Ask for suggestions. Sprague likes to conclude the customer satisfaction portion of a survey with a query like: "What could we do to make your next experience with us extraordinary?" "It stretches their mind and your mind," he says. "It's going to help you think of things you haven't thought of before."
4. Dig for Demographics
The demographic information you seek will depend on which attributes drive your business -- these may include age, gender, marital status, educational attainment, household income, and leisure pursuits. Some of these are sensitive topics, and you don't always need to broach them. For instance, if you know a customer's Zip code, you can get a rough idea about income and education. If you know the address, you can refine that further by sorting customers into what are called census block groups, says Jeffrey DeBellis, director of marketing and research services at the University of North Carolina's Small Business and Technology Development Center. (See "Decoding Demographics.")
When your customers are businesses, you want information about their size by number of employees and revenue. (If your customers are reluctant to share that information, formulate the responses as a series of ranges.) Also, try to get the NAICS (or North American Industry Classification System) or SIC (or Standard Industry Classification, which has been replaced by the NAICS) code. This can help you identify similar companies in the area.
5. Test the Survey First
Before you make the survey available to your customers, ask family members and friends to test it for time and clarity, and whether the questions mean what you intend them to mean and are free of bias and the like.
Using the Data
Once you tabulate the results (which happens almost immediately with e-survey programs), patterns should emerge. "If you have 20 answers, and you don't see definite trends, then you probably don't have enough data," says Sprague. You could try to resurvey, using the existing results to write more probing and targeted questions, or you could convene a focus group. Focus groups are also useful for interpreting the results.
Focus, focus, focus. For focus-group testing, it is smart to engage experienced marketing consultants, who will be adept at moderating the conversation. For one thing, your subjects will probably be more reticent if you or your top sales executive is conducting the session. "With a trained focus-group facilitator, you're going to have someone who will generally script the experience up front," says Ulrich. Moreover, "experienced facilitators develop a certain amount of intuition when something's up," sensing when the dynamic has changed and able to steer the conversation in a new direction if necessary.
The "aha" moment. Ulrich recommends that once you have collected all the data, "find one or two 'aha' ideas and implement them immediately. Make sure they're visible and that they impact the greatest number of people in a positive way." This will show, she says, that you have been listening to the needs and concerns of your customers -- which, any great salesperson will tell you, is half the job.
Decoding Demographics
The Web offers databases and automated services that can help make sense of the survey data you collect. Some are free, but the most useful involve fees or subscriptions. Check with your public library and local "economic gardening" organizations -- such as Small Business Development Centers, chambers of commerce, and economic development groups -- to see if they offer free or discounted access.
To check the demographics behind your customers' Zip codes, go to esri.com/data/esri_data/index.html, a site operated by the software developer ESRI. Also visit mybestsegments.com, a site operated by the demographic profiler Claritas. Both services are free teasers; more detailed information will cost you.
Census block group data are available from ESRI (esri.com/industries) and Pitney Bowes Business Insight (pbinsight.com).
Rutgers University Libraries offers an extensive list of online market research resources at www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/rr_gateway/research_guides/
busi/markres.shtml.
Resources
For help with survey design, start at the e-survey companies for questionnaire libraries. The Resources page at eSurveysPro.com has templates and useful tutorials.
For professional advice, both the Marketing Research Association (mra-net.org) and the American Marketing Association (marketingpower.com) offer directories of market-research specialists.
