Filed under: Business Trends, Case Study, Conferences, Events, Running a better business, Survey Feedback, Surveys, Technology, Tradeshows | Tags: conference attendee Feedback, customer experience, do-it-yourself, Email Marketing, Event Feedback, ipad surveys, iPhone surveys, mobile surveys, real-time survey reporting
We recently partnered with the Fast Casual Executive Summit 2012 team to provide our mobile surveys to attendees at this week’s conference held in San Diego, which was a great learning experience for both teams! We’re not only providers of mobile feedback surveys to conferences but also are attendees of many conferences and tradeshows ourselves. We’re taking our unique perspective and turning it into best practices that can help you make the most of your event to improve your feedback program, and ultimately the likeliness of your attendees joining you again for your next event.
Going back a few years, the 2008 recession has had a significant negative impact across our economy, leading all business owners to examine how effectively their money is being spent. The meetings and conventions industry has certainly felt this impact; Architectural Record reports that both the number of conventions and convention attendance has declined in the last decade.
Though the industry is beginning to show signs of recovery, many meeting planners have had to remain on their toes amid budget cuts. In a 2010 survey of meeting planners by the Professional Convention Management Association, 26% of planners expected their budgets to be cut in the year ahead. Of that number, 80% stated the budget cuts were due to “general economic conditions,” and they expected to book fewer meetings, due to the cost of food and beverage, transportation, and lodging.
Under these conditions, it is more important than ever for meeting planners to stretch their dollars and ensure limited funds are spent as efficiently as possible. However, meeting planners must also avoid a decline in quality despite cost cutting measures. To maintain this balance, planners should pay very close attention to guest satisfaction, using attendee feedback to streamline operations and eliminate unnecessary expenditures while keeping satisfaction high.
Customer feedback cards are one example of inefficient spending: response rates are low, and they are very time-consuming to process and analyze. Instead, meeting planners would be wise to take advantage of On The Spot System’s mobile, real-time survey system to gather feedback from event attendees. Attendees can complete the user-friendly survey on their own mobile phones, sending valuable feedback to meeting planners on every aspect of the conference including facilities, staff, registration process, speakers, individual sessions, materials, location, dining options, and more. Instant alerts notify meeting planners of any negative feedback so they can react quickly to resolve the problem if possible.
Survey results are collected and displayed using On The Spot System’s customizable reporting tools. Meeting planners can easily view and analyze statistics from one or multiple events, allowing them to identify strengths and weaknesses and to pinpoint specific areas for improvement for future events. By using On The Spot Systems and obtaining a wealth of quality feedback from attendees, meeting planners are able to organize quality conferences and events despite shrinking budgets.
Nevertheless, technology can only make it quicker and easier to collect feedback- not fool proof. It’s important to remember that even with a mobile feedback system you have to promote the surveys to your audience to reach your goal response rate. It’s as easy as reminding people to do the surveys at the end of each session. When you stress the importance of feedback, you’ll leave the impression with your audience that their feedback is valuable and will be taken seriously. When they know it’s worth their time, you’d be surprised how willing your audience will be to take out their smartphones to fill out your mobile surveys!
Want to try one of our demo survey for a conference, event or meeting?
Go to this URL on your smartphone or tablet: sots.mobi/confdemo
Or Scan this QR Code with your QR Scanner:
Filed under: Surveys | Tags: customer service surveys, ipad surveys, iPhone surveys, ipod surveys, mobile surveys, real-time survey reporting, Survey On The Spot
There is a tendency among businesses that collect customer feedback to not properly take advantage of the information. Many businesses collect comment cards, but when it comes time to enter the data into a system, there isn’t the budget to pay the administrative staff to do data entry. The only thing worse than not mining your customers for insights is going through the heavy lifting of getting them to complete a survey and then not doing anything with it.
Being able to obtain complete customer participation in experience surveys will not help at all if you never read what your clients have to say. If you are not using your customer feedback to the fullest, you can take some comfort in knowing that you are not alone. Unfortunately, getting data from comment cards is a resource-intensive process that does not always make it to the top of the priorities list in a busy workplace.
The obstacles to analysis of customer comment cards are many, even after your clients have shared their opinions. The cards, once distributed, completed, and collected, must then be reviewed and input by administrative staff. This data entry, though elementary, is a tedious task that uses valuable administrative time. Administrative tasks like data entry also leave ample opportunity for human error, potentially skewing results and negating the value of the survey. Double-checking data entry is another time-consuming task. Depending on your software programs, you may find yourself reviewing the data input manually to extrapolate themes and trends from your data.
Composing the perfect survey takes time and effort. Making the survey accessible to customers and then convincing them to complete it takes time, money, and creative thinking. If you are putting in the resources to develop and promote your survey, why would you want to waste it all on a lack of follow-through? The only thing worse than not mining your customers for insights is failing to take timely action on the learning that is at your fingertips.
Is there an easier approach? Of course there is! Businesses can put aside the pencils and note cards and fast-forward their survey materials to the 21st century. Consider using iPad or iPod touch portable devices so your customers can input survey data in real time. This allows your business to identify specific time frames for responses, pick up on trends, and stay abreast of customer satisfaction as it happens. This method eliminates much of the human error associated with data entry and also cuts down on wasted time for your employees. Allowing your staff to serve customers instead of being hidden away copying responses into a computer means more one-on-one customer service, a better client experience, and happier customers. Meanwhile, you reap the profits.
Filed under: Surveys | Tags: customer feedback, ipad surveys, iPhone surveys, mobile surveys, restaurant surveys
Mobile surveys are for more than just your clients or customers. You may find that your staff can use mobile survey tools to do their jobs more accurately and efficiently.
In retail and distribution services, field data collection is central to staying on top of operations outside of company headquarters. Traditional methods of collecting field data suffer under the financial and time costs of collection, processing and analyzing data without the convenience of automation. Bringing this technology to your staff cuts overhead and allows for more efficient production and processing of data.
Not all company data is purely quantitative. A pen and pencil cannot show some data. Using mobile survey tools, staff can share both the most accurate data and the most appropriate: this can include qualitative data, photos, video, and sound, recorded on a mobile device. This gives managers a holistic view of the situation outside of your company headquarters.
Keep your surveyors moving by working toward faster survey completion. Digital survey tools far surpass traditional record keeping through logic and skip patterns. Questions can be tailored to your respondents without the added costs of multiple printings or the simple time inconvenience of skipping through irrelevant questions.
Some industries may find that their surveyors need more communication between each other. Strengthen communication between staff on different sites by allowing them to monitor others’ data-collection in real-time. This allows staff and management to identify hyper-local trends, emerging issues, and other detail-based concerns that may arise during field data collection.
Of course, the convenience breaks down barriers at the survey site and back at headquarters. Forgoing the clipboard allows for immediate processing and analysis: there is no delay for human data entry. In fact, wireless networking allows for instant uploading to your main site for large-scale processing and analysis and quick turnaround.
Is this right for your business?
Consider the example of Monarch Beverages, an Indiana-based beer and wine distributor operating nearly 80 routes per day. Monarch Beverages uses Survey On The Spot to validate retail performance to support various beverage promotions. Monarch Beverages staff call on Survey On The Spot when visiting locations like bars and restaurants to improve accuracy and speed of making sure their products are being correctly displayed and promoted.
Staff can keep quick and clear records of bars and restaurants’ use of their promotional products for future reports. Photographs and documentation of product display visibility can be stored, promotional pricing can be checked and confirmed, and even appropriate handles for beers on tap can be double-checked and recorded.
Filed under: Case Study | Tags: customer service surveys, ipad surveys, iPhone surveys, mobile surveys, restaurant survey app
With the new technology, clients would be hard-pressed to miss the opportunity to participate. The visual nature of an iPod kiosk lets visitors know their opinion is heard and desired. Encouraging participation from all clients provides a fuller picture of the customer experience.
As in any healthcare environment with a high level of personal interaction, input and feedback is necessary to maintain the highest level of vet service. Real-time surveys make it quick and easy to obtain opinions and ideas without creating new administrative busy work. Kiosks are perfect for organizations like pet hospitals with limited staff to take advantage of the benefits provided by real-time surveys.
Healthcare facility management is at its most challenging in the current economic times. Balancing budget challenges with the constantly mounting need for services and support, non-profit animal hospitals like the MSPCA must still maintain spotless records, satisfy their clients, and provide data for veterinarians to improve pet healthcare services. Real-time surveys allow organizations like the MSPCA Angell Animal Hospital to do just that.
Filed under: Surveys | Tags: customer service surveys, iPhone surveys, mobile restaurant surveys, mobile surveys, restaurant surveys
QR Code for Survey On The Spot Survey
As smartphone ownership and use expands globally, QR codes are becoming an increasingly powerful tool for businesses to share their products with clients. The success of QR codes as a marketing tool for products can be carried over to implementing business and consumer surveys as well, creating opportunities to capitalize on emerging technology and appeal to clientele in trend-conscious market areas.
What are QR codes? Short for “Quick Response codes,” QR codes are are matrix barcodes readable by dedicated barcode readers and smartphones. Also known as “mobile tagging,” QR codes are two-dimensional squares connecting offline media to online content. QR codes eliminate the need for clients to remember and type in a complex URL; a simple smartphone photo will deliver clients directly to the necessary website. Quick and easy for your clients, QR codes are a growing trend and have gained popularity with smartphone users.
Sodexo Leisure, an integrated facilities management services company with locations internationally, found survey success using QR codes to share guest satisfaction surveys with their clients in 22 locations across the United States. Clients are able to scan the code with their smartphones, enabled by QR code reader apps, to access the survey website, and evaluate their experience in real-time.
How can your business replicate Sodexo Leisure’s success?
To encourage your clients to take your survey, it is crucial that you make the survey as accessible as possible: your QR code strategy can be a major element of this accessibility for mobile users. Placing QR codes on signage, merchandising materials, business cards, or other communication vehicles allows customers to scan the code and be linked straight to your business’ survey site. If your client base is not likely to be familiar with QR code technology, provide them with some basic instructions on how to use their smartphone to access the survey. For fans of creative design, QR codes function with up to 30% of the barcode deteriorated, so consider altering your QR code to reflect a basic company icon. QR codes may not replace basic website URLs, but they can be a fast, easy, customer-friendly instrument to get your survey to your clients.
Filed under: Case Study | Tags: customer service surveys, hospital surveys, iPhone surveys, mobile restaurant surveys, Survey On The Spot
Need to know how your organization is operating — straight from the operating room? At hospitals and medical centers, patients are always the top priority. Tift Regional Medical Center in Tifton, Georgia has improved care and satisfied patients in the Emergency Care facility by offering real-time patient experience surveys.
Surveying patients in real time improves hospital functions from top to bottom.
For patients, accessibility is key. iPods with the surveys are given to patients by hospital volunteers, providing convenience and mobility as patients are sent to other parts of the medical center. Easy-to-use technology allows patients to answer survey questions quickly and easily, communicating the most accurate recollection of their experience in the emergency facility. Tift Regional Medical Center can identify key points in the patient experience without weighing down patients with piles of paperwork. iPods make survey taking seem exciting for users new to the technology. It also creates a visible communication focus, highlighting to patients the hospital’s dedication to improving patient experience and responding to patient concerns.
Clear answers make healthier patients. Patients can input relevant information that is quickly documented. Physicians can call up survey feedback, past and present, easily and promptly. Better communication means enhanced physician understanding, necessary for moving toward better patient care.
The hospital benefits from this new technology extend beyond patient interaction. Being able to express their concerns instantly encourages accurate feedback from the patients, giving hospitals a clearer understanding of the patient experience. Digitized responses are easily stored and survey results require no data entry or administrative delays, improving documentation and speeding up analysis for hospitals to make necessary reform. Hospital accountability is enhanced and treatment is improved.
From the data-collection and communication enhancements to the accountability and patient experience benefits, real-time surveys are a means for hospitals and medical centers to improve patient care and safety.
Filed under: Survey Feedback | Tags: customer feedback, customer service surveys, iPhone surveys, mobile restaurant surveys, mobile surveys, restaurant surveys
It can be useful for a business if some customers are prompted to take surveys during their experience, as long as having them do so isn’t overly invasive. There can be real benefits to capturing feedback during the guest experience to gain deeper insight into aspects which might go overlooked or not be remembered too well at the end of their stay (i.e., how was the wait time? how were the drinks? how was the check-in process?). If this is done in addition to prompting other customers to take surveys immediately afterwards, the the overall insights can still be well rounded.
The most comprehensive surveys which gauge overall experience rather than specific elements of an experience are ones completed afterwards, within a few minutes of a guest’s experience.
Businesses should keep in mind the potential drawbacks of real times surveys taken during the service experience when analyzing specific survey data. At the same time, if used and interpreted correctly, focused surveys taken during a service experience can lend deeper insights into specific areas of the service performance which could have otherwise been forgotten.
Filed under: Survey Feedback | Tags: customer feedback, customer service surveys, ipad surveys, iPhone survey app, iPhone surveys, mobile restaurant surveys, mobile surveys
There are various insights businesses can obtain when surveying their customers, including demographic data and satisfaction insights. Surveying customer experience includes evaluating the experiences the customer has with the company, especially service and product quality. An analysis of the customers themselves in terms of demographics and psychographics can establish a deeper understanding of the audience your business appeals to. Both are important in providing effective service and ensuring business growth, but it’s important to understand how each of these customer insights applies to your business in addition to how and when they should be taken into account.
Guest satisfaction surveys give customers the opportunity to provide feedback on their experience with your company through short yet comprehensive surveys. This is valuable to businesses because it helps to establish how the business is performing and where adjustments should be made to improve customer experience.
Analyzing demographics and psychographics provides a deeper look into your customer base that can be very helpful in determining how best to target marketing messaging and product offerings for your best customers. These data-driven surveys are helpful in understanding how to better cater your offering to the needs of your customer base. For example, a customer survey focusing on demographics may reveal that a particular restaurant’s customer’s consist mostly of mid-twenties females with low to moderate incomes. Focusing on the available income of this target, the restaurant can offer a more affordable menu item to draw more business into the restaurant as a logical and effective solution to declining sales.
Part 2 will continue the discussion of mining data from surveys.
Filed under: Survey Feedback | Tags: customer service surveys, iPhone surveys, mobile restaurant surveys, mobile surveys, restaurant surveys
Conditional questions can provide businesses with a more accurate picture of guest experience by eliminating responses that don’t apply, or are less relevant, to a customer’s experience with the different service aspects offered by a business.
Reduce Irrelevant Guest Feedback
Let’s use a hotel as an example: Hotel guests who use a guest satisfaction survey app to evaluate their hotel experience may want to give an overall positive review of the hotel, but may not be eligible to give the same response for every aspect of the survey, as they may not have experienced all aspects of the services. For example, there may be a guest who had a pleasant experience overall with their stay, but who did not order room service. They may feel obliged to provide a positive review on room service anyway, simply to give a complete evaluation. Even if the reviews are positive, this does a disservice to businesses because it hinders the ability of the hotel determine an honest and comprehensive review of the various aspects of their services.
Structure Surveys More Effectively
Conditional questions that are structured around if/then statements allow the customer to feel more comfortable, and keeps them from answering questions that don’t apply to their experience. For example, a question might read: “Did you order room service during your stay at our hotel?” The customer can either answer “yes” or “no”. With a guest satisfaction survey app, customers can be led directly to the follow-up question if they click “yes,” or simply taken to the next question in the survey if they select “no.” This provides the management with more accurate survey feedback because customers are verifying their eligibility to answer the questions. An app can reduce the problem of inaccurate survey results because it won’t allow ineligible respondents to even see questions that don’t apply to their personal experience.
More Detailed Guest Responses
Conditional questions give guests the opportunity to be as specific as possible about their experience by allowing them to describe a good or bad experience in higher detail. Going back to the hotel example, if a guest reports that they did order room service and were unhappy with the experience, the app can lead them to a follow-up question that asks what specifically about the service was unsatisfying. Selections for this might include slow delivery, poor quality food, order mistakes, etc. Conditional questions allow customers the opportunity to be as specific as possible about questions that only apply to them. However, it’s important for businesses to use their personal discretion about how many follow-up questions are necessary, you risk annoying your customers with too many questions.
A guest satisfaction survey app is an effective tool for conditional real-time guest surveys, as many customers will encounter different aspects of your service throughout their experience with you. Describing a particular experience while it happens allows customers to give a completely accurate and detailed account that allows businesses to better understand where their strengths and weaknesses lie.
Filed under: Surveys | Tags: customer feedback, customer service surveys, iPhone surveys, restaurant surveys, Survey On The Spot
Surveys that are too long actually disengage your guests. You can find out most of what you need to know with 10 questions or less. When a survey requires more than a few moments of attention, guests will become easily distracted, which can both reduce the number of guests who actually complete your survey, as well as potentially skewing the answers.
Here are a few ways to keep your surveys easy to read and even easier to complete:
1) Set a clear survey goal and build your survey questions around this goal. Goals can range from practical and operational to more higher-level and managerial. For example, determining which specials to feature in your restaurant each week, the overall satisfaction with your service, how guests feel about the restrooms, etc. This will help you frame the questions in your survey to be more lean and practical as it contributes to your managerial goals.
2) The way you organize your survey questions should be based on what type of information you’re looking for. Just because you are creating a survey, don’t feel you can ask all the questions that cross your mind. They should be relevant and action oriented. Ask them in a logical order that will make sense to your customer or guest. The benefit of using mobile surveys is you can easily edit and update your survey as you develop new goals, and instantly release newly edited surveys.
3) Avoid annoying your guests with lengthy surveys. There’s no doubt that the last thing you want to do is make your customers feel like they are working for you – keep surveys short (ten questions or less), and don’t ask guests for too much personal information. While larger market-research surveys can include redundancies to help you gain the most accurate information, mobile surveys are meant to provide you with faster and real-time feedback that is easy to act upon based on the immediate situation.
4) If you’re unsure about a question, chances are that you can cross that part of your survey out. Surveys can be an ideal way to collect guest information if they are composed intelligently and resonate with people. Ask someone you work with or a friend to complete the survey before you release it to guests.
