3. • 68% of your customers leave you because
they think you are indifferent to them
• A 5% increase in customer retention can
increase a company's profitability by 75%
5. Seth Godin
• Every question you ask is expensive.
(Expensive in terms of loyalty and
goodwill)
• Every question you ask changes the way
your users think
• Make it easy for the user to bail
• Make the questions entertaining and
not so serious, at least some of them.
Boring surveys deserve the boring
results they generate
• Don't be afraid to shake up the format
Images and text from
sethgodin.typepad.com
6. Don Dillman’s Mail & Internet Surveys
Method
• In 2007 psychologist Don Dillman created a set
of survey principles to increase response rate
7. Some core Dillman principles
– Ask yourself: does this question really require an
answer?
– Pre-empt & personalise wherever possible
– Emphasise ease of responding
– List answers vertically instead of horizontally
– Ensure the survey comes from a known person
– Repeat contact where possible
– Remember, people will only be willing to expend a
certain amount of energy responding to you
From Don A Dillman, 2007
8. 5 ways to improve response rate
• 1. Tell people it’s coming
• 2. Personalise it
• 3. Ask as few questions as possible
• 4. Explain what will happen to their response
• 5. Make it enjoyable
But at the same time, tou know it makes sense to keep your customers. But did you know…
Example survey
Are you damaging your business?
Seth Godin is marketing thinker and author. His books have been bestsellers in the NY Times and Businesweek list, and his book free prize inside was the Forbes Business Book of the Year
Here’s what he says about surveys
Every question you ask is expensive. (Expensive in terms of loyalty and goodwill). Don't ask a question unless you truly care about the answer. This means that a vague question with vague answers (extremely satisfied...acceptable...extremely dissatisfied and no scale to compare them to) is a total waste of time. What action will you take based on that? It's smarter to ask, "how much would you say lunch was worth?"
Every question you ask changes the way your users think. If you ask, "which did you hate more..." then you've planted a seed.
Make it easy for the user to bail. If you have 20 questions (that's a lot!) make it easy to quit after five and have those answers still count. If you waste my time and then don't count my answers, see #2.
Make the questions entertaining and not so serious, at least some of them. Boring surveys deserve the boring results they generate.
Don't be afraid to shake up the format. Instead of saying, "Here are ten things, rank them all on a scale of one to five..." why not let people compare things? "We had two speakers, Bob and Ray. Who was better?"
Bottom line: before you let the survey guys run a survey of your loyal customer base, make them pay you with resources you can use to reinvigorate those users you just bothered.
sociologist, Regents Professor, Foley Distinguished Professor of Government and Public Policy, major contributions to modern survey methods. Past president, American Association of Public Opinion Research
Amazon, google books etc
Personalise – logos, personal information, specific information
Repeated contact to remind those who have “filed and forgotten”
Last point – emotional bank balance, Moonpig
These and Seth’s previous points will help any company increase their response rate. But I’d like to suggest going a step further today.
Clearly for indepth market research surveys, Dillman has much more to add. But for most companies who want to understand how satisfied their customers are, if any mistakes have been unwittingly made, and if any customers are thinking of leaving, both Dillman and Godin point to our way of thinking
Why and how – letter etc
Logos, colours, familiarity, trust, email address it comes from, footer and sign off
Seriously consider asking just the one that truly matters
Who will benefit, will anything change
Surveys have somehow become tortuous – why?! It makes no sense to put the most valuable people to your business, your customers, through any pain at all
Customisability (logos, colours, from), personalisation (to, mail merge), easy to answer, instant, the one question that matters, matches responses to real people
it’s the easy way out to make things more complex
One question focuses the mind and allows you to ask what matters
And then, most importantly of all, do something about it…