Survey Advantage Press

If your membership is large I suggest not surveying everyone, but break membership into subsets and manage last survey dates. Then you can get information and support your members, but not badger your membership and cause dissatisfaction.

Some organizations can get away with surveying their members more often, but I don’t know how your response rates have been in the past to comment here.

There is a definite threshold and you don’t want to go over the line.

The key is to understand their appetite for research, look at the size of your membership to determine if you can segment out and only survey a portion of membership and still get the statistical significance necessary for a quality study, and look at the incentives you give to members who participate.

Having a study on a website many times doesn’t work as well and typically an email with the link is the way to go if you want higher response rates, reminder management, tracing. E-newsletters with a link may work, but it may compromise the data or cause box stuffing.

If you can share the results of the research it would help as well. We have found that if a member filling out a research study sees value in the results and will get a copy of the report free, they are more apt to participate in more studies. In one association they go to members just about every 90 days with a study, get high response rates, but always share the report with anyone participating. Others pay for the published study.

They pick the right studies and put out a quality report so members look forward to them. Members see value in participating and the research has become a membership benefit! In this case the research studies got the #1 rating on satisfaction of all the services offered to membership. That is what may want to strive for.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

Recently an association executive was trying to learn how to approach a membership award program for their conference.  Below are a few things to consider.  Granted this is a professional organization so take what you would like from it.   Here is the response.

Hopefully the ideas below helps as you decide how to approach.

1) You may want to start off with maybe a few awards that focus on the key, most important awards. I have seen members dread going to their big dinner / award dinner because they state “I see more firewood being handed out and I never go to them”. Firewood meaning plagues. Be careful and pick your battle. Members will appreciate it and you can test the waters and expand from there.

2) Depending on your membership a plague is a nice gesture and something visible. Certificates may work if in a nice frame and something they would hang in their office or out in front. I noticed you are a teacher association so maybe the certificates would be nice right next to their degree. Also, academia may be more open to recognition versus trade associations so you may be onto something.

3) I don’t think the money is the thing. A nice plague or certificate should be fine. It is the recognition more than the money in most cases with professional organizations.

4) Definitely would give them a little token or money to come out and stay.Again, nothing crazy, but maybe the flight and motel room.

You know your membership and what gets them jazzed more than anyone so I suggest going with your first instinct or go out to members and ask, but start small if you can and then grow from there if possible. First year maybe 5 awards, and then increase as feedback comes back and you see the response from members and winners.

Also, promoting the awards is important and giving PR to those winning members. Maybe a short case study posted on your website explaining what they did to win and why they are a star peer.

From October 29th-31st, 2009 the National Association of Quick Printers will hold their annual conference in Austin, TX.  Survey Advantage has been asked to present a session and moderate a session.  Below is a summary of each session.  Please visit www.naqp.com for more details on the conference.

Session 1: “Leveraging Customer Feedback to Expand Client Share, Drive Referrals, and Preserve Recurring Revenues”  Mike Casey, Survey Advantage

Learn how printers have implemented processes to preserve recurring job revenues, drive referrals, and uncover opportunities to expand client share. Learn how to fully leverage your existing relationships to grow your business. This session will also cover ways to streamline the process by using technology and customer information you already have in your operation.

Session 2: “Panel: How to keep customers coming back for more” Moderator, Mike Casey, Survey Advantage

A prerequisite to being a printer today is producing quality on time. And everyone has solid customer service so there goes that differentiator! Your peers will share how they create and maintain loyal relationships by making their customers feel unique and special and change the game for competition knocking on their customer’s doors. Learn what successful, profitable printers are doing beyond shipping quality on time with great customer service. Learn the little and big things they do that keep customers coming back every time.

Associations, corporations, non-profits, small business owners always ask this question.  It is a loaded question, but here are a few things to consider.  Response rates can vary from <10% to >80% depending on a lot of things and how you approach the study.
 
1) Topic is very important.  How important is it to them to share their brain and heart??  Get inside their head and know their appetite for the topic you are throwing at them. 
 
2) Positioning is important.  You must sell the idea to participate.  I am not saying with incentives, but tell them why it is important TO THEM. 
 
3) Know your audience.  If your members are really engaged with you, you share lessons learned from previous surveys, then you have a great foundation for high response rates.  
 
4) If you don’t send out a survey a week to members then you have a good foundation.  Surveys should have meaning and pick your battles when asking members for help.
 
5) Try to keep them short whenever possible and tell them that.  “This is a five question survey that will only take 2 minutes”.  That will get better response then “This is a 125 question survey that will take you what feels like forever”. 
 
6) Think about each question before you send it to them.  Wording, clarity of purpose, understanding what information you want back and what format should be taken into account.
 
These all may seem obvious, but it is amazing how many surveys I get that start asking my gender, marital status, and income when frankly there is nothing in it for me, it is wasting my time, and I wonder what they plan to do with that information to get at me!   I just received a birthday card last week for a trip to the Virgin Islands.  It was my birthday the week before and that scared the *&*() out of me because they don’t know me, I don’t know them, it was a scam mailer, and I wonder what else they know about me.   Be relevant and respect your audience.

Without getting long winded on this issue, membership retention communications starts with truly understanding their opinion on a regular basis rather than when renewals go out. I may be biased toward the survey model, but I have seen this as very effective if resources are dedicated to watching for those answering neutral or negative on questions relating to future action such as rejoining, recommending, or overall value of the association. This can be done on your typical annual assessment, but it isn’t timely.  Short, 5 question surveys delivered after transactions, events, or any experience can uncover their feeling about the association at that moment. Why not address a membership need 6 months before renewal or right after a horrible experience so you can make it right immediately? Response time on issues is what helps retention, plus understanding what the expectations are and delivering on them.

Associations that understand membership needs and then hone their offerings to fit like a glove have the highest retention rates.  Not rocket science, but just throwing stuff out there without assessing the value is a mistake.

I am probably stating the obvious, but hopefully it helps someone.     Back to the coffee.     Take care,

Many associations conduct their own membership loyalty surveys and exit surveys, manage their own member satisfaction metrics and research studies.  Sometimes the response rates are low and difficult to understand why.  Here are a few things to consider when  running a survey or research study.

1)Keep surveys as short as possible and know your audience. 

2)Know both their appetite for the kind of survey you are doing and also how strong your relationship is with them.

3)Look at your e-mail invitation to the survey.  Messaging is so important to grab attention.

4)Look at the words used. You may be getting caught in spam and it isn’t being delivered.

5)Look at the subject line to make sure it is enticing and connects with the responder.

Most of the time you should only need to remind once and then you become an annoyance.  If you need to go with multiple reminders then something is going on.

Leveraging customer testimonials is a great way to improve your marketing approach. Most businesses do not do this effectively or don’t make it part of their overall marketing strategy. It is very easy to collect testimonials.

The easiest way to get testimonials is through a paper or e-surveying process either done annually to all customers or individually after jobs are completed. In the survey add the question “Is there anything you think we do particularly well or anyone you want to recognize?” You will quickly get dozens of testimonials to use. All you need to do is immediately send back the comments to the customer asking their permission to use in marketing.

99% of the time they will say “sure” and now you have your dozens of testimonials. Another way is to add an approval box after the question asking their permission to use any comments in your marketing efforts. Any checked off are fair game to use and you have documentation that they gave the OK to use it. Good luck!

Ever work with a supplier, business partner, or vendor when your relationship was virtually dead and you were actively searching for someone else to supply that service or product to you?  You were walking or still buying from them, but trying like mad to get out from under them.  They made life so miserable for you, were very difficult to do business with, were rigid in their policies, did not come through for you when you needed them.   You felt liberated when you could finally tell them to go pound sand.   You then went on to tell everyone you could how aweful it was and now how good it was. 

Now as a business owner or manager, we all need to look in the mirror.  I will be the first to confess that I have at times made life miserable for customers, but not on purpose.  Maybe you are now saying “Boy, that business is messed up”.  Well, if you have been in business more than 20 years and haven’t had a dissatisfied customer I want to hang out with you.  Things happen, but we need to own up to it, fix the issue quickly and stay on top of it.  Process breakdowns, lack of proper resources, miscommunications can cause train wrecks, but typically the problems start small and if left uncorrected come to a head.  When we hear of these problems we apologize and can’t believe it happened.

Does your business know when customers are so frustrated with you that they are trying to leave?   The larger the enterprise, the trickier it is to know.  The smaller the enterprise, the easier for the customer to gently walk away without telling the truth to your face.  Here are a true story from a recent survey we conducted.  A printer recieved a loyalty rating, those who say they would recommend you to others, of 53%.  Average printers run in the 92% range here.  Nearly 100 years ago they carved out their niche and owned the market by locking out competition, but now things changed and their ex-customers were telling them why they left and really gave it to them.   The “Walking Dead” or those still buying, but feeling hostage explained their efforts to find someone else.  I felt aweful for the business because it was slowing dying and management continued to blame the economy and the shift to the internet as the reason.  There is some truth in that, but customers were also walking to other printers.  It was not the quality of the product as much as the level of service that caused the walking dead.

Lesson learned:  keep the pulse of your customers over time, react quickly, and don’t become complacent.     

Here are a few things to consider when you look at customer loyalty and keeping the pulse.  Think of the critical satisfiers for your customer base.  Assuming your product is solid, think of the things such as responsiveness to e-mail and voicemails,  shipping product on time, having clear invoices, estimating properly, estimating timely, communicating project status on a continuous basis, issuing credits timely, shipping the right products,  having product in stock for quick delivery.  Pick the top 4 or 5 things that if done well will put you in the best position.  But, don’t neglect the little things that can drive people crazy.   

Great Customer Loyalty is driven by treating each customer in a unique and special way while doing the basics well.

A quick post today to close out the week on Customer Database Management.

I cannot stress the importance of maintaining an accurate and reliable customer database. Of course this should include contact, company, mailing address, email, etc. Most importantly – the information in the database must be clean. That means names and companies spelled and punctuated correctly, and not in the dreaded all caps format.

If you aren’t email marketing to your current customer database, you are missing out on an extremely easy, fast, and cost effective medium. If your contact list isn’t up to date however, you can throw easy and fast out the window. By taking the time today to make sure the information goes into your CRM correctly, you can save yourself hours later cleaning bad data out of an excel sheet.

One of the most commonly questions we hear at Survey Advantage when working on a survey project is “how many will I get?”  Of course this is in reference to survey responses, but the question is easier asked than answered.  In hundreds of surveys ran in the past few years, I have seen response rates range from 1%, all the way to 80%.  There are a couple of key factors that will drive response rates:

1.  Your relationship with your customers.  Would you fill out a survey for a fast food order?  Doubtful.  Would you fill out a survey from a supplier you order from regularly?  Possibly.  Would you fill out a survey for your son or daughter’s daycare?  Absolutely. The value of the relationship is crucial in how many will respond.

2.  Past performance.  Have you surveyed before and done nothing with it?  Maybe you have a history of poor customer service.  If a customer has it in their head that they are just a number, and you don’t care about them, they are much less likely to take time out of their day to tell you how you are doing.  In our eyes the most important part of running a survey is telling the customers what you learned, and then doing something tangible with it.  If you can prove over time that you are listening to customers concerns, and trying to improve, then they will be candid with you.

3.  Contact Database.  Your database needs to have both CURRENT customers, and their CORRECT contact information.  Often a customer comes to us with an email database of customers that has everyone they’ve done business with in the past five years (or longer even.)  Just because 25% of your current customers will respond to a survey, does not mean that 25% of customers who haven’t done business with you in 3 or 4 years will.  Aside from that fact, large, unmaintained lists may have 25%-35% undeliverable rate, compared to 5% to 10% for a properly maintained list.  They can’t respond to it if they don’t get it.

So like I said, easier asked than answered.  But let me try anyway.  Generally in some of the industries we are working in we see the following: Printers 20% – 35%, Marinas/Boatyards: 35%-50%, Childcare/Educations: 60%-75%, Airport Parking/Car Rental: 5%-10%, Association Membership: 5%-20%, Franchisor Membership: 15%-35%.  Of course all these numbers can vary greatly, depending on where you fall in 1,2 and 3 above.  I encourage you to share your experience with survey response rates in the comments section below.