“Build a better mouse trap, and the world will beat a path to your door.” This is a phrase attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson in the late nineteenth century. It seems as though nothing has changed in almost 150 years.
If you are in business then you have competitors. What stands you apart from your competitors is that the product or service you are offering is superior in some way from that of the competition. To ensure that this is the case you cannot rest on your laurels –after all, he who stands still, is dead! One of the ways of making sure that you stay current with your customers is to survey them and see where they are satisfied and where there is room for improvement. During this survey process, the last thing you want to do is antagonize your clients. Unfortunately that is what most companies do when conducting surveys using traditional techniques.
Few of you reading this article will be unfamiliar with phone surveys. What are your initial thoughts when I even mention the term? I do not think it would be an exaggeration to state that they would not be fit for print media. And why is that the case? Because they call at the most inconvenient time? Because they are annoying? Because the topic is irrelevant? Because you couldn’t be bothered? Just because. If that is your response to phone surveys, I won’t even start to mention the topic of door to door surveys.
Conducting a survey using these old techniques will potentially do you more harm than good as you alienate clients or potential clients and there is a high probability that the responses will be intentionally inaccurate.
There is a new surveying technique that has been developed on the back of the proliferation of mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones where a mobile survey tool is used to conduct the survey. The survey has a mobile survey app downloaded to their mobile device and uses this in the field to attract interviewees in their natural environment. How about conducting a survey about coffee whilst stationed outside a Starbucks? Do you think that the interviewees would be relevant to the survey? Would they feel less threatened than if they were approached at home? Would they be more likely to provide pertinent answers to your questions?
If you answered “Yes” to the above questions, then you have only started to scratch the surface of the benefits of mobile survey apps.