Customer Surveys and Focus Groups
In our experience, a well-designed and successfully administered customer survey should follow these rules (sample):
- Focus on attributes of products and services that bear most directly on customer satisfaction.
- Clearly define survey objectives using pre-survey testing.
- Keep it simple. Your customers should easily understand what you are trying to achieve in the survey.
- Focus on determining services and/or products of highest perceived value to customers.
- Keep it short. If a consumer telephone survey, limit it to 15-20 minutes. For executives, 15 minutes should be the max. If a mail survey, do not expect to keep people's attention for more than 5 minutes (especially if you want honest responses).
- Offer incentives to participate. Survey respondents must have a compelling reason to participate. Cash incentives (including contests) work best with customers. Managers and executives respond well to offers of information.
- If you use a telephone survey, use highly professional interviewers. These interviewers should not sound scripted.
- The analysis of the survey should result in detailed action recommendations, including improvement suggestions.
- Consider outsourcing the survey. Use of an experienced market research firm builds credibility among customers and enhances data reliability and value.
- Focus Groups can be designed to test the reactions of potential customers to a new product and / or gather information on specific customer application needs. Groups can be facilitated in an informal manner, such as in a classroom or media center at a school or they can be more formal in a meeting room with video recording of the session.
- The group is structured with a predetermined set of questions which are developed working with you. A predetermined length of time is set for the session.
- We have conducted and documented numerous focus groups nationally in the last two years with businesses to gather data for developing customer strategies and plans. Working with the client we developed questionnaires and surveys to be utilized in the focus groups. The results were then summarized for the client in a format that fit their needs.
Key Benefits
- Personal ownership — "It is my plan!"
- Saves money — you do not have to hire additional staff to write the plan
- Saves time — someone else is doing the work for you
- Comfort — you have first-hand knowledge to make decisions
