Leverage these 7 Steps in Conducting a Survey Research Effectively

Mastering the 7 steps in conducting a survey research is key to gathering reliable insights. Whether you’re launching a product, analyzing customer satisfaction, or exploring market trends, surveys offer a direct way to understand your audience.

Here are the steps to follow: 

1. Define Your Objective 
2. Identify Your Target Audience
3. What to Ask and How?
4. When and Where to Share the Survey?
5. How to Analyze the Gathered Feedback?
6. Involve the relevant stakeholders and prioritize action
7. Take action and write the report

By following these steps, you’ll avoid common pitfalls and gather the insights you need to make smarter decisions.

Let’s dive into each step and build surveys that deliver results. 

7 Steps in Conducting a Survey Research

Here are the seven steps that you must follow while conducting your survey research effectively: 

Step 1: Define your Objective

Before starting a survey, it’s essential to know exactly what you want to achieve. Your objective guides the entire process, from the questions you ask to how you interpret the results. Start by asking yourself: What specific information do you need? Are you trying to understand customer preferences, measure employee satisfaction, or test a new product idea?

Here’s how to do it:

• Clarify Your Purpose: Identify the main reason for conducting the survey. For example, are you aiming to improve customer service or assess product performance?
• Set Clear Goals: Be specific about what insights you’re looking for. 
• Link Objectives to Decisions: Think about how the survey results will inform future actions, such as product development, marketing strategies, or employee training.

A clear objective ensures your survey design is effective, your questions are focused, and your data is relevant, making it easier to draw valuable insights and make informed decisions.

Step 2: Identify Your Target Audience

Once you have defined your objective, the next step is to identify your target audience. Knowing who you want to reach is crucial for gathering relevant insights. Your audience can vary based on your survey’s purpose – whether it’s customers, employees, or a specific demographic.

Here’s how to do it:

• Define Demographics: Consider age, gender, location, income level, and other relevant factors that are important for your survey. For example, if you’re surveying a new product for teenagers, your target audience should primarily be in that age group.
• Segment Your Audience: Think about different groups within your target demographic. You might want to focus on specific segments, such as loyal customers, new customers, or potential buyers, to get more tailored insights.
• Choose the Right Channels: Decide where you will reach your audience. Will you use social media, email, or in-person interactions? Selecting the appropriate channels helps ensure that your survey reaches the right people.

Identifying your target audience helps you create questions that resonate with them, leading to more meaningful responses and valuable insights.

Step 3: What to Ask and How?

The quality of your data hinges on how well your respondents understand what you’re asking – to create effective survey questions. Clear and focused questions not only lead to more accurate responses but also enhance the overall reliability of your survey results. 

Here’s how to do it:

1. Be Specific: Each question should ask for one thing at a time. Ambiguity confuses respondents and leads to inaccurate answers. 

2. Avoid Jargon: Use simple, everyday language. Avoid technical terms or industry-specific jargon that your respondents might not understand. A clear question gets better responses because people know exactly what you’re asking.

3. Use the Right Question Type: Based on your survey’s objective, choose the right type of question. Closed-ended questions like multiple choice or yes/no give you concise answers and are easy to analyze. Open-ended questions allow for more detailed feedback but require more time and effort to answer. A mix of both types can offer depth and clarity to your results​.

4. Keep Questions Neutral: Avoid leading questions that nudge respondents toward a particular answer.

For instance, instead of asking, “Don’t you agree that our product is amazing?” a neutral version would be, “How would you rate your experience with our product?” Neutrality ensures that answers reflect true opinions, not what respondents think you want to hear​.

5. Keep It Short: Respondents are more likely to finish a survey if the questions are short and to the point. Aim to keep each question under two lines of text and stick to about 5-7 questions per survey for better completion rates​.

By creating specific, simple, and direct questions, you improve the clarity of your survey and gain valuable insights that help enhance your product or service.

Are you confused about designing effective surveys? Let SurveySensum simplify survey creation with its intuitive tools, AI-driven analytics, and in-built customizable templates. Streamline your survey process and get actionable insights effortlessly

Step 4: When and Where to Share the Survey?

Timing and survey distribution are crucial for the success of your survey. Choosing when to distribute your survey and where to share it significantly impacts response rates and the quality of the data collected.

Here’s how to do it:

• Choose the Right Timing

Sending your survey at the right time can lead to higher response rates. Aim to distribute your survey when your audience is most likely to engage. 

For instance, exit-intent surveys should be sent just before a user leaves your site. This captures insights about why they didn’t complete a purchase. This timing ensures that the experience is still fresh in their mind, leading to more accurate and honest feedback​.

You should also consider the day of the week. Surveys sent on Tuesdays or Thursdays typically perform better compared to those sent on Mondays, when people are overwhelmed with work.

• Select Appropriate Channels

The channel you choose to distribute your survey is equally important. To choose the best channel for your survey, you must understand your audience’s preferences by identifying where your target audience spends their time. 

For example:

• Email: Ideal for detailed surveys, especially for existing customers or professional contacts. It’s perfect for sending in-depth questionnaires and collecting thoughtful feedback.
• Social Media: Useful for reaching a broad audience quickly. Channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and Twitter are great for sharing short surveys or polls and engaging with users directly.
• Website Pop-ups: Effective for collecting feedback from visitors while they are actively using your site. This method is useful for getting immediate reactions about user experience.
• Mobile Apps: If you have an app, use in-app surveys to capture feedback from active users. This method is convenient and captures feedback at the point of interaction.

By carefully considering when and where to share your survey, you can effectively reach your target audience and collect valuable feedback.

Step 5: Analyze the Gathered Responses

Once you’ve collected your survey responses, it’s time to dive into the data and find valuable insights. The analysis process helps you turn raw feedback into actionable conclusions that can improve your business, product, or service.

To analyze survey responses, you should: 

1. Start by organizing the responses. Use survey tools that provide data in a structured format, such as spreadsheets or dashboards. This organization makes it easier to spot trends and patterns.

2. Look for common themes or trends in the responses. For example, if multiple respondents mention difficulties with a particular feature of your product, this indicates a potential area for improvement.

3. Break down the data into segments based on different criteria, such as demographics or user behavior. This segmentation helps you understand how different groups respond to your survey. 

4. Use visual tools like charts, graphs, and tables to visualize the data. This makes it easier to interpret complex information and communicate findings to others. 

5. Leverage SurveySensum’s AI-powered Text Analytics software to gain deeper insights from open-ended responses. This tool analyzes textual data to identify recurring themes, sentiments, and key topics, providing you with a comprehensive view of respondent opinions and sentiments.

6. Focus on insights that can lead to specific actions. For instance, if many respondents suggest improving customer service, you can use this feedback to enhance your support processes.

7. If you have historical data or industry benchmarks, compare your current results with these references. This comparison helps you gauge whether your performance is improving or if there are areas where you fall short.

Analyzing your survey responses carefully, especially with tools like SurveySensum, helps you turn feedback into meaningful actions and make informed decisions to improve your offerings.

Step 6: Involve the Relevant Stakeholders and Prioritize Action

You are launching a new product and want to collect feedback with a product-market fit survey. While your marketing team runs the survey, it’s important to involve product developers, customer support, and sales teams in reviewing the responses. If you don’t include these key people, you might miss valuable insights as the customer support team can easily identify recurring issues for the product team to address, and the sales team can share new features that customers want.

That’s why, involving relevant stakeholders in the survey process is vital for ensuring that the insights gathered lead to meaningful actions. Stakeholders can provide valuable perspectives, helping you understand the context and implications of the feedback you receive.

Here’s how to do it:

• Identify Key Stakeholders: Start by identifying who should be involved in the survey process. This may include team members from various departments such as marketing, sales, customer service, and product development. Each stakeholder can contribute unique insights based on their expertise and relationship with your audience.
• Engage Early: Involve stakeholders from the beginning, including them in discussions about the survey’s objectives and design. Their input can help shape relevant questions and ensure that the survey aligns with organizational goals.
• Share Findings: Once you collect the survey data, share the findings with all stakeholders. Present the results in a clear and concise manner, highlighting key insights that can inform decision-making.
• Prioritize Action: After reviewing the feedback, prioritize actions based on the insights gathered. Discuss as a team which areas need immediate attention and develop a plan to address them. This could involve refining products, improving customer service, or adjusting marketing strategies.
• Follow Up: Implement changes based on the survey findings and keep stakeholders informed about progress. This fosters a culture of collaboration and shows that their input is valued, leading to more engagement in future surveys.

By involving relevant stakeholders and prioritizing action based on survey results, you ensure that insights translate into meaningful improvements that drive your organization forward.

Step 7: Act on the Insights and Create a Report

Are you aware that 73% of customers switch to a competitor after multiple bad experiences? That’s the cost that businesses pay when they don’t take relevant action on the gathered feedback. 

This is why acting on the insights gathered from your survey is crucial to meeting your survey goals. The key is to focus on clear, actionable steps based on both quantitative trends and qualitative insights.

Here is how to act on gathered survey insights:

1. Take immediate action: Analyze the survey data to identify areas for improvement, such as low customer satisfaction. Use the feedback to understand the reasons behind these issues and implement changes to enhance the customer experience.

2. Close the Feedback Loop: Inform respondents about how their feedback has led to changes. This demonstrates that you value their input and have acted on it, which builds trust and encourages future participation.

3. Prepare a Comprehensive Report: Compile a report that summarizes your findings and action plan. Include key statistics, visual representations of data, and detailed insights. Make sure to highlight the implications of the findings and the expected impact of the proposed actions.

4. Share the Report: Distribute the report to all stakeholders and relevant team members. This promotes transparency and keeps everyone informed about the survey results and the planned actions.

By acting on the insights gained from your survey and creating a detailed report, you turn data into actionable strategies that drive growth and improvement.

Conclusion

Conducting a research survey can be an effective way to gather actionable insights, improve your overall business performance, and meet your business goals. However, its execution requires a strategic approach – from defining your objective to acting on gathered insights – as each step plays a critical role in maximizing the accuracy and relevance of your data. 

This requires leveraging a feedback management system like SurveySensum, which can further enhance your survey research efforts. With its DIY capabilities, you can design effective surveys and gather relevant data. Along with that, the tool’s AI-enabled text analysis software automates the process of turning raw data into actionable insights, enabling you to focus on making informed decisions that promote growth.