Organizations today rely on survey research to learn much-needed business intelligence. Surveys can help you understand customer preferences about a particular product, gauge employee satisfaction, identify market opportunities and much more.

Survey research is much more than simply asking someone a few questions. It’s a multiple-step process with a clearly defined protocol at each step. In order to get reliable results from your survey research, you must be able to plan the survey research project, collect data, access and manage the data easily, as well as report relevant results. And for your survey research project to be a success, you need to share your results with the decision-makers who can act upon them

Areas that benefit from survey research

• Satisfaction measurements
• Customer/employee profile census
• Customer retention
• Complaint tracking
• Product features desired
• Medical errors
• Patient outcomes
• Viewer/readership interests
• Assess program effectiveness
• Customer acquisition

Popular questions that survey research attempts to answer

• What is most important to customers, employees or patients?
• What do people want or need in terms of programs, products or services?
• Who is our customer?
• Do consumers cluster into groups?
• How can we compete in the market most effectively?
• Are we providing value to our members or customers?
• What areas need improvement?
• What drives satisfaction or sales for customers
• How can we improve our programs, materials, products or services?
• What are the brand’s perceived strengths or weaknesses?
• Where should resources be directed?

The seven stages of survey research

Survey research can be divided into seven steps. In order to be successful, survey research needs to be implemented well at every step. Problems at any step can lead to incorrect results.

• Step 1: Planning and survey design
• Step 2: Data collection
• Step 3: Data access
• Step 4: Data preparation and management
• Step 5: Data analysis
• Step 6: Reporting
• Step 7: Deployment