How to Create Engaging Surveys

A CRM survey undeniably holds importance for any company. It not only helps you understand your customers’ perspectives and engage with them better but also helps you tweak your product(s)/service(s) accordingly. However, if your surveys are not relatable for your audience, they may not be able to collect valuable and actionable insights.

Therefore, a CRM survey should be relatable and engaging for the audience to drive high response rates and gather valuable insights for you. Let’s understand what all advanced survey features you should look for while choosing a CRM survey module to make surveys engaging.

1. Data Piping

The exchange or movement of data between CRM and surveys is called data piping.

There are two types of data piping in a survey:

• Forward Data Piping

When the data moves from CRM to surveys, it is forward data piping. This feature auto-fills a number of recurring survey fields like name, DOB, address, etc. The pre-filled survey fields help reduce the time that survey-takers would need to fill surveys. Surveys thus become comparatively shorter to complete and survey completion rates go high.

• Backward Data Piping

When the data moves back from surveys to CRM, it is backward piping. While forward data piping helps make surveys shorter for the audience, backward data piping helps reduce your efforts in updating CRM with new survey data every time. With real-time synchronization between CRM data and survey data, all the collected survey data gets auto-updated in CRM fields with no need for manual updates.

1. Skip Logic

Skip logic is the logic a surveyor defines to redirect survey-takers to relevant questions throughout a survey based on their responses. Besides helping you keep the survey flow relevant throughout, it also makes surveys engaging and helps collect quality data due to the right questions you ask.

Let’s take an example to understand how it works.

Let’s say that you have a different set of questions each for working people and retired people. Obviously, you won’t want a working person to view or answer a question specified for a retired person. Or vice-versa. And that’s where Skip Logic comes in.

The first question of this survey can be something like ‘What is your working status?’. Based on ‘Working’ or ‘Retired’ from the respondent, the survey will redirect them to the next relevant question. This is just an introductory example of ‘Skip Logic’. You can use skip logic in surveys to branch questions even further.

1. Survey Reporting

Proper data analysis of survey reports helps you get in-depth information about your customers’ thinking and perspectives. A number of advanced statistical reports including:

• Status reports showing the total count of survey-takers to help you plan stronger strategies to increase survey respondents.

• A question-wise report to tell the number of respondents who have answered a specific survey question and help you determine question-wise relevance and the overall survey relevance.

• An individual report to give information about individual responses to questions, the date of sending and receiving the survey that can help you determine an individual’s level of engagement with your brand and the perception they hold.

• A cross-tab report that helps you compare survey results of two or more surveys, analyze how surveys are performing by comparing survey response rates over a few subsequent surveys, and plan further strategies accordingly.

1. Automated Surveys

Survey Automation is the process of automating survey workflow through automated surveys. Using survey automation, you can predefine several conditions and events to auto-send surveys rather than creating and sending them manually every time after a condition is met or an event like interaction with your customer occurs.

For instance, if you have specified a customer service call as an event, CRM will auto-trigger a survey after a customer is through with the call. This survey can help you understand how satisfied your customer support service call has been for that customer.

Moreover, such automated surveys help you get rid of the hassle of tracking every such event post which you need to send a survey. With instant and real-time feedback from customers, survey automation can keep you in full control of your customers’ satisfaction levels and needs.

1. Net Promoter Score

A Net Promoter Score survey generally consists of two NPS survey questions. The first question is the rating question where you ask your customers to rate your product(s)/service(s) or the brand itself on a scale of 1-10. Respondents are then classified into three categories depending on ratings as below -

• Those giving ratings less than or equal to 6 are ‘detractors’

• Those giving ratings between 7 and 8 are ‘passives’

• Those giving ratings above 8 are ‘promoters’.

The second question is generally an open-ended follow-up question that asks customers the reasons behind the ratings they gave. You can further personalize NPS survey questions based on ratings. For example, if a respondent gives a score 5, you can ask, "What did you find disappointing or lacking in your experience with us?" In case a person gives you a high rating of 9, you can thank him for it and include a more personalized question as "What did you like the most about our product(s)/service(s)/brand(s)?

Such personalized survey questions won’t only help you know your brand image in people’s minds but also help you strategize your further actions accordingly for maximum customer satisfaction.

6. Survey Templates

Ready-to-use survey question templates help accelerate your process of creating surveys by saving you time in framing questions - especially when finding the right questions for a survey is hard for you.

A SugarCRM survey module or any other can help you create a survey based on your purpose and requirements like Product survey question templates, event feedback templates, parent feedback survey templates are a few examples of survey templates.

In a Nutshell

Sending surveys is a surefire way to collect better insights into customers’ viewpoints. However, surveys should be engaging and relevant enough to collect quality responses in high numbers. For that, you should always look for a CRM survey module with all the above-discussed features. Only then will your surveys stand out and help drive responses and sales.

Summary: Merely sending surveys doesn’t help get quality responses. Read on to know the features like data piping, skip logic, survey reporting, and more that you must have...

Mr. Maulik Shah is the founder & CEO of AppJetty, a digital software products store specializing in extensions, plugins and apps for host of software platforms like Magento, WordPress, SugarCRM, SuiteCRM, Odoo, Dynamics CRM, etc.