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Receipt Surveys: How MR Gets Its Hand in the Till

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Quite a few of the large retailers who use Vovici software set it up to conduct receipt surveys, as they are commonly known. Technically, these are actually receipt invitations, inviting customers to take a survey online.

Receipt surveys are similar to typical satisfaction surveys with one important exception: the questionnaire begins by prompting the user to enter a store number or the numeric or alphanumeric code on the receipt. Codes uniquely identify the transaction, enabling crosstabulation of survey results by store location, cashier, transaction amount and other attributes of the sale. Respondents must enter in a correct receipt code before proceeding with the rest of the survey, and some codes expire a week after the transaction (the assumption being that, after a week, respondents won’t have a clear memory of the sale).

Transaction codes can range from the simple to elaborate: one retailer’s code simply had to be evenly divisible by a certain number, while another’s code consisted of four parts that represented information about the store and its geographic location, with each part of the code having its own validity check. At the high end, a custom survey event handler can even be used to pull in information about the transaction as hidden fields into the survey; this enables the survey to be designed with skip patterns and advanced branching specific to the transaction.

The last page of a receipt survey typically provides a means to access the incentive. Some end by providing a unique validation code for the respondent to write on their receipt; this then enables them to use their receipt as a coupon. Other surveys provide an electronic receipt that can be printed out.

Caveats with Receipt Surveys

When designing your own receipt surveys, it’s easy to go awry. Some things to keep in mind:

• Receipt surveys may not be representative of your customers. Receipt surveys are convenience samples that require consumers to have Internet access, which not all of your customers may have.
• Receipt surveys often encourage extreme responses. Some consumers report that they only complete receipt surveys if they are dissatisfied; others say that they complete them only if service was excellent or horrible. While there are consumers who answer them regardless of the experience, this occurs less than with standard online surveys.
• Survey incentives improve the response rate but increase the likelihood of false answers. Some consumers have reported that they gave their receipts to other customers who asked for their receipt specifically to take the survey. Incentives do shape how likely people are to respond; people are more likely to respond in exchange for a coupon or discount than for a chance at a larger prize.
• Employee incentives for specific satisfaction levels can corrupt the research process. Some retailers have found that employees spam the system, using the codes from receipts discarded in the store to take the survey. While cashiers are sometimes called upon to highlight the survey on the receipt, even circling it, they often use this occasion to ask the consumer to give them the highest rating.

Are the days of receipt surveys already numbered? Apple has taken the lead in terms of shifting paper receipts online. They ask consumers if they would prefer to be emailed their receipt: this is a great “Green” initiative that helps retailers build email lists of customers. Consumers can then be emailed a specific survey invitation at a later date.

In the meantime, when using paper receipts to issue survey invites, make sure that you keep the above caveats in mind.

See also:

• Survey Compensation for Employees Gone Awry
• When Survey Incentives Run Amuck
• Encouraging Honesty from Survey Respondents and Community Members