Well-known religious leader and activist Elijah Muhammad once said, “ Asking good questions is half the learning”. We believe, asking good survey questions is how you can completely learn about your customer’s experience or expectations from your business. Drafting good survey questions is not rocket science. Let us break it down to a few simple steps.The secret to getting the right answers is asking the relevant questions.
Below is a list of simple and actionable steps to creating good survey questions:
Step-1: The Prequel
Before you start forming any question for a survey, identify the touch points in the customer’s journey with your organisation. Voilà! You have a structure and flow defined for your survey.
Step-2: Step into their shoes
Once you map the customer journey, ask yourself, if you were a customer or client what would you expect from the organisation at each stage in terms of Customer Experience.
Step-3: Hit the Bull’s Eye
Keep the questions clear, crisp and to the point. Make sure you ask one question at a time.
Step-4: Do not lead
Good survey questions are unbiased. If you want to obtain candid feedback from your clientele, questions and answer choices (if any) should not lead the responder to an answer which might not be their honest opinion.
Step-5: Make your survey smart
QuestionPro has around 30 standard and advanced question types; Multiple choice, comment box, side by side matrix, and Net Promoter Score questions to name a few. Leverage the choice of questions and along with branching logic to considerably reduce the length of the survey.
Step-6: Take expert advice
It is advised to keep at least one open ended question in a survey. This allows the respondent to share their feedback about your brand or any other concerns they might have.
Step-7: Use specialized questions
Some survey questions are specialized, focused and excellent for getting response to a specific question type. For example, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) question is an industry tested customer survey question that is excellent for capturing quick feedback on their brand loyalty and continuity by categorizing them as brand promoter, passive or detractors based on their survey response.
Interesting fact : Collins Dictionary defines a ‘good question’ as a question that is hard to answer immediately. Conventionally, if you say ‘Good question’ in reply to a question, you mean that it is a difficult question to answer, or perhaps that you are embarrassed about the answer or do not know the answer. However, we would like to define good survey questions as the “right survey questions”, capable of getting all the answers you need to understand the pulse of your target audience.
LEARN ABOUT: Structured Questionnaire