Surveys - 15 Tips to Optimize Yours, From the Man Who Wrote the Book!

Surveys are an important tool for measuring your customers’ and agents’satisfaction along with identifying areas needing improvement.  Listen in to 15 tips to optimize your surveys.

Guest Dr. Fred Van Bennekom, The author of "Customer Surveying: A Guidebook for Service Managers," teaches operations management in Northeastern University’s Executive MBA program and has served as an information systems consultant for Digital Equipment’s field service organization. Through his company, Great Brook, Dr. Van Bennekom conducts workshops and advises clients on their survey practices.

Survey Tips & Tricks – the Fast Fifteen or a Bakers Dozen plus two

Project Management

• Think about what you’re trying to learn – Statement of research objectives
• Line up your ducks – get the resources and sponsorship lined up
• Motivate, motivate, motivate

Questionnaire Design

• Talk to the people – do some field research for “attribute identification”
• Keep it short
• Organize into topical sections
• It’s how you write it – look for multiple interpretations
• Data aren’t all created equal -- Know your data types

Survey Administration

• Target the right people
• Target the right people the right way – Avoid sample bias
• Know the math of statistical accuracy

Analysis & Reporting

• Fight the fires immediately
• Slice and dice – look for the interesting findings among subgroups
• Explain the impact
• Close the loop – tell them what you learned = motivate