A successful survey in 5 steps

A survey, for what?

To inform your decisions! A survey is a primary data collection tool that contributes to improving your organization's strategic knowledge. Once analyzed, this data is useful in particular for the development of your global and marketing strategies.

Customer surveys: one tool, several goals

In tourism as in all sectors of activity, it is essential to know your current and potential customers well in order to identify their needs, to understand how to meet their expectations and to develop services and experiences that correspond to them. This is all the more true in a context of pandemic which is seeing the birth of new clientele and tourist behaviors.

For example, local (or local) customers are still customers whose preferences and consumption habits are little known in the tourism industry. It is therefore appropriate to survey them about their travel habits, their interests, the platforms and media used, etc.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of specific goals that customer surveys can answer:

• Obtain a portrait of the profile and behavior of your current and potential customers;
• Measuring interest in a product/service/destination;
• Measure the perception or reputation of a product/service/destination;
• Measuring customer satisfaction;
• Get the opinion of a population/community about a project;
• Identify new trends.

Encouraging data collection and customer knowledge throughout the year within your team is therefore a profitable initiative. because it allows you to have new, exclusive and reliable information to guide your strategic decisions.‍

Business surveys: to improve B2B services

Customers aren't the only ones who can give you valuable information. As an organization, it is just as relevant to question customers as it is to question members and businesses in your area. Business surveys serve several purposes:

• Measure the perception or reputation of a B2B service;
• Identify ways to improve your services;
• Measure the satisfaction of employees/members or partners;
• Get the opinion of a sector about a project;
• Measure the importance or economic weight of a sector (e.g. accommodation);
• Conduct a diagnosis of a sector;
• Identify a particular need.

Our advice at every stage

The next section details the 5 steps to follow, from identifying the objectives of the questionnaire to analyzing the results. Although this article focuses on online surveys, other collection methods exist, including paper questionnaires at reception sites. The following tips are therefore more suitable for a web questionnaire. The latter facilitate the compilation of data, even if the formats of the questions are sometimes limited by the functionalities of the chosen platform. However, the first two steps below are just as useful if you opt for a paper-based survey option.

Step 1: Identifying the objectives of the questionnaire

Here are examples of questions to ask yourself beforehand and which will be used to guide you throughout the questionnaire development process:

- What information can we look for?
- What need (s) will this data meet?
- Who is this questionnaire for? Who is going to answer it?

Step 2: Questionnaire Development

The length, wording, and type of questions are very important factors to consider as they influence the correct response rate. The recommended length for a questionnaire is approximately 15 to 20 questions. If a questionnaire is too long, some respondents may not complete it all the way. For example, a 10-question survey has an average completion rate of 89% but with 40 questions, this rate increases to 79%. Here are a few tips:

• Formulate simple and precise questions, to limit the risk of misunderstanding/interpretation;
• Insert the most important questions at the beginning to ensure that you get the most answers to these strategic questions;
• Vary the style of the questions and the answer options to keep respondents interested and to avoid them giving up before the end;
• Ask socio-demographic questions at the end.
  

Bet on gamification! By making the process more fun, it's sometimes easier to get respondents' attention. Here are a few ideas:
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- Formulate surprising questions or in the form of challenges
example : In the case of a restaurant, rather than asking what dishes they would like to see on the menu, invite them to put together their ideal 3-course menu.
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- Use visual stimuli like emojis to measure satisfaction with a service or experience
example : Overall, are you satisfied with the services offered by our organization?

- Reward! Monetary or not, rewards are an incentive that should not be overlooked when you want to engage participants. For example, you can offer a promotion, contest, or exclusive content. ‍

Step 3: Programming the questionnaire

Do you like your questionnaire? It is now time to put it online on the chosen platform. Each platform offers more or less customization options and programming assistance tools. For example, Google Forms and Survey Monkey offer pre-designed questionnaire templates. Survey Monkey also offers a bank of questions that have already been formulated.

Step 4: Sending the questionnaire

There are several options for reaching respondents:

• Sending invitations by email. This option is preferred if you already have a bank of email addresses (e.g. members of your organization, customer files, subscribers to your newsletter).
• Sharing the survey on your social networks. Anyone can then access the survey using the link or a QR code. In this case, it is appropriate to add a filter question at the beginning of the survey that will allow you to select respondents who correspond to your target audience. This sharing method also makes it possible to invite potential partners to relay the survey link on their own networks to increase the audience.
  example : For a survey to measure traveller satisfaction, the filter question could be “Have you travelled to the X region in the last three years?” ”. In the case of a negative answer, the respondent would then not be eligible to continue the questionnaire.

• Buying a panel of respondents. It is an option offered by several survey platforms that makes it possible to target respondents according to specific socio-demographic criteria. Although more expensive than other methods, this option makes it possible to target more precisely the profile of respondents you are interested in. Survey Monkey is one of the platforms that offers this option.
  example : In the case of a market study, you want to know the opinion of your future potential customers. By buying answers from a panel, you can precisely target the profile of the respondents using socio-demographic, geographic and even interest-based criteria or interview a representative sample of the general population.

Step 5: Analyzing the results

Once the survey is over and the data is exported, you will be able to make the information collected speak for themselves. Some platforms offer tools for presenting results (graphs, option to cross-reference answers, etc.). Feel free to explore these options to get a first glimpse of the results.

• Focus on the main questions first, which are the ones that meet your original objective. Additional questions often provide additional answers or explanations.
• If the data is comparable to previous surveys, compare them across time periods to get an overview of trends.
• Finally, draw conclusions from the data. To do this, you can group responses into categories and use causal relationships to explain the relationship between the various variables where appropriate.

To conclude, there is only one watchword: share! Depending on the nature of the results, it can be very relevant to share them with your work team, partners and of course your customers. To do this, feel free to use tools like dashboards that make information more readable. And why not share some key stats or highlights on your social networks? In any case, it is necessary to keep in mind that the results of a survey have a limited lifespan and that the process must therefore be repeated on a regular basis in order to always have relevant results that reflect reality.

We can help!

If, despite our advice, you are hesitant to start creating a survey or you are having trouble identifying your needs and all the advantages of a survey, know that we can help you.

To find out more, contact us !