Fresh Survey Ideas for Impactful Results

Survey Ideas are the catalysts for unlocking the full potential of data collection.

In today’s world, knowledge is the key to success. However, this is also an era in which disseminating falsehoods and unproven hypotheses is simpler than ever. Critical business decisions must be based on facts, not speculation or the opinions of others.

So, how do we gather reliable data most straightforwardly and efficiently?

You may learn a lot about your target market and discover their thoughts on your business, products, and services by conducting surveys.

We often make judgments based on what we think is right rather than what is true. We fantasize about doing what pleases us and what our ideal selves would do, but things rarely go as planned.

Decisions based on assumptions can lead to significant financial losses, especially in a corporate context. Trying to reach your target audience on Instagram when they’re all on Twitter would be crazy.

Nonetheless, be sure you’re asking about the right things in your surveys. This blog will examine why survey ideas are essential during your research.

In this blog, you will learn:

Table of Contents:

1. What are Survey Ideas?
2. What Makes Surveys Creative?
3. Innovative Customer Survey Ideas for Enhanced Business Decisions
4. Survey Promotion Ideas Examples
5. How to Apply Your Survey Plan: Step-by-Step
6. Evaluate A Survey Plan Example
7. How to Motivate your Customers to take a Survey?
8. Survey Ideas Frequently Asked Question
9. Wrap Up

What are Survey Ideas?

Definition: A survey idea refers to a fundamental concept or subject matter that provides the framework for developing and implementing a survey.

The process entails the identification of a research question or objective, determining the intended audience, and creating a set of survey questions that will facilitate the collection of pertinent and valuable data.

What Makes Surveys Creative?

Creativity in surveys involves going beyond traditional question-and-answer formats, making the process more engaging, insightful, and enjoyable for participants.

This approach is particularly important in longitudinal surveys, where maintaining participant interest over time is crucial. Here are key elements that contribute to making surveys creative:

• Determine Your Brand Advocate

One potential method for gauging customer satisfaction is to conduct a campaign wherein customers are asked to provide feedback regarding their likelihood of recommending a product or service to others in their personal or professional networks.

The user will receive insights regarding the number of promoters, passives, and detractors they possess. Conversely, to obtain more comprehensive insights, conclude with a handful of open-ended inquiries.

• Assess The Level of Customer Satisfaction About Your Brand

Inquire about the level of customer satisfaction regarding the products and services provided. Augmenting the inquiry above with a couple of open-ended queries is advisable. It is imperative to ensure that customers are comfortable interacting with your organization.

The consumer experience must be a top priority. Research indicates that consumers tend to repeat purchases with a brand that provides them with low-effort expertise, as revealed through an effective survey data collection method, instead of switching to a less expensive competitor.

• Determine The Reasons Behind Customer Churn

Customers come and go, and some will always be disappointed and leave. It’s OK, but learning why they leave would serve you well. Test the waters to see if your product is getting good reviews.

Innovative Customer Survey Ideas for Enhanced Business Decision

The following are five innovative survey ideas that may serve as a source of inspiration for enhancing business decision-making while simultaneously engaging the customer base.

1. Request brand endorsements.

The most effective kind of advertising is word of mouth. Consumers put more faith in people than in companies. The effectiveness of paid media is discounted by a factor of 5. Friends’ recommendations account for 90% of all purchases made by consumers. Five million unique monthly users access G2 reviews.

2. See what content your customers like.

Writing a blog requires a steady stream of original content. Innovative ideas often come from consumers. They will be interested in what you offer if their friends recommend it to them.

3. See if your article was informative.

An influential article can be predicted using analytics data. User apathy cannot be understood by analyzing the data. Pre-made survey formats collect valuable qualitative data for better analytics.

4. Check out your new feature or product.

After releasing your updated product or service to customers, ensure they are still happy. Problems should be solved before they become significant issues.

5. Identify your target market.

It’s vital to verify who your customers are. Many businesses miss out on selling to the most in-demand customer segments because their efforts must be directed.

Survey Promotion Ideas Examples

Here are those questions that allow you to create surveys quickly, which can be of great assistance. Here are some potential ideas for your survey:

• What is your opinion of the quality of our service?
• How would you describe your experience?
• How quickly did our customer support team fix the problem?
• Is this problem now resolved to your satisfaction?
• Do the accepted payment options meet your needs?
• What can we do to serve you better?
• How crucial do you find the operating system to be when looking for a new phone?
• To what extent does the size of the phone’s display affect your decision to buy?
• When making your choice, how important is the picture quality?
• When purchasing, how much weight does the phone’s color have?

How to Apply Your Survey Plan: Step-by-Step

Suppose you want to introduce a mobile device. Before taking any action, it is imperative to have a clear understanding of the preferences and needs of one’s clientele. To this end, an online survey was conducted using Google Forms, and the resulting data was compiled and organized in an Excel spreadsheet. The data will be presented in the following format.

• How important is the operating system for you while purchasing a phone?
• How important is the screen size for you while purchasing a phone?
• To what extent does camera quality factor into your decision?
• To what extent does the color of the phone factor into your decision?

Now, let’s examine the scale that corresponds to these queries.

1. Extremely Unimportant
2. Unimportant
3. Not Sure
4. Important
5. Extremely Important

Write a query on “Untitled Question.” For adding options, write “Option 1” and “Add option” for additional options.

To send your form to the intended recipients, click the Send icon.

After collecting all of the responses. Select the option represented by three vertical dots adjacent to the “Link to Sheets” feature.

This will create a dropdown menu to download your responses as a CSV file.

Evaluate A Survey Plan Example

The neatly organized tables in Excel can’t compare to interactive visualization. Although Excel can analyze and display data, it may need more survey data visualization capabilities.

Excel’s graphics, particularly those of Likert Scale Charts, can be enhanced with the help of third-party add-ons like ChartExpo.

• Likert Scale Chart quickly visualizes client input using the best survey charts.
• ChartExpo visualizations reveal hidden patterns and trends.
• ChartExpo lets you try its charts and sample data for free. If you like the findings, upgrade to the paid edition, which is worth it for relevant and visually appealing data presentations.

How to install ChartExpo in Excel?

1. Open Excel.
2. Click “Insert” in the worksheet.
3. View “My Apps.”
4. In Office Add-ins, choose “Store” and search for ChartExpo on my Apps Store.
5. Click “Add” to install ChartExpo in Excel.

ChartExpo charts can be accessed on both Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel platforms. Kindly utilize the provided Call-to-Actions (CTAs) to install your preferred tool, enabling you to generate aesthetically pleasing visual representations with minimal effort within your preferred platform.

Read on to learn how to use ChartExpo to make eye-catching visualizations in Excel.

This data needs to be converted to the following format before it can be analyzed in Excel.

Timestamp	How important is the operating system for you while purchasing a phone?	How important is the screen size for you while purchasing a phone?	To what extent does camera quality factor into your decision?	To what extent does the color of the phone factor into your decision?
10-13-2023 17:47:33	Extremely Important	Important	Extremely Important	Not Sure
10-13-2023 17:47:33	Important	Extremely Important	Not Sure	Important
10-13-2023 17:47:33	Important	Extremely Unimportant	Unimportant	Extremely Important
10-13-2023 17:47:33	Important	Extremely Important	Extremely Unimportant	Extremely Unimportant
10-13-2023 17:47:33	Unimportant	Important	Unimportant	Not Sure
10-13-2023 17:47:33	Extremely Important	Extremely Important	Extremely Important	Unimportant
10-13-2023 17:47:33	Unimportant	Extremely Unimportant	Extremely Unimportant	Important
10-13-2023 17:47:33	Unimportant	Important	Not Sure	Unimportant
10-13-2023 17:47:33	Extremely Important	Important	Unimportant	Extremely Unimportant
10-13-2023 17:47:33	Extremely Important	Not Sure	Unimportant	Extremely Unimportant
10-13-2023 17:47:33	Important	Unimportant	Important	Unimportant
10-13-2023 17:47:34	Extremely Unimportant	Unimportant	Not Sure	Important
10-13-2023 17:47:35	Not Sure	Important	Unimportant	Important
10-13-2023 17:47:36	Not Sure	Extremely Important	Important	Unimportant
10-13-2023 17:47:37	Unimportant	Not Sure	Unimportant	Extremely Unimportant
10-13-2023 17:47:38	Not Sure	Extremely Unimportant	Extremely Unimportant	Extremely Important
10-13-2023 17:47:39	Extremely Important	Extremely Unimportant	Important	Not Sure
10-13-2023 17:47:40	Unimportant	Not Sure	Extremely Important	Extremely Unimportant
10-13-2023 17:47:41	Unimportant	Extremely Unimportant	Extremely Unimportant	Extremely Unimportant
10-13-2023 17:47:42	Extremely Important	Unimportant	Unimportant	Extremely Unimportant

This table contains example data. Expect many responses and questions in real life.

• To get started with ChartExpo, install ChartExpo in Excel.
• Now Click on My Apps from the INSERT menu.

• Choose ChartExpo from My Apps, then click Insert.

• Once it loads, choose the “Likert Scale Chart” from the charts list.

• Click the “Create Chart From Selection” button after selecting the data from the sheet, as shown.

• After clicking “Create Chart From Selection“, manually map responses to numbers. Likert scale:
  • Extremely Unimportant = 1
  • Unimportant = 2
  • Not Sure = 3
  • Important = 4
  • ”‹Extremely Important = 5
• Once all is set, click the “Create Chart” button.

• ChartExpo will create this visualization.

• If you want to have the title of the chart, click on Edit Chart, as shown in the above image.
• To change the title of the chart, click on the pencil icon that is available very next to Chart Header.

• It will open the properties dialog. Under the Text section, you can add a heading in Line 1 and enable the Show option. Give the appropriate title of your chart and click on the Apply button.

• Let’s say you want to add text responses instead of numbers against every emoji.
• Click the pencil icon next to the respective emoji. Expand the “Label” properties and write the required text. Then click the “Apply All” button.
• Click the “Save Changes” button to persist the changes.

• The final chart will look as below.

Insights:

• 50% of customers indicated that the operating system is important for them while purchasing a phone, 35% of customers indicated that the operating system is unimportant for them while purchasing a phone, and 15% said neither operating system is important for them nor the operating system is unimportant for them.
• 45% of customers indicated that when purchasing a phone screen size is important for them and 40% of customers indicated that when purchasing a phone screen size is unimportant for them.
• 30% of customers indicated that the camera quality factor is important to them and 55% of customers indicated that the camera quality factor is unimportant to them.
• 30% of customers indicated that the color of the phone factor is important to them and 55% of customers indicated that the color of the phone factor is not important to them.
• Overall view, 39% of respondents think the different features are important for them. But 46% said phone features are unimportant to them. The Grey area represents not sure respondents which means sometimes features are important for them and sometimes they overlook features of the phone, which is 15%.

How to Motivate your Customers to take a Survey?

• Offer Incentives

Provide tangible rewards or incentives to customers who complete the survey, such as discounts, coupons, or entries into a prize draw. This can increase participation rates by giving customers a clear benefit for their time and effort.

• Emphasize the Importance

Communicate why their feedback is valuable and how it will be used to improve products or services. When customers understand that their opinions can directly impact future experiences, they may be more inclined to participate.

• Keep it Short and Simple

Respect your customers’ time by keeping the survey short and focused. Use clear and concise language, and avoid asking unnecessary or overly complex questions. Shorter surveys are more likely to be completed in full.

• Personalize the Invitation

Tailor survey invitations to the individual customer whenever possible. Address them by name, and customize the content based on their past interactions or preferences. Personalized invitations can make customers feel valued and more likely to respond.

• Highlight the Benefits

Clearly outline the benefits of taking the survey, such as improving products, shaping future offerings, or receiving better customer service. By emphasizing how their feedback will directly benefit them or others, you can encourage participation.

• Choose the Right Timing

Timing is crucial when asking customers to take a survey. Avoid sending survey requests during busy or inconvenient times, such as peak business hours or holiday seasons. Instead, choose times when customers are more likely to have the time and inclination to participate.

• Follow-up with Reminders

Send friendly reminders to customers who have not yet completed the survey. A gentle nudge can serve as a helpful reminder and prompt them to take action.

• Express Gratitude

Thank customers for their participation and feedback, regardless of whether they completed the survey or not. Expressing genuine appreciation can leave a positive impression and encourage future engagement.

Survey Ideas Frequently Asked Question

What are 5 good survey questions?

The top 5 good survey questions you ask yourself before sending out a survey are;

• How: How do you want to ask?
• Why: Why do you want to ask?
• Who: Who do you want to ask?
• When: When do you want to ask?
• What: What do you want to ask?

There you have it. If you stick to those 5 questions, you’ll have a solid foundation to build your survey.

What are some good survey topics?

Some good survey topics include:

1. Customer satisfaction
2. Employee engagement
3. Market research
4. Event feedback
5. Product feedback
6. Social issues
7. Education
8. Health and wellness
9. Community development
10. Environmental awareness

Wrap Up

Surveys are an effective instrument for acquiring data from a particular demographic, enabling businesses to amass significant information and perspectives that can be utilized to guide judgments and tactics. Creating unambiguous, concise, and pertinent surveys would allow researchers to acquire reliable and valuable data, facilitating their research goals.

Acquiring knowledge of the concept of a business survey and its methodology can enhance an organization’s decision-making quality. Business surveys can reveal market preferences and behaviors, helping companies design growth strategies.

To reach important people, clear and focused queries and several distribution methods are essential. A well-designed survey and a little effort can give us valuable insights.  In turn, this can help us make informed decisions and succeed in any endeavor.