What would your customers say about your product or service if they didn’t have to repeat themselves? Surveys allow you to ask customers a never-ending stream of questions about your products and services, and gain valuable feedback that will help you improve and grow your business.

This article will teach you how to conduct a survey for your business that won’t damage your reputation. We’ll cover five steps you should follow, so you can get the most out of your survey experience.

Get A Survey To Take

If you want to conduct a survey, the first thing you must do is ask for permission from your customers. You should do this well in advance of your survey date so that you don’t have any distractions that might prevent you from getting the most out of your study. It’s also a good idea to get the approval of several customers before you go ahead with your survey. This will help you get an idea of how many people are likely to answer your questions, and how many people might give you biased responses.

Decide What You’ll Ask

Once you have your survey, you should sit down and put some thought into what you’ll ask. You should craft questions that will help you get the most out of your study. You should avoid questions that are too general or subjective, as these will make your results less reliable. Remember: you are trying to get an objective response from your customers, so make sure that each question can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no” without leading you to believe that one option is better than the other.

Avoid Bad Questions

This is especially relevant when asking customers for feedback, as you don’t want to end up skewing the results of your survey by asking questions that may bias them towards your product or service. For example, you might want to avoid asking customers if they’d pay more for your product or service, as this could lead to a biased answer. Instead, you could ask them if they’d pay the same price for your product or service, which would make the results more accurate.

Make Sure Each Question Is Relevant

It’s also important to keep in mind that not every question you ask will have an impact on your business. Some questions will be more relevant to certain demographics, while others will be more relevant to a specific product or service. The more questions you ask, the less likely you are to get reliable results. You should only ask questions that will help you get the most out of your study.

Avoid Questions That Aren’t Actionable

Avoiding questions that aren’t relevant to your business can help you get the most out of your study. If you aren’t sure how your customers feel about a certain aspect of your product or service, it’s best to avoid asking them about it. You should only ask questions that will help you improve your business, and make it easier for customers to provide you with quality feedback.

Annotate The Results

The results of your survey should be annotated in some way to show how many people responded to each question. This can be done by either:

  • Stating how many people answered each question in the results section of your survey (i.e. “45% of respondents said…”)
  • Annotating each response with a “1” or “2” (i.e. “1: Completely disagree, 2: Mostly disagree, 3: Disagree, 4: Neutral, 5: Agree, 6: Completely agree”)
  • Coloring in the blank to show how many people answered each question in your survey (i.e. Pink = 40% responded “yes,” Blue = 20% responded “no,” Purple = 40% didn’t answer)

This last option is useful if you want to see how many people in your study didn’t answer a question. Simply follow the instructions above to color in the blank, and you’ll see a visualization of missing data that will help you understand why some people didn’t answer some questions.

Keeping all of these tips in mind will help you conduct a survey that doesn’t damage your business. Once you get started, you’ll wonder why you didn’t ask for customer feedback sooner. It’s never easy getting feedback, but with a little planning and research, you can assure yourself that you’re collecting the most useful feedback possible, and prevent any repercussions from occurring due to a bad study.