However, what stood out on these surveys was a distinct lack of creative imagination and brand identity. There were no logos, no traces of color, no brand voices, messages or mentions of how the information will be used. One such survey was a plain white page with a string of 40-plus questions that were as poorly written as they were thoughtlessly conceived. One couldn’t help but feel like the whole survey process was an afterthought. I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to provide thoughtful feedback toward an afterthought. I relish the thought of marketers or graphic designers going into cardiac arrest upon learning such surveys were being used to represent their brands.

The brands we interact with and grow to love work tirelessly in crafting their messaging, their look, and their voice. They spend countless hours and dollars to deliver perfectly-positioned creative. They build a seamless, continuous, and consistent brand experience that extends from the customers’ first exposure to advertising all the way to their purchase and use of that brand’s product. Every touch point is carefully orchestrated to deliver the ultimate brand experience every time.

With so much effort invested in crafting the perfect customer experience and brand expression, it’s a shame when there’s one element that is only given a passing consideration — and it’s a tragedy when that element is the customer feedback process.

Measuring and improving customer experience are two of the most critical business functions driving long-term sales growth. Appearing before customers minus a well-executed survey strategy with dovetailed creative and brand voice is of the same as arriving to the championship game wearing nothing but your time-worn tighty-whiteys. It’s not pretty. Aside from compromising brand integrity, you’ll struggle to engage survey respondents in the process. The result: low response rates and unwillingness among customers to provide thoughtful feedback.

This year, I’m on a personal mission to help brands extend the seamlessness of their brand expression to their customer feedback initiatives. When they show up in front of customers, asking, “When you met our frontline employees eyeball to eyeball, how did we do?”, they’ll look and sound the way they intended: cool, composed, convincing. Let’s help the brands we love show up to the big game not only fully clothed, but ready to win. Along the way, let’s save marketers from having heart attacks because of afterthought customer touch points.

Regardless of whether you’re an owner of a small brand or an analyst at a large brand, nailing the messaging of your customer survey is critical to its performance. Before you deploy your next survey, take some time to involve your creative team or ask an outside resource for help to get it right. Your efforts will be rewarded with quality feedback and — who knows — your respondents’ gratitude for building a great survey experience.

Image courtesy of olarte.ollie – Flickr, Creative Commons (Attribution)

Behind the scenes, our new user management system works very similarly to the old system – but on the front-end, we’ve added new features and completely revamped the user interface to give you much more control and make it easier to manage teams of users than ever before. Here’s a run-down of some of the changes:

Users, Teams & Roles

Under our new system, you have access to the same number of users and teams as you had previously. However, you’ll notice a few big changes when managing users:

Roles

The biggest change you’ll notice is a new feature: Roles. Roles are a specified set of user permissions that allow you to quickly give the correct level of access to a user. Want to allow someone to run survey reports, but not to create and launch surveys? Set their role to “Reporter” and you’re done. Want to limit someone’s role to testing surveys? It’s already built-in.

In addition to managing the default roles, you can also create as many custom roles as you need to meet your needs, and apply them to people across your organization.

We think roles will make it much easier to manage user access throughout your organization.

Learn more about managing Teams & Roles »

Team Managers

In addition to the global Account Adminstrator, we’ve also created a Team Manager position.

The Team Manager can access all surveys their team is working on, as well as manage user permissions for their team. This should make the Account Admin’s job a little easier, as they won’t be the only person who can give users additional access when needed.

Learn more about Survey Team Managers »

Users can be on Multiple Teams

Users can now be placed on more than one team! This means that someone with a cross-team role in the “real world” can easily access surveys for all the teams they work with.

Learn more about our new User Permissions features »

Other Team Management Changes

We’ve also made some tweaks to the interface to make it easier to manage your users:

• Avatar Support – Users can now select avatars to represent them in the app. If your users wish to have custom avatars, they can associate a Gravatar account with their SurveyGizmo profile.
• Screen Names – You can assign screen names to users to help you keep better track of them.
• Team Names – Go ahead. Name your team anything you want. We’re cool with that.
• Team Colors – Administrators can assign teams different colors, which will apply globally to help you more easily know what team a user or survey belongs to on first glance.

Learn more about the User Management interface changes »

So when will this happen?

To see these new changes, all you have to do is login to your SurveyGizmo account. The new user management features will exist in all multi-user accounts beginning the morning of February 2nd, 2012.

The new user management system includes changes often requested by our users, so we’re excited to hear what you think! We think it’ll make it considerably easier to manage users in both small and large-scale organizations.

Want more information?

We’ve created an in-depth set of User Management System Tutorials to help you get going. Check them out for a detailed explanation of all the new features!

Boulder’s SurveyGizmo is a young, fast-growing online survey software company that aims to give business-to-business companies, researchers, non-profit organizations and educational institutions the tools needed to create online surveys, questionnaires and forms.

A privately-owned company, SurveyGizmo has nearly 150,000 users in more than 60 different countries. The company reached a milestone this past year, as a total of 200 million surveys were completed through their software. In 2012, the firm looks to double its office space by March and add 20 to 30 new employees.

The Camera recently caught up with SurveyGizmo co-founder and CEO Christian Vanek and talked with him about his company’s history, current services and what the future holds.

The interview below has been edited for clarity and space purposes.

1. What is the backstory of SurveyGizmo?

SurveyGizmo is a bootstrapped startup in every sense. The co-founder and I began SurveyGizmo in 2006 without investment capital or employees — both of us kept our day jobs full time that first year. The idea for SurveyGizmo came from our consulting clients who expressed the need for an affordable survey product that had all of the features that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

For about three months we worked very closely with 10 or so interested customers — they told us which features to build and how they worked. To thank them, they received free lifetime use of the software (most of whom still use the product today).

This approach was very different from the first company I started, where I built a software product without customer input based on my own designs. The evangelistic believe that working closely with customers is really what started SurveyGizmo growing. Today nothing is more important to our product design process than the input we get from customers — we’ve built some strong relationships with customers and they’re helping us succeed because they feel a sense of ownership in the product.

Read entire story 5 Questions with SurveyGizmo co-founder and CEO Christian Vanek

SurveyGizmo is all about customer happiness. Since the start the company’s focus has been to provide its customers powerful online survey software and deliver unmatched customer support. Customers include Fortune 1000 firms, as well as small and medium sized companies, researchers, educational institutions and non-profit organizations. Today SurveyGizmo has more than 150,000 users in 60 countries.

The company’s growth strategy relies very much on word of mouth. “Our beyond-exceptional customer service is what created the customer evangelism we needed to grow early on, and it continues today,” says Christian Vanek, CEO and co-founder of SurveyGizmo. Each customer who contacts the Customer Support team is asked to rate their experience. “For us, a higher net promoter score is more important than higher revenue,” adds Vanek. A company’s net promoter score is a measure of how likely a customer is to recommend that company’s product or service.

SurveyGizmo is also proud to be among the nominees for the 2012 edition of the People’s Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite Customer Service. The general public is invited vote for their favorite provider of customer service through February 10. To vote, go to People’s Choice Favorite Customer Service Award.

The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service recognize the achievements of call center, customer service, and sales professionals worldwide. Final Stevie Award results will be announced at the 2012 awards gala and presentations at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada on Monday, February 27. SurveyGizmo’s Customer Support team will be represented at the event.

We’re pretty nuts about our customers. We couldn’t do all that we do without you. Not only do you all provide the revenue we need to keep things running (which, let’s face it, is pretty important), but you also drive our development efforts. Support is the first place we look when we decide on new features to implement and bugs to fix. Our customers (and, by relation, our awesome support team) are what drive us forward.

That’s why we’re thrilled that the 2012 Stevie Awards have nominated our Survey Support team as the Customer Service Department of the Year!

A team of judges selected SurveyGizmo Support from various other support departments across the US and named us one of 11 finalists. The judges will make their final decision (and we’ll know the results) as of February 27th, 2012.

We’re excited to have been nominated, and look forward to finding out the results!

People’s Choice Awards

So what else? In addition to the formal Stevie Awards nominations, there’s also a People’s Choice Stevie Award for Favorite Customer Service Department! In addition to the awards determined by the judges, the Stevie Awards also open up voting to people around the world and ask them to decide who should win the People’s Choice Award.

And that’s where you come in.

We think our support team is the best in the country (heck, we’d venture to say the entire world). But it really doesn’t matter what we think – we’re interested in what you think. If you’ve ever had great service from SurveyGizmo Support, we’d love it if you’d take a moment and vote for us for the People’s Choice Award.

It will take less than 30 seconds of your time…and we’ll love you for it. (Okay, not true – we already love you. But we’ll love you more.)

You can vote for us here (or click the banner below). Thanks!

These are all good questions, but unfortunately there is no ONE good answer. The “right” number of questions for a survey depends on the survey, the survey audience, and your resources for acting on the information received.

This means we need to look at the factors that determine an acceptable length for a survey and use those to guide our thoughts on survey length (for both online surveys and offline surveys).

The main factors that determine an acceptable length for your survey are:

1. The relationship between you and the respondent.
2. The relevance of your survey’s subject matter to the respondent.
3. The thought put into the survey questions and how the survey flows.
4. The likelihood that you will use the information from the survey to make a decision.
5. The resources (time, money, and people) you have to implement the results of the study in a timely fashion.

Let me explain each factor so that you can understand how each affects the acceptable survey length.

1. The relationship between you and the respondent.

As an example, a very loyal customer with extensive knowledge about your product can stay engaged through a longer survey. The stronger the relationship, the longer a survey can potentially be. On the other hand, if a marketer is reaching out to the general public for opinions on a new product with no prior relationship to the target audience, he or she needs to be looking at a keeping the survey short and focused.

2. The relevance of your survey’s subject matter to the respondent.

If you are doing a survey to get opinions on golf products from golf enthusiasts then the survey certainly can be longer than a community survey on the workings of its local government. In general, people don’t mind spending a few minutes on a survey of passing interest, but will spend quite a bit longer on a survey that covers a topic near and dear to them.

3. The thought put into the survey questions and how the survey flows.

Respondent-friendly surveys are easier to complete and thus reduce survey fatigue. While writing the survey you need to think about how much effort it will take a respondent to answer the questions. The question type (e.g. ranking questions), the content involved, and the length of the survey questions all deserve consideration when aiming for a respondent-friendly survey.

4. The likelihood that you will use the information from the survey to make a decision.

It may seem strange to think that your actions after the survey can affect how a respondent feels about your survey, but a respondent can usually tell how useful the information they are giving will be. If your respondent is wondering how the information they provide can possibly be used or is wondering why certain questions are being asked, they will likely lose interest quickly.

5. The resources (time, money, and people) you have to implement the results of the study in a timely fashion.

If a respondent sees action taken as a result of his or her input then they are more likely to complete a future survey thoughtfully. Many surveys are used to identify improvement opportunities, but budgets and/or resources may limit the ability to implement the opportunities identified. It might take years to act meaningfully on information gathered from 100-question survey, for example, even if they were all essential questions and engaging for the respondent. In a case like this, the survey should be broken into a number of shorter surveys and the results of each can then be acted on in a timely manner. This will keep your respondents interested in taking part in each of your surveys.

These are five factors to consider when deciding whether your survey is too long or not. You should also obtain feedback by surveying a pilot group from the target audience to help with the same decision.

In my next blog post, I’ll look at things you can do to enhance survey response rate.

Image courtesy of lisalou66 – Flickr, Creative Commons (Attribution)

The SurveyGizmo File Library lets you save files in SurveyGizmo to reuse them in multiple online surveys. You can upload most file types – including logos to use in your survey designs, PDF’s for respondents to download, or any number of other media files.

The new SurveyGizmo File Library was built to make using files and images in your surveys much easier. While the engine under the hood remains the same, we’ve made some big user interface improvements to help you manage the files in your library more effectively.

Here are a few of the changes:

New View

Rather than a long, paginated list of files, we now allow you to see and manage all your files from one page. You can select how many files you want to view at once using the new slider bar at the bottom of the page (which appears automatically when you have more than 2 pages of files in your library).

Each file in your library now shows you an icon (or a thumbnail, if it’s an image file), the title of the file, and its size. Clicking on the file allows you to edit its attributes.

We made this change to allow you to get a better “bird’s eye view” of all the images and files existing in your account. From the File Manager, it’s now a lot easier to edit and manage files – mainly because it’s much easier to find the files you need.

Hover to Distribute Files

You can now also hover over each thumbnail and see:

1) A source URL for the file, and

2) An embed code that allows you to drop the file into any website. This is great for copying and pasting an image into a survey theme you’re designing, or even embedding it in your own website.

Mass Upload Files

It’s also now substantially easier to upload files in bulk, then add them to your online surveys. When you click the ‘Upload Files‘ button, simply hold down ‘Ctrl‘ (on your PC) or ‘Cmd‘ (on your Mac) and select as many files as you wish to upload from your computer. You’ll be asked to add a name and caption to each one, then confirm, and they’ll all upload at once.

Mass Delete Files

Additionally, you can now easily bulk delete files from your file library.

From the File Library window, simply select each file you wish to delete with a checkbox, then click the ‘Delete Files‘ button in the bottom right, and you’re done.

If you haven’t checked out the new file library yet, login to your account and give it a try! You can also take a look at our File Library Tutorial for more in-depth information about the changes.

Image courtesy of Jessica Mullen – Flickr, Creative Commons (Attribution)

Well, I knew that I was going to absorb all sorts of great market research knowledge at the event, so I had not thought much about conducting my own research study. As I sat in the airport, I tried to come up with an idea, but my attention got swayed by a fellow passenger waiting for the flight in sky-high heels. I just couldn’t imagine flying in something that uncomfortable…and then I knew what I would do.

A Qualitative Study

I’ve always loved Observational Research (a social research technique that involves the direct observation of phenomena in their natural setting), but up until now, I had not had the opportunity to conduct it personally. Market research and the market research industry in general are not known for being flashy or high-fashion (and I fit right into that group), but my NYC days had taught me to be a bit of a fashion police-woman. I notice what people wear. I sometimes recognize people by their outfits; which is a bad thing, because most people change their clothing.

So I had my topic! I wiped out the iPad and decided to purchase the Gesture Tally Question from the SurveyGizmo Marketplace. This way I could observe and quickly make a tally without too much distraction from the event. I decided to conduct a separate qualitative study each day. I would observe the colors people wore, if they wore jeans, and – to honor the woman that provided my airport inspiration – shoes. Using the iPad, I was able to create the surveys before boarding even started!

With my iPad in hand, I headed to the conference. The event was billed as corporate casual and I was ready to observe! The iPad was the perfect survey tool to use for this event. Whenever a new person walked by, I could easily make a gesture on the iPad survey to tally my observations. As an added bonus, I could just as easily switch to take notes on the same device. This was going to be fun!

Here are my results:

Day 1: Observing Colors

No surprise that the big colors at the event were Black, Blue, Grey and White. There were a handful of Green, Pink, Red, Tan, etc. But what really surprised me at first was how many people were wearing patterns (with no dominant color). I later consulted with some NY fashionistas, and indeed patterns were the big “in” thing at that time of year. I guess I missed that being in Boulder.

Regardless, using the iPad I was able to access the SurveyGizmo survey tool and quickly add a category for “Patterns” so that it had its own gesture and did not cloud the “Other” results.

Day 2: Observing Jeans/No Jeans

At the SurveyGizmo, jeans are the majority garb, but I wanted to see what the researchers at TMRE were wearing. After observing the attendees for a day, dress pants were the clear winner for men, and skirts/dresses were the hot items for women. I did see a speckling of jeans, khakis and capris in the group, but it was a much lower incidence than I anticipated.

Day 3: Observing Shoes

When Day 3 finally rolled around, I was ready to look at shoes. Several people were leaving straight for the airport from the event, so I figured there would be whole lot of casual, comfy shoes.

I was WRONG – I saw lots of dress shoes on both men and women!

While observing the crowd, I also observed that there were a lot more women in attendance on the final day of the event. Where were all the men? Had they left early? Were they in their rooms on a conference call? That would take some extra research. I also saw some other shoe options like sandals, sneakers, and even a pair of Crocs (a local Boulder company!).

Conclusions from the Qualitative Study

Looking back over the experience, this was a really fun observational research study – and I conducted it using a simple ipad survey! But let me guess: are you wondering why I didn’t list percentages or counts in the research results? Here’s why:

An observational research study is a qualitative study. I recorded all the people that were in the same session as me and nearly as many during the networking breaks, but ultimately the results were directional. Because of that, the percentages and numbers of my results would not give an accurate representation of all the people at the conference.

At the same time, with just an iPad survey, I did learn a lot about the most popular fashion choices of my fellow researchers.

And that maybe I need to change my mind about how fashionable market researchers are.

And that I think I need to go shopping ASAP!

Image courtesy of dennis.tang – Flickr, Creative Commons (Attribution)

We’ve also updated our library of survey templates! Unlike survey themes, a survey template is a set of pre-built survey questions that center around one particular survey topic. All SurveyGizmo users have access to our library of templates – when you create a new survey, just select “Use a pre-built template” from the New Project screen, and you’re ready to go. You can then customize the template to your heart’s content. (If you’d like more info, you can read our tutorial on how to create a survey from a survey template).

Additionally, you can now preview most of our templates from the website without having to log into your account. Just head to our Survey Guides section and browse through the survey examples. A few popular survey templates include:

• IT Satisfaction Survey Template
• Employee Survey Template
• Customer Satisfaction Survey Template
• Web Form Template

…& more.

Our Survey Guides section offers access to all the templates we carry (which currently stands at more than 75!) – and more are being added each day. Keep checking back to see what new templates we add in the coming weeks!

Image courtesy of Will Scullin – Flickr, Creative Commons (Attribution)

Over the past few years, technology has really shaken up the polling world. It started with the revelation that more than 1 in 4 Americans have given up their land line in favor of mobile phones. In response, Rasmussen Reports (who pioneered the use of automated phone polling techniques) adjusted their polling methods to include both phone polling and online surveys to reach those who have abandoned traditional land lines. Other polling services adopted similar techniques.

And that’s just one of the many ways technology is affecting the polling landscape. So we asked ourselves – how can technology make the political data collection world more efficient? Here are a few ways we came up with:

iPad Surveys & Exit Polls

One way to make political polls more efficient is to simply change the method you use to collect data. The iPad has had a huge impact on the world of mobile surveys – it only makes sense that it could improve exit polling as well.

Currently, most exit polls are conducted via pen and paper, which has worked well for years. Interviewers phone in results three times a day, and note the demographic data of the voters who refuse to participate.

Today, by using an iPad survey app in place of pen and paper, you can quickly and easily record data to a server. Real-time data updates allow polling organizations to see what’s happening in the moment, rather than waiting on their polling staff to report in 3 times per day. Just set up an iPad with a quick kiosk survey, and you’re on your way.

But what about the demographic component that pollsters report? Again, there’s an answer in the form of an iPad survey. By keeping a tally on an iPad or iPhone (using a tool like our Gesture Tally question type), pollsters can easily keep track of different characteristics of the people polled (or not polled, for that matter).

Using iPad Surveys to Collect Digital Petitions

Additionally, ballot initiatives across the U.S. are on the rise…and in order to get on the ballot, you need petition signatures. Collecting signatures by hand requires careful validation of each signature, as well as the name and address of the signee (which is a tedious task – something that most petition collectors are all-too-aware of). So why not make your petition collection digital?

With an iPad, a SurveyGizmo survey, and SurveyGizmo’s awesome Signature Capture question type, organizations can collect signatures from people on the street. Respondents can either sign the iPad using their fingers, or you can offer an iPad Stylus (if your respondents feel more comfortable signing with that).

By using an iPad survey and an online survey tool to collect petition signatures, organizations gain tremendous efficiency. All responses will be automatically synced to the server, and can then be quickly scanned to remove duplicates. This streamlines the process, yields better data, and makes everybody’s job a lot easier.

As the election season progresses, technology will continue to affect polling and data collection in numerous other ways. From computerized voting to polling, what other ways can you see technology changing the political landscape in 2012?

Image courtesy of Denise Cross – Flickr, Creative Commons (Attribution)