Diving Into Cross-Sectional Surveys

Diving Into Cross-Sectional Surveys

cross sectional surveys

There are several survey studies that you can conduct on consumers or on virtually any subject you wish. As mentioned previously, there are three main types of survey research methods: cross-sectional studies, longitudinal studies and retrospective studies.

Fortunately, you can create and customize a survey for each type of survey research method. In this article, we will delve into cross-sectional surveys, which are a part of their own distinct set of survey research: cross-sectional studies. 

Mainly used in developmental psychology, this research method expands to a wide variety of other sectors. This includes studying consumers and a business's target market.

Defining Cross-Sectional Surveys

A cross-sectional study is defined as a study in which research is gathered about a particular population at one fixed point in time. As such, this type of survey research method has been dubbed as a snapshot of a studied population.

This kind of study is conducted via cross-sectional surveys, surveys designed specifically for the cross-sectional model. Using an online survey tool, researchers and business owners can craft their own cross-sectional surveys and deploy them to a specific sample pool.

This type of survey therefore does not require using a survey panel. In fact, it is often contrasted to panel surveys, as they follow a panel over several points in time. Additionally, it runs contrary to longitudinal studies, as they too inspect participants beyond a specific position in time. 

The Key Aspects of Cross-Sectional Surveys

cross sectional surveys

To fully understand cross-sectional surveys, aside from their definition solely, you ought to understand their key features. The following lists the core aspects that distinguish these surveys from that of others. Here is how they differ aside from their deployment frequency:

  1. They are part of observational studies, in which no intervention takes place, only pure investigation.
  2. They fall under descriptive research, which seeks to describe the what, how, when and where of variables, as opposed to the why. 
  3. They can find current and prevalent attributes in a population.
  4. They do not manipulate variables. 
  5. They cannot be used to uncover the cause of something, but rather the makeup of a phenomenon or opinions thereof. 
  6. Researchers use them to look at various respondent characteristics, such as age, education, income, gender, etc.)
  7. They provide an overview of what is occurring in a particular community, situation, etc. 

How They Differ from Longitudinal & Retrospective Surveys

Cross-sectional studies are in diametric opposition to longitudinal studies; they are also different from retrospective studies. As such, the surveys for each will differ in design, function, frequency of deployment and purpose. 

Unlike cross-sectional studies, longitudinal studies observe a group of people over an extended period of time, as opposed to just over one point. The length of study varies; it can take place anywhere from weeks to years. 

Therefore, these studies help put forth a depiction of a sequence of events. These are used to detect changes and developments within the sampling pool. Cross-sectional studies, on the other hand, paint a picture of just one moment in time, usually the prevailing one.

Retrospective studies combine aspects of both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. They study respondents with surveys that deal with questions about past events. In this way, researchers can compare past feelings and attitudes with those of the present, much like in longitudinal studies. 

However, retrospective surveys can be conducted just once, as with cross-sectional surveys. They may amass data on one point in time or several. 

Additionally, unlike longitudinal studies, which involve continuous studies, retrospective surveys draw from a pool of an already existing data set. As such, they only deal with events of the past and will not gather any data on new opinions and attitudes that respondents may hold.  

It’s important to note that all three of these research methods/survey types are observational, allowing researchers to record and understand the subjects’ behaviors via observation only.

The Types of Cross-Sectional Surveys

There are two types of cross-sectional surveys: descriptive and analytical. Typically, researchers rely on both when conducting this type of study. However, one of these methods may exist entirely on its own. 

Descriptive: 

A cross-sectional descriptive survey evaluates how frequently, widely, or extensively a particular behavior, phenomenon, attitude or opinion occurs in a demographic group. The findings of each of these categories is thus reviewed and measured on prevalence. 

There is a slight distinction made when assessing these different traits in that, when performing studies on the prevalence of something, the study is called a “prevalence study.” On the contrary, when feelings and opinions are analyzed, it is called a “survey.” In either case, surveys can be used to study all of these categories. 

Since it is purely descriptive, this method can exist on its own in a cross-sectional study, as opposed to the following study.

Analytical:

An analytical cross-sectional survey probes into the association of two related or unrelated variables. This type of research isn’t entirely infallible, as variables and outcomes are simultaneous, along with their studies. 

For example, say you need to find the association between a risk factor and health. Since the risk factor and health result are measured concurrently, with no other variable taken into consideration, it may be difficult to determine whether the risk factor alone contributed to the health outcome. Due to this limitation, analytical studies are usually not conducted alone. 

Which Industries Depend on these Surveys for Market Research

There are various industries that depend on cross-sectional surveys for their market research needs. As such, these surveys can serve a wide variety of applications. The following cites several industries that put these surveys into practice.

  1. General business: In the general business sphere, you can conduct these studies to understand how your target market and its segments react to changes in offerings, along with how you set up marketing, advertising and branding campaigns. 
  2. Healthcare: Researchers may use this survey to study how certain groups of people are prone to certain disorders and conditions, along with how lifestyle changes affect health and much more.
  3. Retail: Retailers can use these surveys to find trends in relation to spending and how they differ between genders and income levels.cross sectional studies
  4. Psychology: Psychologists can conduct these surveys to study a wide variety of people to understand similarities and differences in their mentality and psyche.
  5. Education: This survey can help educators understand how students of various grades perform in a new course of study. 
  6. Real estate: Real estate agents and business owners can use these surveys to measure the demand of real estate in particular neighborhoods at the current time. 
  7. Technology: Those in the tech sector can learn the prevalence or existence of certain frustrations and pain points that new SaaS or tech products can help solve. 

The Pros and Cons of Cross-Sectional Surveys

Like many other types of survey research methods, cross-sectional studies offer both advantages and disadvantages. It’s vital to consider both of these facets, as they will not merely guide your decision in choosing to use these surveys. They will also allow you to know what to expect if you do use them for your market research needs.

Pros

  1. Surveying multiple variables shows how differences in income, gender, age, et al. correspond with a critical variable of interest.
  2. Can be used to prove or disprove assumptions and hypotheses. 
  3. Relatively inexpensive to conduct.
  4. Fast results despite large amounts of data from a large sampling pool.
  5. Findings can be used to create new hypotheses, inciting new studies and more thorough research.
  6. Captures the specific feelings, attitudes and behaviors at a specific point in time.
  7. Can be used for a wellspring of other research methods (retrospective surveys, market segmentation, branding, etc). 

Cons

  1. Cannot be used to uncover behavior over a period of time.
  2. Does not determine cause and effect since variables can affect the relationship between the cause and outcomes.
  3. Cannot be used to find conclusions about causation.
  4. Results can be biased if there is a conflict of interest (with the funding source).
  5. Cohort differences can affect groups. (Those born in the same decade may share certain experiences, but those within that group born in a certain area may share only experiences connected to their location).

Questions, Trends and Key Things To Remember 

There are a variety of questions pertinent to cross-sectional surveys, as they are descriptive and observational in nature. You would compose them based on the prevailing characteristics you want to unearth or see if there are any correlative qualities behind components like risks, behaviors and outcomes.  

As such, there is no list of general questions to ask in these types of studies, as they are specific to populations, variables and their conditions. Investigating the ins and outs of a specific population allows marketers and business owners to understand the relationships between variables. If you need to examine trends, you can repeat these surveys at different points in time. But remember — these surveys should NOT be repeated in the same group of respondents, as they are not follow-up surveys, which are only used in longitudinal studies.

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by Pollfish Marketing Team

How to Use Surveys to Bolster the Voice of Customer (VoC)

How to Use Surveys to Bolster the Voice of Customer (VoC)

voice of customer

Voice of the Customer, or VoC, is a term used to describe customer feedback. VoC has made waves in the customer experience (CX) space and is considered a core business strategy.

This is largely due to VoC programs’ (such as VoC surveys) contribution to improving customer satisfaction. Happy customers won’t just purchase from a brand once; rather they are likely to become loyal to it, which entails making repeat purchases.

The PWC has found that 43% of customers are willing to pay more for a good customer experience. Consequently, a bad customer experience will drive customers and potential customers away from a business.

This article will explain the Voice of Customer in-depth so that you can implement an effective VoC program.

Defining the Voice of Customer

While VoC falls under the specialty of customer feedback, it denotes so much more. Voice of Customer is a research method businesses use to discover the needs, complaints and general commentary of their customers.

It isn’t merely a single touchpoint, such as a conversation with a salesperson, as it constitutes a process. The VoC process includes various programs that work to capture all that customers have to say about a brand, product, service or experience.

It consolidates all of this feedback into a general customer perspective of a brand. Brands can then use this perspective to bridge the gap between customer expectations and business practices.

In short, VoC allows brands to fully understand their customers’ specific grievances and likings of a brand, along with their overall views of it.

Voice of the Customer Applications

VoC programs have a wide scope of utility. That is why you can tinker your VoC outlet to gather specific information around your business. The following lists some of the most crucial applications VoC can help execute.

  • Informing the design specifications of a new product.
  • Improving the functionality of a product or product feature.
  • Gaining access to the sentiment around interactions with representatives and other employees.
  • Finding product, service or experience features that are excelling or poorly performing.
  • Identifying glitches in the UX of a product or digital experience.
  • Spotting early warnings of a potential brand crisis.
  • Creating solutions to improve customer experience.
  • Performing market research about your customers and site visitors.
  • Avoiding past mistakes and underperforming experiences.
  • Increasing customer retention.

Voice of the Customer Examples

As aforementioned, Voice of Customer does not entail only one touchpoint, i.e., the VoC program. Rather, it works via a multi-program approach. The best way to fully acquire and retain your customers’ desires and opinions is by deploying several of them in your process.

The following enumerates key VoC programs for obtaining a sharp sense of your customers in relation to your company. 

  • Customer Interviews: One of the more traditional VoC programs, these interviews are usually conducted over the phone. A traditional interview requires a company representative to call the customer and inquire about products, services, a recent transaction, a recent customer support interaction or anything else related to company/customer relations.
    1. Can be done in-person, over the phone, via email.
    2. Known as the most personal interaction.
    3. Costliest to conduct.
  1. VoC Surveys: Surveys allow you to collect customer feedback via customer satisfaction surveys. Luckily, there are several survey types that fall under this category such as the Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Customer Effort Score (CES) and other such surveys. 
    1. Most are conducted online, either on-site or via email prompts.
    2. Most effective when deployed on-site or in-app to collect real-time users.
    3. Most scalable program.VOC survey
  1. Social Listening: As its name hints at, social listening involves using social media platforms for collecting VoC data. This method allows brands to find, scrutinize, and respond to conversations about them on these platforms. This technique goes beyond tracking reviews on social media, rather it involves gathering real conversations surrounding your business, its offering and associations. 
    1. Can also include online forums, blog comments, and product review sites.
    2. Great to track for natural commentary about your brand.
    3. Allows you to respond to customer concerns and assure them their feedback is valued.
  • Live Chat: Live chat allows you to speak with customers 1:1, much like you would on the phone, except it is more in line with their real-time issues, ex: trouble at site checkout.
    1. Allows you to help consumers as they navigate your site or to address problems or questions about your products/service.
    2. Provides a way to reduce customer dissatisfaction.
    3. Enables you to gain more insights by sending the customer a follow-up survey.
  1. Website Behaviors: Studying website behaviors will allow you to detect any site glitches or issues hampering your customers digital UX.
    1. Shows you how users traverse and interact with your website. 
    2. Can be studied via digital experience analytics platforms.
    3. Can be compiled via session replay tools.

The Voice of Customer Process

Since VoC relies on more than just one touchpoint, it also entails much more than just the touchpoint, i.e., the program itself. It calls for other actions, as it is a process. 

The VoC process will differ from brand to brand depending on the number of VoC techniques you deploy, the timeframe you set to review them and their relation to other campaigns (advertising, branding, etc). 

The following steps present a general overview of the main undertakings in a VoC process. 

voice of customer

  1. Collect your data with the programs mentioned above, such as voice of customer surveys, etc. 
  2. Analyze all of your responses across program types. Search for commonalities in complaints, inquiries, points of friction, expectations and other customer concerns. Use these to determine what to prioritize first. You should pay attention to the severity of an issue, along with its frequency.
  3. Implement any necessary changes to improve customer experience and satisfaction. Make sure to respond to customers who have contacted your business in a way that shows you recognize their concerns and appreciate their feedback. Assure them that their voices are heard and that your brand will take the necessary steps to correct any issue or improve its product, service or experience.

Questions to Use When Collecting VoC Feedback

VoC represents feedback that the customers may have initiated themselves, i.e., when they go to your website and use the live chat, or when they call in to express their opinions with a product or service.

This means that much of the VoC responses you’ll receive are pure commentary, that is, the feedback given directly and not in response to your brand’s questions. However, you can still gather VoC data by asking the questions yourself in your VoC programs.

The following lists question examples to use in your VoC methods. These will help you gather thoughts on various customer/company matters, such as company reputation and brand loyalty.

  1. What comes to mind when you think about [company/product name]?
    1. Best Methods: VoC surveys, phone, in-person interview
  2. What features do you look for in a company or product?
    1. Best Methods:  VoC surveys, phone, in-person interview
  3. How can [company] improve your customer experience?
    1. Best Methods: VoC surveys, phone, in-person interview, dedicated feedback forms, social media
  4. What company and/or product would you recommend to a friend and why?
    1. Best Methods: VoC surveys, phone, in-person interview
  5. What is a product/service you prefer over ours and explain why?
    1. Best Methods: VoC surveys, live chat, dedicated feedback forms
  6. What were the main issues you had when using our website?
    1. Best Methods: Live chat, phone calls, VoC surveys
  7. On a scale of 1-7, how would you rate your interaction with our sales representative?
    1. VoC surveys, dedicated feedback forms
    2. The surveys would use Likert scale or semantic differential questions

Taking Your VoC to the Next Level

In summary, brands can record their Voice of the Customer data through a variety of means, including focus groups, emails and even offsite surveys. VoC surveys that can be deployed across websites and apps are the best VoC program environment, as it grants you the ability to collect feedback in real-time and in a timely manner.

The point of the entire process is to learn how to best engage and retain your target market. 

A poor customer experience will induce more bounces, fewer purchases and worst of all, the loss of a customer. 

Contrarily, a satisfying customer experience will foster customer retention, gaining you a steady stream of repeat purchases and brand loyalty. 

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by Pollfish Marketing Team

Diving Into Retrospective Surveys

Diving Into Retrospective Surveys

While most survey research involves looking into the here and now, there is one type of study that does quite the opposite. Retrospective surveys entail examining past events to see how they relate to outcomes (a study of interest) discovered at the beginning of a study. 

Used in retrospective research, these surveys unlock many valuable insights that businesses can use to strengthen their marketing efforts and to better understand their target market.

That is because this study is not limited to medicine and psychology. This article will take a dive into retrospective studies and their accompanying surveys to make their purpose lucid in the business world.

Defining Retrospective Surveys

To put it in simple terms, in a retrospective study, researchers gather data on occurrences that have already happened. This places a retrospective study in opposition to a prospective study, in which researchers choose a survey panel or survey respondents from an online survey tool and follow the subjects over a period of time.

Also called historical research, a retrospective study inspects the historical data of a group of people. It falls under cohort studies, which are observational studies that determine how often a phenomenon occurs within a targeted population.

The purpose of a retrospective study is to discover how certain events and mindsets have unfolded or how they developed. It also looks at links and causes between studied events or phenomena. In the case of business, consider the following example:

A group of customers does not wish to make any online purchases. Their aversion comes in spite of the fact that they have internet access and a tendency to frequent the online space. A retrospective study would therefore inspect past events to learn about the factors that contributed to the consumers’ reluctance to shop online. 

In this, the study and therefore the retrospective surveys, seek to find the links between experiences and unwillingness to shop online. They would also uncover when these phenomena began.

The Two Types of Retrospective Studies

There are two main types of retrospective surveys. They can be used in tandem as part of the broader retrospective study. 

  1. Retrospective cohort study: This kind of study would seek to compare the risk of developing a certain outcome to some already known exposure factors. In retrospective cohort studies, the exposure and outcomes have already occurred. The studies are conducted on research already in existence.  The exposures are defined before looking at the outcome data to see if exposure to a factor is associated with a significant disparity in the outcome development rate.
  2. Case-control study: This seeks to determine the possible exposure factors after a known incidence. Most case-control studies are retrospective, but some can be prospective. They define two groups at the onset of the study. These include both the one with the outcome and one without the outcome. They look to the past to find if there is a statistically crucial difference in the exposure rates of a risk factor between the two groups. 

Using Retrospective Surveys with Cross-Sectional & Longitudinal Surveys

Retrospective surveys are not standalone surveys; they are usually conducted as part of a larger cross-sectional or longitudinal study. 

In a cross-sectional study, research is gathered to find prevalence, which is the number of cases in a studied group at a specific point in time. Although cross-sectional and retrospective studies form their own survey methods, they share some common ground. This is mainly due to surveys, in that a retrospective survey, like a cross-sectional survey, can be conducted just once to find historical information.

Retrospective studies can be used with longitudinal studies, which study trajectories and changes over a period of time. Called retrospective longitudinal studies, this kind of research studies a sampling pool over a period of time — the time period involves data that was previously collected. As such, no data from the present and onwards is collected, as it is in longitudinal studies. 

Examples of Retrospective Surveys

The following includes a few examples of retrospective studies. Surveys can be applied to all cases as part of the research process.

  • A group of investigators study the records of factory workers from two decades ago. Their studies include retrospective surveys that question these workers’ health, well-being and exposure to a certain radiation, including its source of emanation. This would unearth whether there is a link between exposure to the radiation and certain health detriments.

 

  • A researcher who wishes to learn about the origins of stomach cancer will interview a cohort of people who already have the disease. The study will involve asking the group about their medical history, lifestyle choices, family health history and habits to find the causes of the disease. The people with certain lifestyles may be compared with those of contrasting ones.

 

  • A business owner seeks to discover why a segment of their target market is only interested in one offering of the company. This segment may be filled with loyal customers who predominantly shop from this business. As such, the business owner can conduct an investigation into past shopping experiences, purchases, habits, diversions and interests of the target subjects in the study. The business owner can then use those findings to see which and if any changes in certain aspects of life have contributed to this disinterest of offerings and if it can be changed. 

The Pros and Cons of Retrospective Studies

Retrospective studies are useful for finding the what, when, where and how. They are thus used to find causal relationships between variables as well. Aside from their utility, these studies, along with their respective surveys have some drawbacks

The Pros

  1. These studies offer many insights: surveillance, evaluation, causation and impact of different variables within subjects.
  2. Looking at factors before the onset of a disease/occurrence can help assess the effects of rare or unusual factors, as researchers can identify a number of subjects who have them.
  3. These surveys can help determine if prospective studies are necessary to later carry out.
  4. They are among the fastest studies to conduct, along with cross-sectional studies.
  5. They are inexpensive, especially when compared to long-term longitudinal studies.
  6. Traditionally used in medicine and psychology, they also offer a creative way to understand the mindset and behaviors of consumers.
  7. There is no risk of loss of follow-up.

The Cons

  1. They are prone to recall bias, an incorrect remembrance which skews the accuracy of the study’s results.
  2. They are prone to misclassification bias, a systematic error that can crop up when a subject is assigned to a wrong category of identification. 
  3. There is less evidence than that which exists from prospective studies. 
  4. Since controls are usually recruited via convenience sampling, they don’t represent the general population.
  5. Time-related relationships may be difficult to evaluate.

The Utilitarian Nature of Retrospective Surveys

Although they are fast and relatively inexpensive, these studies can be difficult to conduct for a number of reasons. But their disadvantages shouldn't sway you from charting these market research waters. 

That is because you can avoid errors with surveys. Online surveys in particular grant you fast access to the behaviors and minds of your target market or subject of interest. For example, to weed out misclassification, you can conduct further surveys into your target market segments to better understand which kind of respondents fall under which categories.

All in all, you can take part in this kind of research due to the ever-utilitarian nature of online surveys. 

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by Pollfish Marketing Team

Diving Into the Product Satisfaction Survey

Diving Into the Product Satisfaction Survey

Diving Into the Product Satisfaction Survey

With the advent of online survey platforms, delivering a product satisfaction survey into the hands of your customers has never been easier. A product satisfaction survey provides insights that can help ensure the success of your product. Whether you need to measure the general opinions towards your product, its successes, ease or difficulty of use, points of friction, etc., conducting survey research will empower your business. 

Product surveys are thus an essential part of your business upkeep. Routine use of product satisfaction surveys will help you create products that your customers will love and enthusiastically recommend to others. 

This article will help you understand what you can achieve through a product satisfaction survey and present several  tips on how to use the data that you amassed.

Defining Product Satisfaction 

At its most basic level, a product satisfaction survey is used to measure how satisfied customers are with your product. This type of survey provides valuable information about how your product is used and how it can be improved. 

Product satisfaction differs from customer satisfaction because it seeks to measure satisfaction with the product itself, rather than the entire customer experience While this type of survey focuses primarily on the product itself, you may also examine how your shopping, support, and return experiences affect your overall product satisfaction.

A product satisfaction survey provides candid feedback about the product, while also helping a company understand any discrepancy between the product and customer satisfaction, the latter of which you can determine with customer satisfaction surveys. 

Insights Gained in a Product Satisfaction Survey

By focusing the questions on the product itself, a company can learn a great deal about how customers interact with a product. You may consider conducting a product satisfaction survey to:

  1. Glean insights into the user experience (UX) of your product.
  2. Understand what customers like and dislike about your product.
  3. See how your product compares to your competitors’ products.
  4. Discover how customers use your product.
  5. Decide how to improve the product.
  6. Identify features that are lacking or extraneous. 
  7. Measure the useful lifespan of your product.
  8. Learn what factors lead customers to return your product. 
  9. Understand how the product purchase experience affects overall feelings about the product.
  10. Determine how much customer support is needed to use the product.
  11. Gain insights during prototyping and product development to drive key decisions.
  12. Choose how to market your product to certain market segments.

Questions to Ask to Measure Product Satisfaction

When conducting a product satisfaction survey, you need to understand more than just how satisfied the customer is with your product. It is important to understand how demographics, product features, customer experience, and product retention affect your customers’ overall satisfaction with your product.

You can benefit from using a combination of long and short survey formats. For example, if you want to understand how customer satisfaction changes over time or during a product development cycle, deploying short surveys to anyone who purchased the product will yield a large number of responses. 

For short surveys, the most important questions are:

  • How satisfied are you with this product?
  • How likely are you to recommend this product to a friend? (Also referred to as Net Promoter Score)
  • Does the product fulfill the purpose for which you bought it?
  • If you could change any part of the product, what would it be?
  • Did you experience any problems when using this product?

A short survey can provide quick insights, but a longer survey will provide data that can help shape the future of your product. Below we outline the categories of questions that you should consider including in a more comprehensive product satisfaction survey. 

Customer Demographics

During data analysis, you will want to segment and cross-tabulate your data to understand how product satisfaction correlates with various demographic data. Types of information to gather in your product satisfaction survey are:

  1. Customer age and gender
  2. Race and ethnicity
  3. Education level
  4. Employment status
  5. Salary range
  6. Employment type
  7. Organization type
  8. Geographic location
  9. Domestic relationship status
  10. Number of children

Product Satisfaction

Next, you will want to understand the overall satisfaction with your product. You should include questions that cover all or some of the following topics: 

  1. Overall, how satisfied are the customers with your product (The CSAT format is typically used, measuring customer satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10)
  2. How likely your customer is to recommend the product to a friend 
  3. How your product compares to competitors’ products
  4. How likely your customer is to purchase the product again
  5. How easy is it is to use the product

Product Features

This section of the survey is the most useful in terms of understanding how to improve or develop your product further. By understanding how existing customers are using your product, you can make informed decisions about the features to include (or remove) in subsequent iterations. 

In this section, you can benefit from asking a mix of multiple-choice/scaled and open-ended questions to maximize insights.  When using multiple-choice questions, consider “piping” response text from a previous question to personalize the survey and gather deeper data.

Your questions should cover the following aspects:

  1. Why and when the product is used
  2. How often the product is used
  3. Which features are used most frequently 
  4. Which features are missing
  5. What can be changed or improved about your product

Company experience

While the focus of the product satisfaction survey is on the product itself, it is important to understand how the customer’s experience with your company may negatively or positively affect their feelings about your product. Include questions about the following:

  1. The purchase experience 
  2. Shipping, processing and returns
  3. Whether customer service or support was needed
  4. How well support teams managed the customer’s issue

Product Retention 

A final aspect to consider is whether or not your customers tend to keep or return the product and how long it was useful to them. You may wish to include these questions with your product satisfaction survey to help cross-tabulate the data or use them as pre-screening criteria.

  1. What percentage of customers kept the product vs. returned it
  2. What are the reasons for returning the product
  3. The amount of time the product was used before it was discarded or no longer useful to the customer

How to Analyze Product Satisfaction Data

Once the results are in, it is time to start the process of survey data analysis. We’ll provide a brief overview of the data analysis process here. For further information, we encourage you to read our guide, How to Analyze Survey Data Like a Pro. 

Survey data analysis is the process of organizing, reviewing, and drawing conclusions from your survey data. When it comes to a product satisfaction survey, you should follow these general steps:

  • Review the purpose of your survey. You will have a lot of data to sift through, but staying focused on the data that will help answer your key questions will ensure that you answer your top questions. 
  • Review, filter, and use crosstabs. Review the data and think about how you will organize it. For example, you may wish to review all scale and multiple-choice questions first and save the open-ended responses for the end. You should use crosstabs reports to dive deeper into your data and understand how satisfaction levels vary between segments. 
  • Interrogate your data. Before drawing conclusions, take the time to examine your data for irregularities. Try to identify instances of sampling bias and ensure that your results are statistically significant before drawing any firm conclusions. 
  • Draw conclusions and create a plan for improvement. Based on the results of your survey, you can draw certain conclusions about your product. Once you have a deeper understanding of how satisfied your customers are with your product, you can create a plan to improve your product and/or the customer experience that surrounds it.

Investing in a Product Satisfaction Survey

While product satisfaction surveys are undoubtedly valuable in gauging satisfaction with an existing product, another important application of these surveys is during the product development cycle. 

If you are developing a new product or considering how to innovate an existing one, product satisfaction surveys deployed during development allow you to test new features and validate decisions. 

Product surveys are a relatively low cost and low effort research method, yet they are capable of yielding rich insights about your product. The results can be used to ensure your product will remain relevant in a competitive marketplace, thereby ensuring the success of your company. 

Given all this, it should not be difficult to convince stakeholders to invest in a product satisfaction survey. 

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by Pollfish Marketing Team

All About Panel Surveys: Using this Method for Market Research

All About Panel Surveys: Using this Method for Market Research

Panel surveys (not to be confused with survey panels) are used in survey research as part of longitudinal studies. The purpose of this kind of study is to reap continual observations on different variables on the same sample pool over a period of time. 

The variables include consumer feelings, attitudes and opinions regarding a number of matters. As such, the surveys are conducted across the same sample pool, i.e., the survey panel.

This way, the opinions of the same panelists can be monitored, as opposed to bringing in new respondents (even if they are part of the same target market). Panel surveys are conducted in waves (sequences of surveys) to measure changes in consumer thoughts and behaviors. 

There are many key aspects of panel surveys; this article will cover all of them to help you decide on whether your business needs to use the panel survey method.

How Panel Surveys are Conducted

First off, panel surveys are but one type of longitudinal studies, which also include retrospective studies and record linkages.

As their name indicates, panel surveys use surveying as the data collection method. This data is mainly collected through the aforementioned survey panels, a method in which a pre-recruited pool of respondents agreed to take part in your survey.

However, panel surveys can also be collected through other online survey methods, mainly DIY survey platforms. These allow you to target a specific set of respondents, but unlike survey panels, they are not conducted among the same exact group of individuals. (More on this below).

Since panel surveys are longitudinal, this sampling pool stays the same and is used for repeated studies and observations.

Panel surveys are part of panel research and can take the form of either qualitative or quantitative studies for measuring consumer behavior. 

The Pros of Panel Surveys

It’s worth considering several of the advantages that panel surveys carry when considering this surveying method. You ought to then weigh them against the disadvantages to determine if this is the correct survey route for your market research needs.

  1. Easy Collection of the Sampling Pool: Whether you intend to use an online survey platform or a survey panel, panel surveys make it easy to use a qualified sampling pool. That is because there is no need to look for respondents on an individual basis; instead, you either opt for recruited participants, or the online survey platform you use prescreens respondents for qualification.

  2. Longitudinal Benefits: As it follows the longitudinal survey method, panel surveys allow you to truly access the psyche of your target market. This is because consumers and the general public can change their minds — some more regularly than others. By conducting this survey research, you can stay up to date with any and all changes in attitude, thoughts and behaviors your target market undergoes.
  3. Speed to Insights: Online survey tools allow you to quickly garner all the respondents that match your screening requirements and demographics selections. A survey panel entails that respondents have already opted into the survey. In any case, getting results will be quick.
  4. Optimized Design: Whether you use an online survey panel or organic random sampling via a survey platform, each allows you to create customized questionnaires. The degree of this will change from one survey platform to the next, but the convenience of optimizing your survey to your favor is still present.
  5. Affordability: Panel surveys are relatively affordable. With online survey panels, you should be wise about how you incentivize your panel — this can be done by paying the panelists small amounts per each survey they take, or a larger sum for a set amount of surveys. A decent online survey tool should include several payment plans, with at least one perfect for your budget. 

The Cons of Panel Surveys

While an invaluable form of primary research, panel surveys are not without setbacks. Here are a few of the disadvantages these surveys harbor. Some may appear minor, while others are more considerable.

    1. Panel Fatigue: Predominantly found in survey panels, this occurrence refers to the reduction of interest among the panelist(s) when they take part in too many survey waves. This breeds full-fledged boredom and exhaustion, leading to a decline in the quality of data. In this case, panelists may take part in flat-lining or other inaccurate answer tactics. There are 5 types of survey respondents like these to look out for. 

    2. Limited Internet Traffic: A problem principally found in online survey tools, as they are under the heel of the publisher sites and apps that deploy the surveys. There may not be enough qualifying respondents in one site or app, depending on who visits it during survey distribution.
    3. Survey Attrition: Piggybacking off of panel fatigue as the most severe case of it, survey attrition alludes to the dropping out of a panel. Panelists may experience a negative UX with the panel, thereby attriting at any wave of the study. These respondents are especially difficult to replace in survey panels, as they’ve already provided some crucial data, so there will be a void when it comes to conducting further surveys based on their responses. Some panelists do not drop out permanently, as they may return to the panel at some later time. With online surveys, this is relatively non-existent, as new responders are screened in each survey wave.
    4. Inclination towards Bias: Particular to survey panels, this occurs when panel respondents have taken too many surveys, thus becoming programmed to the way your surveys are set up. As such, they become less like genuine research subjects and more like trained survey-taking professionals. They may not put forth too much effort or thought into further survey waves because of this; rather they will clamber to get out of a survey as soon as possible.
    5. Respondent Identity Fraud: Especially common in online survey tools where you cannot validate the identity of your sampling pool, this can lead to respondent fraud. Respondents may lie about their age, employment and any other type of demographic identifier. Your data will suffer as a result. Survey panels may be immune to this if you choose your panel via face-to-face interviews, or if you know any member of the panel.

Panel Surveys: Uses and Applications

Panel surveys have various applications that you can put to use for your brand. Whether you’re looking to innovate an existing product, develop a new one, understand how your target market responds to current affairs, how they respond to certain communications or virtually anything else you need data for, panel surveys are useful ind=struments to leverage. 

Here are several specific uses and applications for these kinds of surveys.

  1. Detect common customer behaviors in relation to purchasing, clicking on an ad, or interacting with your brand in any other way (digital or physical).
  2. Analyze the costs of a product, service or subscription.
  3. Predict sales for particular campaigns and seasons.

  4. Understand how to use current affairs in brand messaging (including the knowledge of which subjects and rhetoric may be too sensitive for your target market).
  5. Monitor trends in how customers buy from brands.
  6. Find how recent and distant events have affected the attitude and opinions of your target market.
  7. Segmenting your target market. 

Marrying Survey Panels and Organic Sampling 

Closing off, it is crucial to reiterate that one of the key differentiators of panel surveys is their ability to incorporate two different types of survey respondent collection methods: survey panels and organic sampling (in online survey tools).

These fall into diametric opposition with one another, as the former involves recruiting willing survey respondents (the panel), while the latter uses organic sampling, in which respondents opt into a survey in real-time when they discover it in a website or app.

Although survey panels are the chief method to conduct panel surveys, due to the repeated nature of observation, both of these survey methods have the ability to sustain the longitudinal study method of panel surveys. 

Survey panels are the primary collection method of responses, as panel surveys and other longitudinal studies involve studying the same group of respondents. 

Survey panels do just that. However, survey tools that use organic sampling, can also study the same group based on their demographics and conditioned screening questions. The only difference is that the responders in organic sampling won’t be the exact same people, but rather those who fit the categories.

Either way these two methods can both be applied or even used hand in hand. We suggest using a robust online software tool that provides a wide range of features to optimize your survey research. 

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by Pollfish Marketing Team

Diving into the Employee Feedback Survey

Diving into the Employee Feedback Survey

Whether you have five employees or 5,000, the employee feedback survey is an excellent source of collecting employee sentiment that allows you to improve business operations and employee retention in turn. 

Feedback surveys provide employees with an anonymous way to share their concerns without fear of reprisal. In this format, a business can expect much more honest feedback that can drive meaningful change in the company.

Unfortunately, many employee feedback surveys fail because they do not ask the right questions or suffer from a low response rate. This guide will help you understand why these surveys matter and how you can make the most out of your next survey. 

Employee Feedback Survey Overview

An employee feedback survey entails capturing feedback from existing employees in a survey format. This type of survey is also referred to as an employee engagement or employee opinion survey. 

In general, employee feedback surveys seek to understand the level of job satisfaction, fulfillment and overall happiness that employees feel. Employee feedback surveys are conducted to understand employees’ holistic feelings toward a company or those pertaining to their team or department. 

The results of an employee feedback survey are then used to help drive company action by improving companywide aspects such as management styles, HR methodologies, employee relations and interactions with clients.

There are many reasons why a company may choose to conduct an employee feedback survey. Some of the main motivations include: 

  • Understanding current pain points
  • Measuring overall job satisfaction
  • Gaining insight into successful management styles 
  • Learning which HR incentives are most appreciated by employees
  • Improving processes for hiring and onboarding new employees
  • Demonstrating to employees that the company is interested and invested in improving their experience 
  • Giving employees the opportunity to reflect and volunteer ways to improve their role or the company
  • Improving the general satisfaction employees feel with their work and work environment

Benefits of Employee Feedback Surveys

Companies of all sizes can benefit from conducting an employee feedback survey and acting on the insights uncovered during the analysis process. Benefits companies may experience include:

  • Better performance: your team may feel more motivated to perform when they are given the opportunity to provide employee feedback. 
  • Eliminating any discomfort employees feel about raising their concerns on employment particulars.
  • Detecting problems before they occur.
  • An improved and streamlined communication between management and employees.
  • Helping employees feel they belong and have a sense of purpose within the business.
  • Boosting employee retention rates.
  • Attracting prospective employees who want to be part of a culture where their voice is heard.

Additionally, there are added benefits of administering surveys on a more regular basis. The benefits of more frequent employee feedback surveys include:

  • Having a system of benchmarks to understand how employee satisfaction changes over time.
  • Identifying changes in HR or operation procedures that have positively or negatively impacted employees.
  • Giving employees more frequent opportunities to voice their concerns.

How to Conduct an Employee Feedback Survey

Employee feedback surveys are relatively easy to conduct and follow a similar process to other survey types. 

  • Understand the purpose of your survey and write down your goals. Before you begin  to pen your questions, explore your motivations for conducting an employee feedback survey. Then write down what you hope to accomplish or learn by the end of your survey.
  • Identify your target audience. Determine if you will distribute your survey to the entire company or to smaller segments. Your target audience will influence the questions in your survey. 
  • Organize and plan your survey(s). Depending on the purpose of your survey and the target audience(s) you identify, you may need to create more than one survey. For example, if you are creating a survey for a large company with several offices, you may want to create individual surveys for each office or for each team within the offices. The questions that you ask managers are also likely to differ from those that you will ask team members.
  • Create your questions and design your survey. With the purpose and audience of your survey in mind, create questions that will provide the data you need to drive change. The design of your survey matters too;  consider using a professional survey platform to make the process easier for the employees and, thereby, improve your survey response rate. 
  • Distribute your survey. Before sending the survey out, it is a good idea to explain to your employees why you are conducting the survey. This should encourage employees to take the time to complete the survey and provide thoughtful answers.
  • Perform survey data analysis. Once the responses are in, you will need to collate, organize, and analyze the responses in order to draw conclusions for your business. We encourage you to read our in-depth article about survey data analysis to learn more about this process. 
  • Put the insights into action. With the analysis complete, you should be able to draw some conclusions and put them into action. Circle back with your employees and share the results of the survey and explain how you will use these insights to improve the company. 

Questions to Include in Employee Feedback Surveys

By asking the right questions, you are more likely to get insightful responses that can help drive positive and impactful change in your organization. 

The wording of your questions is important. In order to get helpful responses, be sure to ask questions that require specific responses. Don’t try to kill two birds with one stone; keep questions focused on one topic at a time. 

To help get you started, we have compiled a list of questions covering some of the topics you may wish to include in your next employee feedback survey. 

Overall Job Satisfaction

  1. Have you considered looking for another job within the past three months? If yes, please explain why.
  2. What’s the one thing you would change about your job?
  3. On a scale of 1 - 10, how happy are you with your job?
  4. Are you happy with your work-life balance?
  5. Would you refer a friend or colleague to work at this company? If no, please explain why not.

Relationship with Management

  1. On a scale of 1 - 10, how would you rate your manager’s performance?
  2. Are you happy with the level of communication between senior management and the team?
  3. Do you know where to turn for help when you have a problem or challenge?
  4. Do you feel recognized for the work you do?

Performance and Motivation

  1. On a scale of 1 - 10, how challenging do you find your job?
  2. What is the most challenging aspect of your job?
  3. Do you feel inspired to do your best work?

Boost Your Business with the Employee Feedback Surveys

Employee turnover is expensive. Not only is it expensive and time-consuming to hire and train new employees, but companies with a higher turnover rate will experience lower overall profits. 

An employee feedback survey is an incredibly valuable tool that can help keep your employees engaged with your business. By investing in your people and understanding their true feelings about their role in your company, you can ensure the success of your business for years to come.

The simple act of conducting the employee feedback survey alone can help boost morale within your team. Add the free insights you’ll get from your employees, and it makes conducting an employee feedback survey a no-brainer. 

A professional survey platform can make it even easier to distribute your survey to a vast network of online users and assure that your survey collects the exact number of responses that you need. There is nothing holding you back from getting started today!

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by Pollfish Marketing Team

The Business Survey Question Guide

The Business Survey Question Guide

Well-designed business survey questions can reveal deep insights about your company, product, or service. Business surveys can help you focus your research so you can make smart growth decisions.

A good business survey can support unparalleled growth. Any business owner who wants to improve or grow their business can benefit from conducting regular business surveys. 

In order to gain actionable insights, however, you need to ask the right questions. This guide explains how to create the right business survey questions for your target market, the kinds that will elicit valuable responses. 

What is a Business Survey? 

When conducting any type of business survey, your goal is to gather information and insights that will help you understand and improve specific aspects of your business. The questions that you include will depend upon your motivations for conducting the survey. 

Business surveys are used in a variety of ways. They are frequently used to understand how well your company is meeting the needs of your target market.  You may use them to better understand your existing market or explore new ones. A business survey is also used to understand company operations and/or employee satisfaction in order to improve processes. 

By asking the right questions, you can gather specific insights that can help you grow your company. We’ll dive into the different types of surveys and provide you with sample business survey questions to help you create your own business survey. 

Customer Satisfaction Survey

One of the most common types of business surveys, customer satisfaction surveys seek to measure how satisfied your customers are with your product, services, or company as a whole. We will cover the four primary types of customer satisfaction surveys here.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

The Customer Satisfaction Score survey assesses customer satisfaction with your company, product, or service. The survey contains a small number of questions that directly relate to the customer's experience. The responses on a CSAT survey are done on a scale, typically, 1 - 5 or 1 -10.

Examples of CSAT questions include:

  1. How satisfied are you with your purchase of [product name]?
  2. How satisfied were you with our checkout process?
  3. How satisfied were you with your recent experience with our support team?

Net Promoter Score Survey (NPS)

The purpose of a net promoter score survey is to determine how likely it is that existing customers will recommend your company, product, or service to a friend. Much like the CSAT, this type of survey is also scale based, but there is only one scale (1-10). A positive NPS score is a good indication of how satisfied your customers are with your company. 

Sample questions include:

  1. On a scale of 1-10, how likely would you be to recommend [product name] to a friend?
  2. On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend [company name] to a friend or colleague? 

Customer Effort Score Survey (CES)

Using the Customer Effort Score (CES), this metric-based survey measures how much effort is required for a customer to use your product or interact with your company (e.g. with a help desk or sales rep). These questions use a 5-point scale to determine the effort score.

Examples of CES questions are:

  1. Overall, how easy was it to solve your problem with [company name] today? 
  2. How easy was it to [state action here]? 

Visual Rating Surveys

This type of survey uses emojis (e.g. hearts, starts, emojis) to quickly gauge customer feedback during or after an experience with your company.

Some examples include:

  1. How would you rate your experience with our customer service team today? (Happy face / neutral face / sad face)
  2. How happy are you with your recent purchase of [product name]? (User is able to select any number of the 5 stars displayed)

Market Research Survey

Often included in market research, market research surveys are conducted in order to better understand the market for your product or service. You may conduct a market research survey in order to plan an effective marketing campaign, determine viability for a new product or feature, or identify new customer segments. 

The purpose of your survey will influence the type of questions you want to include. It is important to include demographic questions in your survey to help you better understand the market.

Example of market research questions include:

  1. Where do you live? 
  2. How old are you? 
  3. How long have you been using [product name]?
  4. Would you recommend [product name] to a friend?
  5. How much money do you usually spend on [product category]?
  6. What is your least favorite thing about [product name]?

Employee Satisfaction Survey

An employee satisfaction survey is an excellent source of information for improving both employee retention and business operations. If you deploy this survey to the entire company, it is important to include demographic information to help draw more accurate conclusions. 

Example questions include:

  1. On a scale of 1 - 10, how happy are you with your work-life balance?
  2. Do you feel that your role and responsibilities are well-defined?
  3. Have you thought about looking for a new job in the past 6 months? 
  4. What reasons would you have for looking for a new job?
  5. Do you feel that your workload is reasonable?
  6. On a scale of 1 - 10, how supportive is your manager when you have a problem?
  7. Do you feel comfortable discussing a problem or issue with your manager?
  8. What is the most challenging part of your job?
  9. Do you feel appreciated for the work you do?
  10. If you could change one thing about your job, what would it be?

Brand Awareness Survey

You can conduct a brand awareness survey to measure the recognition and awareness of your brand amongst your target audience or consumers in general. Brand awareness surveys can help you plan effective marketing campaigns and identify new sectors for growth.

Questions to include in this type of survey are:

  1. Which of the following brands have you used?
  2. Which of the following brands have you heard about?
  3. Do you currently use [product category]?
  4. When is the last time you used [product category]?
  5. Have you heard of [company/product name] before?
  6. How likely are you to switch to [competitor brand] should they offer cheaper prices?
  7. Which brands would you use for [a need, an industry practice or service]?
  8. How was your experience with our [company/product]?
  9. Of the following brands, please select the one that you feel is the best.
  10. How likely are you to recommend [company name] to a friend?

Product Satisfaction Survey

The product satisfaction survey focuses on how satisfied your customers are with your product. The questions should be designed to help you gauge overall satisfaction, see how your product measures up to its competition, and understand how you can improve your product.

Examples of product satisfaction survey question include:

  1. How long have you used [product name]?
  2. How long have you been using our product?
  3. How frequently do you use [product name}?
  4. How happy are you with [product name]?
  5. On a scale of 1-10, how well does [product name] meet your needs?
  6. What is your favorite thing about our product?
  7. What do you dislike about our product?
  8. How likely are you to recommend [product name] to a friend?
  9. Which of the following features do you use?
  10. What would you improve about our product?

Best Practices for Creating Business Survey Questions

We hope that these business survey questions will inspire you to create your own business survey to gain new insights about your target market, for various businesses needs. In order to leverage these questions to uncover valuable insights, we will leave you with some best practices for creating survey questions:

  • Before creating your questions, determine and write down the purpose of your survey. Each question should support the survey’s purpose. 
  • A short, focused survey will achieve a higher response rate. You may get better results by deploying several short surveys, rather than trying to get all the answers from one, long survey.
  • Ensure that each survey question is clear and well-written so respondents do not spend unnecessary time trying to understand the question.
  • Make sure your question responses are appropriate for the question type. 

Make an Impact with the Right Business Survey Questions

Business surveys are a cost-effective tool that businesses can utilize to improve the customer experience (CX), streamline internal processes, and increase profitability. The advent of professional online survey platforms has encouraged many businesses to conduct surveys on a routine basis to establish benchmarks and monitor improvement. 

While these tools make it easy to deploy surveys, they will not provide the answers you need unless you take the time to create thoughtful business survey questions. Each question must relate back to your survey’s purpose in order to focus your findings.

When you start by creating a business survey with the right kind of questions, you can expect your survey to reveal deep insights that will have a positive impact on your business. 

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by Pollfish Marketing Team

Diving Into the Net Promoter Score (NPS) Survey

Diving Into the Net Promoter Score (NPS) Survey

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey is one of the most prominent customer satisfaction surveys. Based on its eponymous score, this survey measures one of the most critical aspects of customer satisfaction: loyalty.

While brand awareness and product / experience satisfaction are invaluable for any business, loyalty is the only guaranteeing factor that assures your customers will return to your brand for future purchases. As a matter of fact, 43% of customers spend more on a brand that they’re loyal to. 

Brands should thus keep track of their NPS score, as it is one of the top indicators of customer loyalty. The best way to do so is by running NPS surveys. This article will take a deep dive into this survey type and guide you on several best practices.  

Defining the Net Promoter Score

As its name indicates, the Net Promoter Score survey is a survey based on its titular Net Promoter Score. The score is a key customer satisfaction metric, as it reveals how likely a customer is to recommend a product or company to a friend or colleague. 

The score is derived by asking just one question, known as the Ultimate Question in relation to the above. The responder answers the question using a scale of 0-10. 0-6 is the low end of the scale, denoting negative sentiment towards the brand and thus a low chance of receiving a customer’s recommendation. 

Conversely, 9-10 is the higher end of the scale, signifying a high chance of customer satisfaction and recommendation of the company. 7-8, although they appear on the higher end, are known to be the mid-range.

This scale is only one aspect of the NPS, as it requires using respondents’ combined answers to find the score in a particular study. Thus, an NPS survey is the vehicle used in obtaining and enriching this score. 

Let’s observe the nuances of the NPS score and how to calculate it.

How to Calculate the NPS and its Numerical Significance

Delving into the specifics of this score, you’ll find that the numbers represent more than just the “not likely” and “extremely likely” points of view. 

On the contrary, the NPS score designates several types of customers based on their answers: the detractors, the passives and the promoters.

It also requires a calculation, as the respondents’ answer itself does not represent the final score. First, you’ll need to know the customer classification in the NPS, which is based on the answers the respondents give. Here is the numerical significance for each answer range:


  • 0-6: The Detractors: The most unlikely group to recommend your company or product.
  1. Unlikely to stay on your website for long or make repeat purchases
    Tend to be naysayers, which means they can intentionally discourage other customers from buying from your brand.
  2. Can spread negative opinions about your brand on social media, forums or word of mouth.
  • 7-8: The Passives: The somewhat satisfied group of customers susceptible to buying from your competitors.
  1. Won’t actively recommend your brand, yet aren’t likely to harm it with negative feedback. 
  2. Not used in the NPS calculation.
  3. Close to being promoters (especially if they respond with an 8)
  4. Opportune for brands to study and nurture this group, as they are the easiest to convert to promoters.
  • 9-10: The Promoters: The most loyal customers who make continuous purchases from your brand and refer others to it.
  1. Most likely to act as brand ambassadors and augment your brand’s reputation. 
  2. Most responsible for a company's growth.
  3. Increase referrals, thereby increasing brand awareness.

You will need to understand these to calculate the Net Promoter Score. Here is how to do so:

  • Subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters. 
  • For example, if 15% of respondents are Detractors, 20% are Passives and 60% are Promoters, your NPS score would be 60-15 = 45.
  • The NPS= 45, as it is always represented as a digit, not a percentage.
  • A higher NPS score points to a larger amount of promoters, which is most ideal.

The NPS Survey Measures & Correlates with Growth

A Net Promoter Score survey puts the score to greater use by providing it with context. As such, this type of survey does not merely ask the Ultimate Question; it can ask more for a more lucid context. 

This is to say that despite the NPS being the bulk of an NPS survey, it is just that: a part of it but not its entirety. This survey is capable of not only measuring growth but it has proven to correlate with it.

According to Bain & Company, which devised the Net Promoter System, the score can determine growth. Bain conducted a study on the correlation between the NPS and organic growth, measuring this score among business competitors in different industries

Bain concluded that the NPS correlated with 20%-60% of organic growth among these competitors. What’s more is that Net Promoter Score leaders went on to outgrow their competitors by more than twice.

This proves the urgency of tracking one’s NPS and a Net Promoter Score survey helps do just that. This score will enlighten your business on how to improve on several fronts. To understand how you must understand the other questions and facets of an NPS survey.

The Components of an NPS Survey & How they Provide Key Insights 

Aside from asking the Ultimate Question, there are a few other capabilities you can configure to fortify your customer satisfaction measurement. These will provide much more context than a number (the NPS) can alone.

Here are some other ways your business can benefit from a Net Promoter Score survey based on its components.

  1. You can set up the NPS survey to measure virtually anything instead of simply obtaining a general NPS for your brand. You can use it measure:
    1. Products
    2. Interactions with representatives 
    3. UX
    4. Brick and mortar stores & more
  1. If looking for insight into something specific, you can implement the NPS survey in various parts of the customer journey, such as:
    1. The homepage
    2. A landing page
    3. A product page
    4. At checkout
    5. Post checkout/purchase
  2. You can perform market segmentation by using demographics as part of your survey. This will help you create groupings of respondent answers based on their demography. You can thus make educated deductions on how your NPS answers correlate with different demographics.
  3. The added questions. You can use the survey to extract key contextual information that a score alone wouldn’t grant you, such as:
    1. Finding the exact reason behind a respondent's number. For example:
      1. What are the main reasons for the score you gave us?
      2. What makes you feel this way?
    2. Improving customer and user experience. For example:
      1. What can Pollfish do to improve your experience?
      2. How can we improve this product, interaction, etc?
    3. Following up with the respondents to learn more about their concerns on a more granular level. For example:
      1. Can we follow up with you about your responses?
      2. Can we follow up with you to see how we can improve your experience?

Transactional vs Relational NPS Surveys

Now that we’ve established and elucidated the utility and importance of Net Promoter Score surveys, let’s examine the two main types of NPS surveys. 

These surveys are classified as relational and transactional NPS surveys. They are categorized based on both their frequency and purpose of deployment.

  • Relational NPS Surveys:
    • Deployed periodically, such as every quarter, annually or monthly.
    • Designed to keep regular track of customer sentiment, find patterns and detect changes in attitudes toward your brand overall.
    • Provide “health check-ins” on customers as a way to measure success.
  • Transactional NPS Surveys:
    • Distributed after a customer interacted with your company (ex: post purchases or conversation with a representative).
    • Used to understand customer satisfaction in more depth.
    • Based on specific topics.

The success of your brand depends on using both of these types of surveys to fully comprehend your customer loyalty. If you rely on sending out various transactional NPS surveys, then you ought to adjust your relational surveys to a lesser frequency.

If you rarely deploy transactional surveys, you should dispense more frequent relational surveys. To find the correct balance of using both, examine all of your survey feedback. Look for things you find to be missing and once you do, determine which type of survey these concerns best fall under.

Customer Loyalty and Long-Term Business Success

The main insight you can glean from Net Promoter Score surveys is how loyal your costumes are, and of course, how many customers can damage your reputation. 

Through more detailed questions, you can pinpoint the reasons behind your customers’ satisfaction or dissatisfaction with your company as a whole or a particular component. 

This allows you to innovate better, augment your offerings and fix any bugs (whether it’s with an online experience, a salesperson or any other feature). As mentioned above briefly, one of the benefits of this type of survey is its versatility; it can be used to measure satisfaction with just about anything.

The goal is to use the insights you’ve acquired through this survey to gain loyal customers, the kinds who transcend the notion of “customer,” by becoming brand evangelists.

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by Pollfish Marketing Team

How to Use the New Carry Forward Feature for an Enhanced Survey Experience

How to Use the New Carry Forward Feature for an Enhanced Survey Experience

As the heart of any survey, the questionnaire must be contrived carefully so that you receive the responses most necessary for your survey research. Creating the questions themselves can be difficult, especially if you choose to create question paths. 

Pollfish is thus thrilled to present a new feature to make building the questions a much easier task: Carry Forward. This new attribute provides advanced piping capabilities to optimize your questionnaire experience. 

The Purpose of the Carry Forward Feature

As a refresher, piping is a functionality that allows users to place, aka, “pipe,” a part of a question or answer into a subsequent question or answer. 

In the Pollfish platform, piping works by taking the answer(s) from the sender question and inserting them to the receiver question. 

In the first piping iteration, researchers were able to funnel answer choices from one question to another based on respondents’ selections. The following question would carry forward answers from previously piped answers. 

The new Carry Forward feature carries (no pun intended) the function of enriching the question-building experience, as it allows you to pipe questions on more question and answer types, along with other capabilities.

This new feature helps researchers design specific questions that are more relevant to the respondent’s behavior, and more useful to their research. 

It functions on both selected and unselected answers. It also can be used with:

  • Matrix questions
  • Ranking questions
  • Single selection questions
  • Multiple selection questions

Laying Out the Carry Forward Capabilities

Multiple Selection Questions

Along with carrying forward selected answers, this feature allows researchers to carry forward all the answers that the respondent did not select. 

In the case of a multiple selection question, for example, the feature can carry forward the unselected answers into the receiver question. 

Due to this, when a responder selects all the answers and proceeds, there will be no answer to carry forward, as there are no remaining unselected answers. For this precise reason, the Pollfish platform has developed a validation which exists as a dialogue box. 

This pop-up allows the researcher to know that the Carry Forward feature cannot support this case, as it only works if at least one answer is unselected. This is due to the condition that unselected answers cannot be carried forward if all the answers have been selected.

Advanced Logic

This can be used in tandem with advanced logic, allowing you to augment your survey with multiple layers. 

Enabling advanced logic (ADL) can trigger questions without forwarded answers. For example, when Carry Forward is enabled but a respondent skipped the sender question, the respondent will then be routed to a question without Carry Forward answers

Pollfish has also added front end validation that disables the researchers from proceeding with the previous structure. 

Sender questions with either the “None of the above” or “Other” option must be structured correctly, that is, with multiple selection questions. If these aren’t added to the proper question, there will be pop-up error messages.

Carry Forward Answers that Contain Media

If the Carry Forward answer type is the same or similar to the source (question) type, such as: 

  • single to single, 
  • multiple to multiple, 
  • single to multiple, etc.,

then the platform will carry forward the media files together with the answers.

In other cases, such as different types between sender & receiver questions, there are certain conditions and rules that dictate how Carry Forward will work.

How to maneuver Carry Forward answers which contain media:

  • If the Carry Forward answer type is the same or similar (single, multiple) to the source type ? the media will be carried forward.
  • If the Carry Forward answer type doesn’t support media then:
    • The text will be carried forward if the source answer contains both text and media. 
    • Carry Forward will not be supported if the source answer contains only media. 

How to Add Carry Forward to Your Questionnaire

In order to add the Carry Forward feature, you’ll need to enter the questionnaire portion of the survey first (after completing the audience section). You’ll also need to have your questions and answers in mind. 

You can add Carry Forward when you begin the questionnaire, as you’ll need at least two questions to use this feature, the sender and receiver question. You can also implement it to an existing questionnaire. 

  1. Find the Carry Forward option at the left panel of the questionnaire.
  2. Find a sender and a receiver question you wish to apply the CF feature to. This can be in any order. For example, you can use Question 1 as the sender question and Question 2 as the receiver question. 
  3. Enable this via the receiver question and select “Carry Forward” and then the selected or unselected answers from a previous question (the sender question). 

What Carry Forward Supports Vs. What It Does Not Support

There are certain conditions that need to be met in order to apply the Carry Forward function. There are certain circumstances in which your questions will not be able to implement Carry Forward. 

What it supports:

  1. Carry Forward can be used with single/ multiple/ ranking/ matrix questions when they are designed as receiver questions.
    1. When you carry forward a matrix question, there’s an additional option to narrow the choices based on selected columns, unselected columns, rows for selected columns, rows for unselected columns, and columns for specific rows.
  2. It is supported by single, multiple, open-ended, numeric, ranking, matrix, slider and OE when they are set up as sender questions.
  3. The researcher can carry forward all the questions that the respondent didn’t select. 
  4. There is simultaneous support of advanced logic and Carry Forward.
  5. It supports Order/ Shuffle answers for funneling questions. 

What it doesn’t support:

  1. Carry Forward cannot be used with description questions, Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys and visual ratings surveys.
  2. It does not support screening questions and therefore cannot be used in them.
  3. It does not support the option of “Group and Randomize.”

Note: Closing off, you should know that responses that are carried forward will be treated the same as other answer choices on the results page.

We suggest you preview your survey design before submitting the survey itself. Try it out!

by Pollfish Marketing Team

The Complete Guide to Qualitative Market Research

The Complete Guide to Qualitative Market Research

qualitative market research Qualitative research is one of the most prominent research methods in the ever-increasing research sphere. Running counter to quantitative research, qualitative research encompasses a distinct set of differentiating qualities (no pun intended). These attributes prove that these two methods ought not to be used interchangeably.

So what exactly is qualitative research? At a glance, this type of research method seeks to gather in-depth data about a phenomenon without focusing on numerical data or on quantities.

But there is much more to this kind of study method. Learn holistically about qualitative market research with this complete guide.

What Defines & Makes Up Qualitative Research?

Qualitative research is centered around experiences, ideas and opinions. As such, it does not focus on statistical or quantitative outcomes. Instead, it seeks out an in-depth understanding of an issue, occurrence or phenomenon.

Thus, this research method zeroes in on the “what” and more importantly, the “why” of a research subject. (Unlike quantitative research, which focuses on the “how much”).

Here are some of the applications of qualitative research:

  • Understanding an issue in greater depth

  • Finding the reason behind an occurrence (whether it’s desirable or undesirable)

  • Uncovering trends in target market opinions

  • Forming educated solutions to address customer/studied subject concerns

  • Discovering the causes of certain actions

Qualitative research generally relies on a smaller sample size in order to get a deep read of happenings, causes and motivations. This kind of research method functions through the usage of open-ended and exploratory questions.

Understanding the “why” behind an issue is then used to make decisions on how to resolve the issue or how to improve on an existing productive situation.

Qualitative data must occur in natural environments. This denotes a kind of environment in which participants discuss their opinions at length and at ease, which researchers use to gain deeper knowledge and form inferences around a topic.

Prior to the internet, this kind of research was conducted in-person, but with the advent of the internet and innovations in market research, qualitative data has been collected online. The digital space can also serve as a natural environment.

The Five Main Types of Qualitative Research

Just as with quantitative research, there is not a single approach to conducting qualitative research. On the contrary, there are five main varieties of performing qualitative research. Aside from their methodology, these sub-categories also seek different types of answers and conclusions.

types of qualitative market research

1. Narrative Research

This research is used to form a cohesive story, or narrative, by way of consolidating several events from a small group of people. It involves running in-depth interviews and reading up on documents featuring similar actions as a means of theme-searching.

The point of this is to discover how one narrative is shaped by larger contextual influences. Interviews should be conducted for weeks to months and sometimes even for years. The narrative that the researcher uncovers does not have to be presented in sequential order.

Instead, it should be projected as one with defined themes that attempt to reconcile inconsistent stories. This method can highlight the research study’s ongoing challenges and hardships, which can be used to make any improvements.

2. Ethnographic Research

The most common qualitative research method, ethnography relies on entrenching oneself in various participant environments to extract challenges, goals, themes and cultures.

As the name suggests, it involves taking an ethnographic approach to research, meaning that researchers would experience an environment themselves to draw research. Using this firsthand observation, the researcher would not need to then rely on interviews or surveys.

This approach may seem to be far-fetched where market research is concerned, but it is doable. For example, you’d like to see the effectiveness or frustration that customers face when using your product. Since you can’t follow them home, you can request videos that show them using it. Many big brands have call-outs on their websites (ex: on product pages) for their customers to send in videos of their interactions with the products.

3. Phenomenological Research

This qualitative method entails researchers having to probe a phenomenon or event by bringing lived experiences to light and then interpreting them. In order to achieve this, researchers use several methods in combination.

These include conducting surveys, interviews and utilizing secondary research such as available documents and videos on the studied phenomenon. Additionally, as in ethnographic research, phenomenological research involves visiting places to collect research.

These will help you understand how your participants view your subject of examination. In turn, you will gain insight into the participants’ motivations.

In this research type, you would conduct between 5 and 25 surveys or interviews, then peruse them for themes. Once again, you would scrutinize experiences and sentiment over numerical data.

4. Grounded Theory Research

In contrast to phenomenological research, which seeks to fully form the core of an issue, grounded theory attempts to find explanations (the why) behind an issue. To achieve this, researchers use interviews, surveys and secondary research to form a theory around the issue/occurrence.

The sample of this study tends to be on the larger side, at 20-60 participants. Data extracted from this type of research is interpreted to determine the reasoning behind, for example, heavy usage of or frustration with a product. These types of studies help a business innovate an existing product by getting into the weeds of how it’s used.

5. Action Research

action research

This type of research involves researchers and participants working collaboratively to bring theory to practice. Also called participatory research, collaborative inquiry, emancipatory research and action learning, this method entails the act of “learning by doing.”

This means a group of researchers come together to find and address a problem, resolve it and then study the success of their endeavors. If they underperformed or their outcomes don’t satisfy their expectations, they would then reattempt the process.

In action research, a researcher spends a considerable amount of time on collecting, analyzing, and presenting data in an ongoing, periodic process. This involves researchers coming up with their own surveys and interviews around a subject matter, then presenting their findings to one another to draw conclusions and solutions.

They would put into practice the means to improve a situation and continue measuring their success throughout the process.

Examples of Questions for Qualitative Research

When working within the capacity of any of the above research types, it’s crucial to ask the right questions. Here you’ll find the questions you can use when conducting each of the five types of qualitative research.

Bear in mind that some of these questions will appear to be similar in nature; some are even interchangeable. That is normal, as researchers may search for the same answers, but apply a different approach in their research method.

In any case, all of the below features questions that fit within the larger qualitative research framework.

Learn more about asking insightful market research questions. Here are a few examples of the questions within the five categories:

1. How do people who witnessed domestic violence understand its effects in their own relationships?

    Variable: Views of domestic violence on one’s own relationships

    Demographic: People in relationships, who’ve witnessed domestic violence

    Qualitative Research Type: Narrative

2. What are the lived experiences of working-class Americans between the ages of 20 and 40?

    Variable: Experiences and views of a working-class background

    Demographic: Working-class Americans ages 20-40

    Qualitative Research Type: Narrative

3. How do Asian Americans experience reaching out to address mental health concerns?

    Variable: The experiences in seeking out care for mental health

    Demographic: Asian Americans seeking help for mental health

    Qualitative Research Type: Ethnographic

4. What do you enjoy about this product or service?

    Variable: The positive experiences of using a particular product/service

    Demographic: The target market of a product or service

    Qualitative Research Type: Ethnographic

5. How have people who have experienced poverty changed their shopping habits when they entered the middle (or higher) class?

    Variable: The changes or stagnation in shopping habits

    Demographic: those who experienced poverty, but climbed the social ladder

    Qualitative Research Type: Phenomenological

6. What was it like when you had a negative online shopping experience?

    Variable: unpleasant shopping experiences

    Demographic: a group that is most likely to shop at a particular online store

    Qualitative Research Type: Phenomenological

7. What influences managers in private sectors to seek further professional advancement?

    Variable: Motivation for seniority

    Demographic: Managers in the private sector

    Qualitative Research Type: Grounded Theory

8. How do women in third world countries set up financial independence?

    Variable: Efforts at reaching financial independence

    Demographic: Women in third-world countries

    Qualitative Research Type: Grounded Theory

9. What impact does collaborative working have on the UX optimization efforts of a telecommunications company?

    Variable: effects of collaboration on the UX of a telecommunications company

    Demographic: workers in the telecommunications space

    Qualitative Research Type: Action Research

10. What strategies can marketing managers use to improve the reach of millennial customers?

    Variable: Strategies to improve millennial reach and their outcomes

    Demographic: Marketing managers

    Qualitative Research Type: Action Research

When to Use the Research and How to Analyze It

The qualitative research method has specific use cases. You ought to consider which is best for your particular business, which includes your strategy, your marketing and other facets.

The core of qualitative research is to understand a phenomenon (a problem, an inadequacy, and a slew of other occurrences) including its causes, its motivations, its goals and its solutions. Researchers do this by observing smaller portions of a population.

Researchers should use this form of research whenever you need to get the gist of a particular occurrence or event. It is particularly useful for studying how your target market experiences certain situations and how it feels about them.

There are several more specific ways that elucidate why this research style is valuable if not completely necessary. Here are some of the most crucial ways this method of research is vital:

  • Helps brands see the emotional connections customers have with them

  • Allows brands to find gaps in customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX)

  • Enables brands to create experiences that are more tailored to their target market

  • Helps businesses understand how they can improve on their product, service or CX

  • Finds experiences that customers had that highlight sensitive topics/language for them

  • Shows businesses how customers compare them to their competitors

  • Identifies possible solutions and innovations based on customer attitudes and experiences

To analyze qualitative research, you should first identify your subject of study and decide on the type of research you need to conduct based on the five types of research that fall under the qualitative category.

Then, brainstorm several questions that you can use to form the base of your studies. During the process make sure to jot down (either digitally or otherwise) your observations. For example, record interviews and store surveys in an organized database.

Make sure you ask open-ended questions in surveys, interviews, focus groups, et al. Aggregate secondary research such as government database documents, articles in your niche,  images,  videos and more.

Search for patterns or similarities within your findings. When you group them together and organize them by demographics, you can start drawing conclusions and proposing solutions.

The Benefits and Drawbacks of Qualitative Research

Qualitative research can be extraordinarily beneficial. But as with other aspects of research and beyond, it too comes with a set of drawbacks. As a business owner, marketer or market researcher, you should know both the pros and cons. Here are some notable ones:

Benefits

  1. More intimate understanding of context and causation: besides understanding “what” in a granular way, you also learn the “why” and “how” of a particular situation.

  2. Understanding key experiences: Open-ended questions lead to unique answers, exposing things numerical-based surveys can’t answer.

  3. A foundation of deep insights: The design of the study is made to understand how customers relate to particular occurrences, events, ideas and products.

  4. Context-driven: Finding insights on motivation and past behaviors allows researchers to understand what their target market needs and what it tries to avoid.

  5. No need to find and create the correct measuring units: Open-ended questions don’t require a scale, a number range or any other measuring tools — one less thing to worry about.

  6. Smaller sample size: Smaller sample sizes allow researchers to study responses more thoroughly to form more accurate hypotheses and conclusions.

  7. Inspirational: The responses received can also help researchers form new studies.

  8. Flexible and detail-oriented: Since questions aren’t based on scales and other units, you can ask more creative and in-depth questions. Questions focus on details and subtleties for robust insights.

Drawbacks

  1. Relies on researcher experience: It relies on the researchers’ experience; not all are familiar with industry topics.

  2. Not statistically representative: Only collects perspective-based research; does not provide statistical representation. Only comparisons, not measurements can be executed.

  3. Difficult to make copies of data.  Individual perspectives make it hard to replicate findings, making it it more difficult to form conclusions.

  4. More likely to have researcher bias: Both conscious or subconscious of the researcher can affect the data. The conclusions they draw can thus be influenced by their bias. (This can be avoided by using controls in data collection.

The Final Word

Market research is a wide-spanning undertaking. It has a wide swath of aspects, practices and applications. As such, researchers should know its main categories and qualitative research is one such category of significance.

As opposed to quantitative research, which has four methods, qualitative research has five — not all of which will be of use to your particular market research needs. In any case, this type of research involves imbuing as much context and particularities around a phenomenon as possible.

As such, researchers should create questions more specific to the aforementioned examples of this article. That is because those are more encompassing, generalized questions that researchers can attempt to answer after conducting all of their research and parsing of the findings.

But prior to that, researchers should ask several related questions around a particular topic and tailor those questions as best as possible to the target audience.

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by Pollfish Marketing Team