How Scheduling Surveys Can Help Your Brand

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How Scheduling Surveys Can Help Your Brand customer retention rate
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It’s not always easy to launch a survey manually in real time. You might be planning a vacation around the time, or the survey launch time is not ideal for the target audience. 

What do you do then? 

The answer is simple. You use an online scheduling survey tool. 

Surveys can give you the right insights to boost business growth. However, ensuring that the survey reaches the right people at the right time is important. Scheduling surveys can help you do so. 

By carefully planning your survey for scheduling, you can maximize response rates, gather actionable insights, and minimize bias. Launching your surveys at the right time can ensure that you collect data that is representative of your target audience. 

In this blog, we’ll explore the importance of a survey schedule and the factors you should consider to leverage it to its full potential.

What does scheduling surveys mean?

Survey scheduling is the process of planning and organizing when you will launch your survey. The process includes determining the time of the survey launch, identifying the target audience, and selecting the data collection method. 

Instead of launching it manually, you use online survey tools to schedule surveys for automatic launch. 

The goal of scheduling surveys is to ensure that you conduct your survey at the most appropriate time and efficiently. It helps you reach the target audience at the right time and achieve a higher response rate. 

For example, a brand can benefit from scheduling surveys for post-customer-service interactions. You can gather real-time insights by scheduling surveys that trigger after a customer service interaction. 

An e-commerce company can schedule a survey on its website to appear after a user lands on targeted pages. For example, you can trigger a survey on the checkout page or product pages to appear after a user spends 5 seconds on the page. 

In survey scheduling, there are several factors you need to consider.

What are the key factors you should consider when scheduling surveys?

You need to consider several key factors when you schedule surveys to ensure that it yields quality insights. Here are the key factors. 

1. Timing:

You need to consider the right time for your survey to ensure it reaches the target population. The right time helps you ensure that your target population is available to offer their insights. 

Avoid business periods, holidays, or times of crises or major events. 

2. Length of the survey:

The survey length is a driving factor whether you schedule your surveys or not. The longer your surveys are, the less likely it is that respondents will complete them. 

So, if you want to schedule longer surveys, it’s best to do so when your target audiences likely have more free time. 

3. Duration:

Determine the appropriate time period to keep your surveys live. A short duration may not ensure a high response rate. But it should also not be made live for a long time. 

Determine the duration based on the complexity of the survey and the mode of data collection. 

4. Target audience:

You should know who you want to collect data from. This will help you decide the best time to schedule surveys for the target audience. 

For example, if you want to gather data from school students, there may be better times than the morning as they would be busy in school. 

5. Method of data collection:

The mode of collecting the data can impact scheduling surveys. For example, when it comes to online surveys, you can either trigger them based on events or keep them live 24X7. Whereas you may need to schedule a phone survey during certain hours. 

These are the five key factors to keep in mind when you are considering surveys for scheduling. Now let’s also look at the different scenarios to schedule surveys.

> Meet respondents where they are. 

> Drive completion. 

> Deliver seamless survey experiences.

What are the different survey scheduling scenarios?

Here are some of the many scenarios you can schedule surveys.

1. One-time surveys → 

Surveys that do not need to be repeated. For example, you may want to validate a product concept. You don’t need to conduct repeated surveys for this purpose so you can schedule a one-time survey.

2. Regular surveys →

For surveys that you need to conduct at regular intervals, you can schedule them ahead of time. For example, scheduling surveys such as quarterly employee experience or monthly customer satisfaction surveys can help you efficiently save time and conduct surveys.

3. Event-based surveys →

Surveys such as post-purchase surveys or customer-service interaction surveys are event-based surveys. You can schedule them to trigger based on certain events or actions to gather data from respondents while the experience is still fresh in their minds.

4. Seasonal surveys →

These surveys can help you understand customers’ holiday shopping habits or summer/winter travel plans. You can schedule surveys like these in advance to give participants the time to complete them and also so you can gather relevant insights at the right moment.

5. Rolling surveys →

You can conduct these surveys on an ongoing basis. For example, you can gather feedback from new customers after they make their first purchase. You can schedule surveys for first-time buyers, never to miss an opportunity to engage a new customer. 

The choice of scheduling surveys depends on your business needs or research goal. By selecting the appropriate time, you can maximize the data collection efforts. This leads us to the advantages of the survey schedule.

What are the advantages of scheduling surveys?

Scheduling surveys ensure that your survey reaches the right audience and you collect representative data. This leads to more accurate insights and helps make confident and informed decisions. 

Here are some of the advantages of survey schedules. 

1. Maximize response rates: 

Determining the best time and scheduling surveys can help you increase the response rates. By finding out when your target audience is available and willing to take the survey, you can target more audiences and gather more data. 

2. Increased survey efficiency: 

When you schedule surveys in advance, you better manage your time and resources. You don’t have to rush through to launch a survey. Instead, by scheduling it beforehand, you can focus on other work and not worry about the survey. 

3. Improving data accuracy: 

Scheduling surveys enable you to gather data in real-time. It helps you conduct surveys promptly, thus allowing you to gather data when needed. It helps to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the data. 

4. Improving respondent satisfaction:

Scheduling event-based surveys such as customer-service interaction survey shows that you care about their experience and opinions. Scheduling surveys that reach respondents at the right time demonstrates that you respect their time. 

5. Track respondents: 

You can launch and re-launch a scheduled survey after a period of time. This helps you gather data over time and track data gathered from respondents. 

Scheduling surveys enable you to track the data back to a previous time or data. This means you can see the changes in the data and identify patterns or themes. Additionally, you can segment survey results on a weekly or monthly basis. 

Scheduling surveys effectively impacts the desired outcomes of your survey. While this concludes the importance of the survey schedule, let’s look at the disadvantages.

What are the disadvantages of scheduling surveys?

Here are some potential disadvantages to note when considering your surveys for scheduling. 

1. Scheduling conflict: 

Even with careful and organized planning, you may experience scheduling conflicts. For example, you may miss opportunities for data collection for an important event if you solely depend on scheduled surveys. 

2. Limited reach:

Work schedules, geographical locations, or other factors can lead to lower responses. This can make it difficult to gather data from a representative sample. 

3. Over-surveying:

Surveys scheduled at inconvenient times or sent too frequently can lead to survey abandonment. Scheduling too many surveys can cause survey fatigue and lower data quality. 

Careful planning and considering the target population can help you minimize these challenges. While you should schedule surveys in some scenarios, relying on them for all survey projects is not the best.

When should you avoid scheduling surveys?

Here are some situations when you should not rely on scheduling surveys.

1. Peak business periods →

It’s best to avoid scheduling surveys during peak business hours when customers and employees are too busy. For example, if a retail business survey during the holiday season, it won’t yield quality results, with employees busy preparing for the holiday shopping demands.

2. During major holidays →

Holiday seasons are also not an ideal time to schedule your surveys. With people traveling and spending time with family and friends, they won’t bother to check your surveys.

3. During major crises →

Natural disasters, political turmoil, or social uproar are not a good time to survey the population. No one will be inclined to offer their insights in times of crisis.

Voxco is trusted by 500+ global brands to gather, measure, uncover, act on actionable insights.

Wrapping up;

Effectively scheduling surveys is essential to ensure that your survey reaches the right people and yields accurate and meaningful data. It can help you obtain high-quality data and improve your business decision-making.

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