Skip the Survey and Use What You've Got
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Wed, Jul 18, 2007
Sometimes the best survey is not doing a new survey at all, and sometimes the best questions are the ones you don't ask.
Recently Dean requested that I do a new survey of trial users of EFM Feedback regarding five specific questions he wanted addressed. But in the first week of June I had done a large survey of EFM Feedback users and prospects. I didn't want to re-email these prospects so soon unless I had to.
First, I filtered the results of the previous study just to prospects. That gave me most of the information Dean was looking for.
Next, I mined our CRM system. For each respondent, we had already piped information into the survey from our CRM system as "hidden questions. This meant that we branched to specific sections for different types of customers and prospects based on what they had purchased from us, while sparing them the need to tell us which product edition they use. Asking respondents questions your organization should already know the answer to depersonalizes the survey process and wastes the respondent's time.
Dean was requesting an analysis by industry, which was not a field that I had piped in from our CRM system. It was a simple matter to go back to the CRM records and get that information. I was able to provide Dean the information that he was looking for without needing to do another survey.
The next time you're thinking of a survey, you might want to start by reviewing recent questionnaires that your organization has sent out. You just might find that you already have the answers you need close at hand.