How's your business doing? Every day we hear from businesses that are looking for new ways to effectively market their businesses during this recession. In many cases, the answer is "know your customer." That's a mantra that works in good times and challenging times, like now.
Online surveys are an easy way to get customer feedback that is critical to understanding your customer and their needs. But their feedback is only as good as the quality of your survey questions. Here are some ways to write more effective survey questions that will bring back more actionable and reliable results.

Focus Your Questions on One Objective
Every business has challenges. There are plenty of things you can learn from your customers to help you better serve them and become a more successful business, such as: Why do customers come to you? What other products or services would they be interested in? How well is your website serving your customers' needs?

Those are all good things to know about ... but they are separate survey topics.

We have another mantra here: One problem, one survey. The most important thing to do when you sit down to write your survey is to figure out what your objective is - what you need to know to solve a particular problem. Ask yourself, What's the most important thing I need to learn right now to grow my business? Then focus the survey on that one problem.

For example, let's say you are a retail store and you're considering adding additional products to your mix. You may want to survey customers with questions like these: Which of the following products are you interested in? Which of the following attributes are most important when purchasing [product]? What would you expect to pay for [product] if it had those attributes? How likely are you to purchase [product] from us if it has those attributes? Craft your questions around getting answers that will shed light on that one problem and help you find solutions.
Narrowing in on just one objective prevents your survey from getting cumbersome and unwieldy - and customers from getting bored and bailing. The shorter and simpler the better.

What Makes a Good Survey Question?
Every question in your survey should relate to your one objective. As you think about writing each question, ask yourself, "Will the answers to this question help me solve this problem?" If the answer is no, then save that question for a different survey.

Also consider the type of question you're asking:
• Closed-ended questions, where you provide a customer with choices for them to respond with, are easier to analyze and spot trends (e.g., Which of the following services do you use?). For businesses that need actionable customer information fast, we recommended closed-ended questions. The data will be easier for you to analyze and track trends over time.
• Open-ended questions, where customers are given a blank text box and can write whatever they want, can be informative because they allow your customers to give you more detailed feedback. On the other hand, they require more time - for customers to answer and for you to interpret. You can get the best of both worlds by using the "Comments" option at the end of your closed-ended survey questions as a way to invite customers to share other thoughts and ideas.

Whichever type of question you ask, ask about just one topic per question. Avoid "double-barreled questions" that jam more than one topic into one question. For example, "How satisfied are you with our online ordering process and our customer service?" That's two questions. They might love your customer service but not be thrilled with your online ordering. Give customers the opportunity to rate both by asking two separate questions.

Avoid Bias (a/k/a Don't Lead Your Customers)
Be careful about how you word your questions. The accuracy of your customers' answers - and the value of your data - depend on it. If you use words that presume to know how customers feel, or that lead them toward one answer or the other, you're just preventing them from telling you how they really feel. Here are some hints:
• Avoid leading customers with words such as "always" or "never", which may skew their responses toward one end of the scale.
• Ask questions in a neutral way that doesn't trend answers in any particular direction.
For example, instead of asking "Don't you think our staff is very knowledgeable?" phrase it in a more neutral way, like "How knowledgeable do you find our staff?" Then they can rate the responses on a scale of 1 to 5 - 1 for highly knowledgeable; 2 for somewhat knowledgeable; 3 for neutral; 4 for somewhat unknowledgeable; and 5 for highly unknowledgeable.
Now more so than ever with the tough economy, consumers are selective about where they take their business. Writing effective survey questions can help you learn what's most important to your customers so you can give them what they need to continue their relationship with you, versus Joe down the street.




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