Customer Satisfaction Survey - How to Design a Survey

Customer surveys are useful for gathering all kinds of marketing data, and when they're completed they make great bird cage liners.

Oh, did you want your customer survey to provide you with useful data? Forget it... that's not what they're good for. Unless you mail a bazillion of them survey results are unreliable. What? Hell yes! Bazillion is a number - ask my 6 year old daughter.

Most customer satisfaction surveys don't work because the surveys aren't designed well. Survey Information requested is too much, too personal, or just plain unnecessary. The satisfaction survey winds up being 8 pages long and only 1 person in 10,000 fills it out correctly and sends it in. Problem is: you never know which one.

Solution: use the "Hidden-objective" survey technique. You may never have heard of this style of survey because... I just made it up. Well, I created it several years ago for a client who used it and then went on to become a billionaire (I'm not sure but I think because I designed he survey so well) before leaving me in the dust to continue to drive my 10 year old mini van, but that's another story I won't go into now. This is the first time I'm writing about it, though.

Whether it's an web survey, employee survey or just a marketing survey for your own customers, in the hidden-objective survey we may - or may not - base the success of our survey around the answers. Actually, answering survey questions may not be our objective. Our objective may be to use this format of a survey tool to inform customers, or advertise a new product. Now that I've cleared that up, let's get back to watching TV. Oh, sorry, sometimes my ADD gets way ahead of me.

OK, let's move on and pretend I'm working, as my wife is watching and I can't go to "those" websites any more or at least not right now. Let's see... oh yea... customer satisfaction surveys.

Another one of my favorite survey research techniques is the "Key-Question" survey. This is where we hide one or two impotent questions, sorry, Fraudian slip. Oops. Another Freudian slip. So - most survey questions are fluffy and don't matter, but one or two are the specific hidden key-questions of the whole shebang that make the customer survey relevant. Confused? Let me explain while my wife is hanging around pretending to not watch what I'm doing.

The Hidden-Objective Satisfaction Survey

Our hidden objective may be "to inform readers about a new product or offering," or "bring an advertising message to prospects and clientele." In other words, it's a slick piece of advertising, designed to look like a satisfaction survey. Ever consider that? No, most people don't. That's why I get the big bucks. Or I may any day now.

My own hidden-objective as a direct marketer is usually to generate a phone call or have people raise their hands and ask us to call them. "Furgetabout survey shmurvey," my NJ clients say, "If the phone don't ring... you get axed." I grew up on the streets and this has real meaning. We send something in the mail, the phone bedder ring. He really meant "axed."

Suppose, for example, you'd like to introduce a new product to the insurance industry, you’re new LTCI that now includes coverage for massage therapy. Yes, grand papa would love that therapy, at say, a local massage parlor. Hey - it's close by and it says "Massage" right there on the door.

So in the nice cover letter you send with the customer satisfaction survey - and you know me, everything is sent with a nice cover letter - you ask the reader for a quiet moment to take your quick 5-question market research survey. No one minds a "quick 5-question survey."

To increase participation you could enclose a crisp dollar bill for taking the survey, but it would be much better if you sent that money to me. To increase response tells the reader you'll let them know what the survey results are. Viola - instant permission to call, fulfilling our objective.

"Did you know the Jeff Dobkin agency offers long term care including paid coverage for massage for your loved ones?"

[ ] Yes [ ] No [ ] Please call

"Do you think your grand father would like a nice soothing all over body massage?"

[ ] Yes [ ] No [ ] TMI* (*Too Much Information)

OK, I my have been a little over the top here, but we're all adults here aren't we? Ha. You didn't think that last question was part of the survey but it was. Fill out the rest of the questions and I'll send you a dollar. And the results. Just send it in with a $10 processing fee...

Here you can see we don't really want an answer to these questions - that would be too much information (TMI) about grand papa. We just want to inform clients of this new product and service that we offer, and we do it in the form of a customer satisfaction survey. Market research surveys get high readership. Clever, huh?

The "Actionable Key-Question" Survey

We continue our survey questionnaire, and turn it into an actionable key-question survey:

"Have you planned for good care of your grandfather in his later years?"

[ ] Yes [ ] No [ ] don’t know

"Are you worried about your grand parents care as they get older?"

[ ] Yes [ ] No [ ] Please call

Key Question Customer Survey Tip: You can see we are now asking a key question that if clients answer in a certain way we can take action.

The rest of the survey questions? Who cares? It may not matter, because if this question is checked "yes" or "please call" it worked! We fulfilled our hidden objective - remember that from a few paragraphs ago - by generating a lead: a customer asked us to call. We call them - which makes this survey 100% successful.

But since I have one question left, I'll ask:

"How long has it been since you have had your insurance policies reviewed?"

[ ] One year [ ] three years [ ] don't remember

This seemingly innocent question is really a Super Actionable Key-Question - and kind’ a gives us a "reason to call" if ANY of the boxes are checked. Doesn't it? If this was my survey I'd toss in a few more innocuous throw-away survey questions just to make it look more legit.

So, if you're designing a customer satisfaction survey, even an online survey, first decide on the objective; then design the survey to fulfill the objective.

If the objective is to call or be called, insert just one or maybe two relevant "key questions" that you can act on. Make the rest of the survey questions easy. OK, I got to go... I have some stuff to do on the Internet - my wife just left to go food shopping for the week at the 7-11 and she'll be back in 20 minutes...

Surveys For Money

Surveys for money are simply the best way to make fast money on the internet.

To get paid to take surveys or surveys for money you simply have to fill out questionnaires about a product, service or lifestyle.

Companies need to get feed backs from customers about their products in other to be able to know the effectiveness and weakness of each product, so it can be improved on when necessary. These type of customer feed backs are very essential to the success of the company. So they are willing to pay consumers several millions for it, that is why we have surveys for money.

The time involved to complete a survey usually is between 5-15 minutes. The longer time it takes of course, the more you earn from such paid survey.

Surveys for money - Why common

Well, because a survey for money is the easiest and cheapest money making opportunity online. Yes, you can quote me on this.

It gives you the opportunity to earn few thousands of dollars with an investment of less than a $100 or even $50. The amount invested is simply paid to survey brokers (paid survey sites or networks) so you are able to get lots of make money surveys and add up a lot of cash fast.

Of course you can sign up to free survey sites, and even earn reasonable amount of money with them every month, if you know how to go about it. The little difference is that with paid survey network you could find higher paying surveys (perhaps $75 and above) coming from 500 fortune companies attach to those networks. And since you are paying for a service, it should be expected that there would be more commitment since they know you can ask for you money back (most of the legit paid online survey sites have a money back guarantee policy). So there is really no risk involved. Most often than not you would make back the money you paid for registering to the site in your first few days of joining the survey network. Do not sign up with a survey broker without a money back guarantee policy!

One of the secrets of maximizing earnings from surveys for money is to sign up with as many paid survey brokers as you can and also free survey sites. The strategy is, once you join a paid survey network today and in few days you made your investment back, then pick another paid survey network to register with, keep doing this until you have enough paid surveys to keep you busy and making good money. This is to ensure that you not only always get surveys to fill but high paying surveys too.

With free paid online surveys, you might not get surveys to fill out as often as you may want, even when you do, they are usually low paying surveys which means you have to fill out lots of surveys to make good money; though there are some good free survey sites that pay well. If you can stop by at my site you will find good free to join online paid survey sites.

Another thing about free to join survey sites is that not all pay you actual money. Some just give incentives which you can only win from a draw, now if you want to make money from surveys; you do not need such sites, except maybe one or two to complement your list. If you really want to make enough money from filling out get paid surveys, you need a survey broker and my amazing secret of getting the best out of paid surveys. Luck for you this secret is free for all to read on my site.

Oh but there are lots of Paid survey scams

It's becoming more and more difficult to find legit paid survey sites, most of them are just scams and do not give you satisfaction for your money. That is why you need proper direction else you could lose your money. This is why i have created a site that answers all paid survey questions, guides and secrets to making a living from sharing your opinion on the internet. Surveys for money has very good potential of making you money from home

Surveys for money can be done by any child who knows how to read. You read a question and use your mouse to select an option from the list given. No need for typing skills.

Online Surveys Cash Funnel - Divert the $$ Flow Into Your Bank Account

If you are looking for a way to do online surveys for cash or wanting to increase your online surveys business income, the Online Surveys Cash Funnel will help you to maximize your income.

For the beginning start up steps, the article "Fill Out Surveys - How to Fill Out Online Surveys For Cash - 5 Simple Steps" (ref.1) will provide the basics for start up. The steps outlined in that article provide you with a minimum of 100 survey providers as well as the tools for signing up those 100 survey providers the easiest. This is the initial step for your Online Surveys Cash Funnel set up.

The key to this number of 100 minimum to start is that this is the width of your beginning "Online Surveys Cash Funnel." Another important note about this funnel is that you should make sure that these first 100 are actual paying survey providers. Although there are some free survey provider lists that are available that do a good job of identifying these, you will want to make sure that the survey providers that you spend significant time signing up with are legitimate and high quality paying companies. If you Google "paid surveys" you will find a return of close to 8 million results. That is a lot of companies to try to go through on your own and many of the free list providers are simply giving you a list of the ones they have used themselves. But to have a database that thoroughly scans all available survey providers and pre-qualifies each as a "paid" survey provider involves a great deal of work. Since it is rare to get that kind of quality work for nothing, we must expect the adage "You get what you pay for" to apply here also. By paying a one time fee, usually under $50, you can become a member of a database which constantly updates and tests each provider for quality and profitability - keeping the good ones and deleting the others. This will make your beginning Online Surveys Cash Funnel efficient and profitable. Naturally, even some of these survey providers in a paid database will be better than others and you will be able to easily sort these out later but biting the bullet and spending a little business start up money will get you profitable quicker and let's face it, doing online surveys for cash is one of the cheapest online business start ups there are!

Initially, you will begin to receive 1 or 2 surveys a month from each of these survey providers. This is normal for new accounts and will increase as you provide quality survey data and the survey offers you receive will also have higher pay outs. Actively complete as many surveys as are offered to you in the beginning as you can so that you can assess the value of each survey provider to your business as they begin to send you better survey offers. Later you can get more selective after you have established yourself.

After a few months, your income will be doing fairly well for a start up company. That is when you want to adjust the Online Surveys Cash Funnel to start increasing your profits. You will be able to assess the profitability of the 100 you started off with and start replacing the ones that are not quite as good as the others. Start signing up with several more survey providers and increase the size of your funnel to about 200. Remember, the survey offers that you get in your email accounts will usually explain the pay out for completion of the survey, review, product test, or focus group. You do not have to do each and every one but picking the best and most profitable during your testing will help you identify the ones you will keep. You can use this method to also preference the type of survey offers you like to do.

You can continue this process of adjusting the width of your funnel and sorting survey providers until you have a steady stream of the best survey opportunities coming through. Once you have all high quality, high paying survey offers in your Online Surveys Cash Funnel, you can then set the width of the funnel to a size that provides you with the right amount of paying surveys per month that you are comfortable handling.

It is smooth sailing from there with a properly designed Online Surveys Cash Funnel that filters your surveys to your own requirements and provides you with the highest income that you can comfortably make doing online surveys.

What About Survey Participation for Earning Extra Money?

Another way of earning extra money online is with survey participation. There are several survey companies out there and you should definitely check them out before registering with them. Read about some ways to protect yourself from being ripped off. In my experience, I found that checking with the BBB, Rip-Off Report and Alexa.com are good places to start your research. When you search the name of the potential survey site you've chosen, on Google or AOL, sometimes you may find a review written up about that particular survey site. Sometimes they are good, sometimes they are not so good. Use the companies I've listed above to look up your intended survey site so you can be sure that you have received a legitimate report. Check out the market research companies too. These are contracted by businesses and corporations to conduct online research, and are found to be legitimate.

You can also go on social sites where people participate in surveys and are happy to share with you what they know about which are legitimate survey sites and which are not worth your time. Another good way to get to know a potential survey site is to take the time to read the Terms of Service or TOS located at the very bottom of the survey sites page. When you click on there you're taken to a page that tells you all the legal stuff, do's and dont’s, which seem to go on endlessly. But one rule of thumb to keep in mind is ALWAYS READ THE FINE PRINT. I can't stress this enough. It may seem a little overwhelming at first but by going over the TOS it's one good way to be assured of what to expect from the survey site and what is expected of you. Also reading the FAQ's is a great way to find out more about the intended survey site.

I have to tell you, doing surveys is not a way to get rich quick. You won't. Survey participation is a good way to earn a little extra money.

You've shared your opinion about a product and you've helped these companies make changes for the better for the consumer. I like to participate in surveys for several months, accumulate some money, then redeem it a few weeks before the holidays. It's a good way to utilize what I've earned and I save money. Now don't go thinking you'll earn thousands of dollars in a year, you won't. Participating in surveys normally does not pay a lot of money. You earn more money by allowing your earnings to accumulate over a period of time. Although sometimes you will be invited to participate in a survey panel or a phone survey which does pay better than a regular survey site. But they are far and few between. So if you do get invited to a higher paying survey by all means go for it. A word of caution. If you're ever asked to pay for any survey registration or participation... DON'T.

You should never have to pay for participating in a survey. The company behind the survey needs your input to better their product. A legitimate survey site will NEVER ask you to pay to participate. Stay away from anything asking you for your credit card number in order to participate in surveys or product trials. They tell you that it pays out a higher reward, than most, but its a scam and you usually get taken. One thing I should point out here is being active in survey participation should not be just for how much money you can earn. For the survey sites that are legitimate, your opinion really does matter. You are actually helping these companies behind the survey to find out what they can do to make things better for consumers. So if you're only in it for the money or incentives, you're going to be disappointed. Your opinion counts and it should matter to you to know that you are helping to change what the public purchases and how to make products better.

Now and then I get asked; "What are the legitimate survey sites I should register with?" That's a good question! (I had to say that, all those people on TV say that when they're asked a question, so when in Rome. LOL!) Ok, back to the point. I consider the following list of survey sites to be legitimate survey sites. These are the ones I've participated in for a while and I have been paid by them as well without a problem.

Here are some survey sites you could try.

1. Inboxdollars

2. Opinion Outpost

3. Clearvoice

4. My Survey

5. Ipsos/I-say

6. Synovate aka Global Opinion Panel

7. Valued Opinions

8. ACOP aka American Consumer Opinion

Most survey sites pay you by totaling up the points you've earned and once you've accumulated the points required you can redeem them. You can get paid by way of a check, gift-cards, eCertificates for stores i.e. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Cabella's, Zappo's etc. Or buy from the stores they have listed on their site. You can donate your earnings to a charity if you like. Being a legitimate survey site, they have been very good at the payout process. But if you haven't had a payout from ANY survey site as yet. Do your homework and be sure to review the FAQ's about how the process works for that particular survey site. Sure it takes you some time to read all of these things, but you are truly better off in doing so. You'll be surprised at what you can learn about the intended survey site too. Here's some really good advice for you to follow through on, it'll save you a lot of frustration. The survey sites you register with will be sending you a confirmation email too. You'll have to click on the link they send you to confirm your registration. It's a good idea to use only one email address for all of the survey sites you register with.

That way they're not all over the place and you can manage their emails a lot easier. Remember you have to be patient when getting into survey site participation. It does take awhile to earn money. Look at it like some thing you do with your time, that you can do a few minutes or a few hours a day, something you can earn a little money every time you complete a survey, and just keep building up what you're earning. After a period of time you'll have some money saved up, you would've gotten your opinion noted, and you've helped these companies make changes for the better for the consumer. It's all in how you look at it. Good luck in your survey venture. Enjoy the day.