The Survey Says...

Want to know what consumers think? Put down the comment cards and poll them online instead.

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Don't trust online polls. That's what traditional-minded researchers have been telling business owners for years. The Internet isn't diverse enough to be a valid testing ground, they argue, so data gathered online is bound to be skewed.

If that argument was ever valid, it no longer is. Consumers of all stripes are giving feedback to businesses online. One out of every four American Internet users--about 33 million people--has rated a product, service, or person online, according to a recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, an initiative of the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center. That number is expected to grow as consumers become accustomed to having more interactive relationships with companies, says Lee Rainie, director of Pew Internet. "We're well past the time when this was an activity of early adopters," he says. "This is how consumers want and expect to communicate with businesses."

At the same time, new technology offered by companies such as SurveyMonkey, based in Portland, Oreg., and WebSurveyor, based in Herndon, Va., is making it easier for companies to conduct online polls. The polling software aggregates hundreds of responses to multiple-choice questions into easy-to-read documents, complete with graphs and charts, that can be mined for information on everything from customer satisfaction to product development.

Online polls have been a boon for Michael Kahn, senior director of consumer and trade marketing for Chicago-based Socrates, which sells do-it-yourself legal forms to business owners. Kahn regularly surveys customers to figure out what new products would appeal to them. One evening this past January, he sent out an e-mail inviting customers to fill out a poll consisting of 34 multiple-choice questions. By the next morning, he had received hundreds of replies. The response to one question in particular piqued his interest: A majority of property owners said they were likely to rent or lease an apartment without any assistance. Armed with the poll results, Kahn pitched a new product to his managers: a do-it-yourself background-check kit for landlords. Six months later, the kit hit the market. "I am in love with this tactic," Kahn says.

Web surveys are the quickest way to find out if a product or service is up to par once it's unveiled. Open-ended surveys can also turn up suggestions on everything from cost cutting to marketing. Cameron Herold, chief operating officer of 1-800-Got-Junk?, a trash-removal company based in Vancouver, British Columbia, frequently sends surveys to his company's customers and franchisees. He's often surprised by the results. A recent poll revealed that franchisees thought a newly designed box for the back of the trash-removal trucks was a waste of money. "We thought it was amazing," he says. "They told us it was terrible." Another poll revealed that many customers were concerned about recycling, so Herold added information about 1-800-Got-Junk?'s ecofriendly initiatives in the company's marketing materials. "We want to tell people up-front that we're already doing something they care about," he says.

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