Action Oriented Survey Results
In life and in business, it’s important to have a plan, right?
Would you take your family on a vacation without researching your destination? Would you buy a cart full of groceries without having any idea what you’re going to make with them? I certainly hope not! The same goes for making a survey.
In previous blog posts, I’ve detailed the importance of designing a survey with the results you want in mind. Now, I need to stress that this doesn’t mean designing it so you get favorable results — that’s a cardinal survey sin — but you do need to design it with consideration for this question: How are you going to act on the data you receive? Make sure you ask the respondents WHY they answered the way they did, so you know HOW to improve. It’s all about getting action oriented survey results.
Survey Results
Here we are: you’ve deployed your survey and have a nice new report with awesome pie charts, bar graphs, open text responses — and doesn’t it look great? Now you can check that box on your to-do list, move on to the next project, and put out the next fire, right?
WRONG.
You can’t just leave that data sitting around to collect dust! You’ve got to USE it!
In fact, if you’ve designed your survey tool correctly, you will be able to analyze the results and come up with action items for improvement, decision-making, product and service launches, etc.
Client and Employee Satisfaction Surveys
When evaluating the data from a client or employee satisfaction survey, a good idea would be to identify the top 3 areas that need improvement, as well as the importance of those areas to the respondents. Your action items should directly correlate with those most important areas that the respondents are least satisfied with. As an example, take a look at the below sample customer satisfaction survey graph.
This graph quickly illustrates what your customers feel are the most important issues, and how they think you are performing on those important issues.
Particularly, this graph shows that the ABC Company needs to focus on “responsiveness to your needs” as it is important to their organization and there is a large gap between importance and the client’s satisfaction.
Remember: this sample displays just one option for utilizing the data you’ve gathered for the greater good. At Peak Surveys, we are happy to help you find the format that works for you.
Let Respondents Know You Hear Them
In the area of employee surveys especially, the most frequent comment I’ve heard is, “They never act on anything I’m concerned about and I have no idea what they do with the feedback.” Not sharing at least a portion of the results and actions you’ll take is worse than not gathering data to begin with. Unless the respondents see changes, they won’t believe any changes are occurring. Perception is everything.
For client and employee surveys, it’s important to share your results and report on your action items. There are several reasons for this:
1. the respondents know you’re listening and will be more apt to give feedback in the future
2. the respondents see that you are making changes to better their experience
3. you can share information as to the problem/concern and how you’re going to fix it
How to Share Survey Results
Now that you’ve gathered your data, evaluated results, and come up with plans to address them, how do you actually share the info with your respondents?
One way is by sharing results in a monthly newsletter. This way, you can dribble a single survey’s results over a period of 6 months, showing that you’re continuously working on improvement.
You can also provide one document that explains all the results and your action items. This gets it all out in one official shot, and can display your seriousness toward the issues.
Other ways to share results are in meetings, utilizing social media, or physically mailing letters to respondents.
The main goal is to determine through which medium your client/employee is most likely to view the results from your survey data. After all, this survey is ultimately about the respondents and their perceptions — making it easier for them to participate is in your best interest.
Contact Peak Surveys to help you gather actionable data.
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