Surveys 2.0 - For discovery, diagnosis and root-cause analysis.
Today's surveys are great measurement tools but fail miserably if you intend to use them as a tool for discovery, diagnosis or root-cause analysis. The current surveys do a good job of quantifying what you already know but do not help with uncovering what you don't know. With an average consumer being solicited to answer more than 10 surveys per week, the response rates are on the decline and more importantly, the "yield" is worsening.
We have modeled our solution around a one-to-one personal conversation between friends. With an emphasis on listening and open-ended dialog, we aim to deliver results in the areas of discovery, diagnosis and root-cause analysis which compliment your existing survey investments.
What's wrong with today's surveys?
Surveys are impersonal. People do not like talking to strangers, they talk to friends. Get to know me, show that you care, and then, you will see a definite up-tick in quality and quantity of responses.
Surveys are product centric. They should be user centric. It is common-place for surveys to ask you to rate your recent hotel stay based on the 5 categories that the product managers are tracking. That may not always map to a guests' experience. A guest may have a very different set of experience categories that she want to talk about, but does not have the means to convey it back to the people who need to know.
Limited apetite for open-ended commentary. Other than the ubiquitous box at the end of a traditional survey that says "Other comments", traditional surveys shy away from soliciting open ended feedback.
Surveys lack a community element. People do not like talking to strangers, they talk to friends. Get to know me, show that you care, and then, you will see a definite up-tick in quality and quantity of responses.
What's different in our approach?
Conversation, not interview or interrogation. The basic difference is the emphasis on listening. While we will start with a particular topic or agenda for a conversation the questions, the responses are not pre-determined. The next question depends on the answer to the previous questions in ways that go way beyond the traditional branching techniques.
Structured questions to segment or validate customer attributes. We use questions to either validate or confirm customer attributes. If an airline wants to speak with passengers who traveled in business class, we can can ask them a yes/no question to determine if we should continue further.
Give them a microphone — and then listen! Commonly seen in high-end and expensive focus groups, letting users speak their mind is an invaluable source of attitudinal and behavioral data about customers. We can capture open-ended feedback, categorize it in areas relevant to your organization and present you a summarized view of what's on their mind.
Assume that you don’t know everything! because no one ever does. So we can leave it to the community to write the responses to some questions.
Let them talk -- with you and amongst themselves. The likelihood of a user “clicking” is about 20 times higher that “typing” a response. We can let the respondents see what other users just like themselves are talking about and your respondents will tell you if they agree or disagree with what others have said. Other than being a great tool to avoid duplicates, this has shown to increase the response rates and yields significantly in our early customers.
Want to give it a try?
If you are planning a survey in the near future and are hoping to use it to discover, diagnose or perform some form of root-cause analysis, you should give Idea Magnet a try. With no software to buy or hardware to manage, Idea Magnet is offered as a service to allow you to focus and spend your time on acting on the insights. Let us take care of the rest!
We like the "toe in the water" approach and can work with you on your next project. All you need is a list of users you wish to connect with and the questions you want answered. We will help you design and formulate the campaign and administer and manage it for you. You will get a dashboard to monitor the progress and analyze the findings.
Let us do your next survey customer conversation. We would love to hear from you!