultimately wastes time and costs the business.
However, with a survey, you only need to change what is relevant to the new conditions, whether it is related to a question, answer, or how a question is worded. This frees up time for your team to actually distribute your survey and get responses with the new criteria set in place.
3. It Frees Up The Time Of Your Staff
Some feedback collection tools aren’t designed to be used by anyone other than a staff member. This can be very frustrating for your staff who want to be adding value to your business and not listening to complaining customers who might just want to be left alone. In addition, analyzing results from other feedback collection tools is time consuming.
A survey can be sent automatically to your audience for them to complete in their own time. Then the results can be collected by a computer where they are automatically analyzed and a report given to your management team. The time that is otherwise spent asking audiences to complete feedback is freed to complete other business centric tasks.
4. It Is More Honest
Feedback collection tools are often prone to being corrupted. This could be because the respondent doesn’t want to give their true feelings to a stranger or to the person they’re talking about. Another problem is social pressure to conform. Experiments have shown that humans will agree with a more dominant person in a room, even if they know the answer is wrong.
Surveys get around these problems by allowing respondents to complete them in private, without peer pressure and without the listening ear of the person who they’re talking about. Therefore, the results given are more honest and valuable to the business.
5. They Can Be More Selective
Surveys don’t just have to be used to collect information about past customers. They can be used in market research to find the potential customer base or how a new product might be perceived by the audience. When collecting this information, you might not want to include certain demographics within your respondents.
That is easy with a survey as you can ask qualifying questions that will help narrow down the audience to only those that you seek. This could be those who have a high disposable income or those with two cars. Whatever the criteria is that you’re looking at you can choose with pre-qualifying questions. It also doesn’t mean that you can discriminate against other groups either, the survey can still collect responses from others, but keep them in a separate report or not even keep their results.
6. They Can Be Made More Attractive
While many would not see the appearance of a feedback tool a high priority, the fact is that by using your own branding in the survey you can actually remind the audience of you. This can help spark memories to get better answers.
The attractiveness of the survey can also inspire more people to complete the questionnaire and therefore, you will get more responses. The challenge is not to make it too attractive so it becomes a distraction and the respondents forget to put down real answers.
Conclusion
Surveys can be a powerful tool when used correctly in your business. They can help your business collect valuable information that can help improve business operations and generate future direction for your business. They offer significant benefits for your business over other forms of feedback collection tools that make them more valuable and offer better information.
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