Survey Question
Best Practices

 

Customizing your survey program can offer a ton of value to different aspects of your business. Surveys don’t just support client satisfaction, they impact employee morale and training, financial forecasting, marketing efforts and operational processes. This makes setting a strong tone right at the beginning imperative.

The below best practices will help get you started on ways to think about creating your survey as well as some questions we’ve seen to be effective. Once you’ve finished crafting your survey set, share it with your dedicated Customer Success Manager via a word doc and they’ll be happy to offer feedback and submit it to the Operations team for processing.

Full survey customization is available with Enterprise plans only.

Surveying Best Practices

1. Set goals - what are you hoping to accomplish?

  • How are you sharing this information after the survey closes? 

2. Asking close-ended questions to gather hard data 

  • Yes, No, etc.
  • Keep scales consistent so respondents have solid framing in mind

3. Ask questions that support a statement or A.K.A “the headline exercise”

  • Make your headlines/results statements first, then back into question crafting to support that. Answers to those questions may not always turn out to be positive, but you’ll uncover some truths if there are surprises.

4. Ask questions that are actionable 

5. Avoid the below:

  • Leading questions
  • Sales questions
  • Double-barreled questions (questions that are two separate things with a single yes/no for example)

6. Think how the survey questions can impact operations, internal professional development, cross service education and marketing opportunities

7. If a new structure or process has been put in place, gauge how impactful it’s been and if any adjustments that can be made

  • As an example: a new billing system, Zoom calls instead of in person, training webinars, etc.

8. Keep the survey short (think 12-14 questions max)

  • Short = actionable  
  • Short = digestible
  • Short = easier for the survey recipient to respond

9. Worried about response rate?

  • Use this resource to create a plan of action
  • Consider adding an incentive for survey recipients
  • Review your data and make sure the audience you are surveying is accurate. As a best practice, we highly recommend running some cleanup before you launch!
  • From your own system, send pre-survey communication - this helps identify bounces prior to ClearlyRated launching your survey
  • Incentivize internal teams to work towards a minimum 20% response rate

10. Keep open-ended survey questions to a minimum (2-3)

The Types of Questions that ClearlyRated Supports will provide more detailed examples

The types of questions we support are:

  • Scaled (0-10)
  • Select (choose one answer)
  • Multi-Select (chose more than one option)
  • Open-ended

We do not support more advanced survey question types like ranking, array or survey logic (aka, "based on prior answer", to then display a different question next).

Survey Question Examples

1. [Brand] is collaborative in the way they work with your organization.

  • Always
  • Sometimes
  • Never
  • N/A

2. [Brand] educates you on new ideas and perspectives.

  • Always
  • Sometimes
  • Never
  • N/A

3. [Brand] is an innovative, creative problem solving partner.

  • Always
  • Sometimes
  • Never
  • N/A

4. To help better support your future/ existing needs, which of the services below do you need now or in the near future that you're not using today?

[SELECT: List of services]

5. In your opinion, is [brand] dedicated to empowering your business in achieving critical financial goals that improve your overall success?

  • Yes
  • No
  • Don't Know

6. Are you satisfied with the ROI our services provide?

  • Yes
  • No
  • Don't Know

7. What do you anticipate will be your biggest challenges this year?
[open-end]

Survey Question Examples (Internal Employee)

1. I feel that I have access to the technology and tools that allow me to be successful in my job function at [brand].

  • Yes
  • No
  • Don't Know

2. Do you see yourself working here in a year?

  • Yes
  • No
  • Don't Know

3. What is the reason for your answer above?
[Open-ended]

4. Hypothetically, if you were to quit tomorrow, what would your reason be?
[Open-ended]

5. What practices do we need to change?
[Open-ended]

6. How can we help improve your engagement at work?
[Open-ended]