How to get more survey responses

SHARE THE ARTICLE ON

We all know how surveys help in understanding customer satisfaction an attracting innovative ideas for your business. Given that there are various survey tools that make the entire process easy for you, but that doesn’t cut the efforts you have to put to design the survey and survey questions.

But what if you have a perfectly designed survey with accurately phrased questions and the entire survey has the potential to bring out the best responses for you, but you don’t have a quality audience or enough audience for that matter, for the same purpose.

It might seem that it is hard to gain an audience to attempt your survey, but it is actually in your hands. And given the following factors, the next time you wish to get enough survey responses, you shouldn’t have any trouble with the process.

Let’s get into the matter step by step from the problems to the solutions.

Step by Step guide to Descriptive Research

Get ready to uncover the how, when, what, and where questions in a research problem

The problem with getting enough survey responses

Getting the right audience is a tougher task than it looks. Having wrong set of sample to take your survey can yield incorrect results. And you surely don’t want to take that risk.

Another problem is with getting the audience to notice your survey. We have been the audience to someone else’s survey and we all know how lightly we take some of them. There’s a serious channelling problem right there.

Start Creating Descriptive Surveys Now

Who are the right respondents and where to find them?

Depending on the topic of your survey, the respondents are going to vary. Let’s say you are doing a customer satisfaction survey; in this case you will need people who have used your products and wish to contribute to the feedback and following improvements.

In the other case, say you are conducting a survey to gain knowledge about the market, you are going to need the respondents who are active in your market field and firmly know their wants and needs.

Once you have decided what kind of respondents you want, you can further go on to find them. But how?

Keep in mind that the respondents you choose are going to affect directly on your result and indirectly your business. So you can accordingly choose your respondents from the following list of places:

Workplace – Closest respondents are your colleagues. You can offer to participate in their surveys in return and hence be valuable respondents for each other.
Personal networks – You can also ask your friends and family to participate in your surveys provided they have enough knowledge on the topic.
Online forums – This is the mine of respondents. People in the forums have idea about pretty much everything and there is a high chance you will find skilled panellists to be your respondents.
Social media – Being the hotspot of customer engagement, for known reasons, you can circulate your responses around on various platforms and groups.
Emails – Most formal place of communication. This can be a medium for the respondents who do not use social media, to get in touch with your survey.

Your own website – Do not forget to do this right away before going for anything else. Your website gets the attention of people who might already know about your survey topic. Make use of them to contribute to valuable respondents.

Start uncovering high quality insights now!

Challenge of sample size

The sample size is the number of people you include in your survey responses. Keep in mind, too large a sample size can surely give you a large data size but not all of them is going to be useful. You might waste your time interpreting the data that is not relevant in the first place.

Likewise, too small a sample size can lead to inadequate data and you might miss out on valuable business insights.

Points to look out for while choosing your sample size:

Population size – Depending on your population, decide how many respondents you want to involve. Make sure that the sample size is representative of your population.
The margin of error – This is a range of values within the lower and upper bounds of the results of the survey.
Confidence level – this depicts the percentage of how much confidence you are in your data accuracy.
Standard deviation – This shows the variation in the data. Slight standard deviation means the data set elements to the mean.

Exploratory Research Guide

Conducting exploratory research seems tricky but an effective guide can help.

Distributing your survey

The prime thing that matters is how you distribute your survey. It is important to channel it through the mediums that are close to the audience.

Let’s take a look at some type so f ways in which you can distribute your survey over the various channels:

Legacy survey distribution methods

These are the methods that have been used for decades. But old is not always gold. They come with a lot of issues with data quality and slow data gathering. These methods are:

Telephone surveys – These are conducted on phone calls. Like everyone these days don’t receive calls from unknown numbers, telephonic surveys don’t really stand a chance.
In-person interviews – Going to every respondent’s place and interviewing them just doesn’t sound good in today’s world as people are more privacy-oriented and don’t wish to have a conversation with strangers.
Google search ads – Investing so much in these ads just to get that little cross button clicked by the respondents is not what an ideal business would like. This medium doesn’t guarantee survey success.
Panel sampling – This includes employing research experts to study the ongoing market changes and conduct research. But since everyone spends more time on their smartphones, this method is not much effective.

Better survey distribution methods

Here are some of the survey distribution methods that work way better in today’s world.

Random device engagement – As a substitution to panellist, this helps you distribute your survey inside the mobile apps where people are more engaged.
Sharing on social media – Another huge user engagement is found on social media apps like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. With well-framed surveys, you can stand a chance against the rest of the surveys and get responses.
Sharing on the website – Your website’s traffic will give you corresponding survey responses.
Hire a market research agency – This is what most businesses do. Appointing a staff to totally focus on market research and surveys will help you get the most out of it.
Sharing on email – This method of leveraging your existing customer base proves to be an effective method of gaining maximum survey responses

Net Promoter^®, NPS^®, NPS Prism^®, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld. Net Promoter Score℠ and Net Promoter System℠ are service marks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.

Download Market Research Toolkit

Get market research trends guide, Online Surveys guide, Agile Market Research Guide & 5 Market research Template

Explore all the survey question types
possible on Voxco

Explore Voxco Survey Software

+ Omnichannel Survey Software

+ Online Survey Software

+ CATI Survey Software

+ IVR Survey Software

+ Market Research Tool

+ Customer Experience Tool

+ Product Experience Software

+ Enterprise Survey Software