In the past twelve months Measuring Success has conducted projects collecting nearly 20,000 survey responses from customers across almost 70 organizations. In a recent project, three of Measuring Success’ consultants spent the month of May on a whirlwind tour of schools across North America that participated in the 2009 Day School Peer Yardstick Parent Survey funded by PEJE: the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education. For that survey, on average 80% of parent households completed the survey; one school even achieved a 97% response rate. Before the survey, schools were very skeptical about achieving high response rates since in home-grown surveys few had exceeded 30% or 40% participation.

So, why have we been able to achieve 2x the response rate of surveys conducted by the organization itself? In this Measuring Success e-newsletter, we will review a few of the keys to high response rates.

Confidentiality. When a survey goes out directly from an organization, customers worry that their responses will be examined individually and used to judge against them. By having Measuring Success act as the independent third party, schools were able to assure survey respondents their answers were confidential and would not be seen by professionals or board members of the organization. Stakeholders are more likely to complete a survey and give candid answers when they are confident that their answers are truly anonymous.

Professional quality of survey instrument. Many home-grown surveys are fraught with ambiguous questions, difficult to navigate interface, and confusing answer choices. It is critical to combine expertise in survey design and extensive advanced instrument testing that involves organizational leaders, field experts, and pilot stakeholders. In doing so, the final surveys are aesthetically appealing and easy to understand. Customers are more likely complete a survey when questions are clearly worded and concise, where the answer scales are intuitive, and when the flow is easy to navigate.

Length. A commonality in home-grown surveys is the desire to include every question under the sun. However, research shows if a survey is too long respondents drop out. We design our surveys so that the time it takes to complete is proportional to the strength of the relationship between customer and organization. For example, parents with children currently in the school received a 15 minute survey, while those whose children were applying or had recently left only took a 5 minute version of the survey.

Support on demand. A core purpose of surveys, beyond learning key areas for improvement, is to use them as a way to let customers know that you care. However, many organizations forget to set up effective support systems to address technical problems or questions from customers taking the survey. We set up a special email address for troubleshooting and questions, which is diligently monitored by several people to ensure that all customers get their problem tackled within a day. Many questions are quite simple to answer. However, this personal stewardship ensures maximum satisfaction from the very customers the organization is trying to impress.

High response rates are paramount to legitimizing statistically and politically a survey's results. Furthermore, a well-designed survey, coupled with incentives and techniques to elicit high response is an important customer engagement tool in and of itself.

But perhaps the most important benefit of outsourcing a survey is the ability to free your organization from spending hundreds of hours designing, deploying, monitoring, analyzing, and generating insights from your customers. Instead, you can focus your limited and valuable time on acting on the results of the survey and moving your organization forward. To learn more about how Measuring Success can help your organization make data driven strategic decisions please contact me at Sacha-newsletter@measuring-success.com.

Sacha.