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Are your surveys an expense or an investment?

This article from our archives offers three strategies for assessing and increasing ROI of surveys.

If justifying the cost of employee or customer surveys is an annual or semi-annual ritual in your organization, take a serious look at your survey program's ROI (return on investment). Like any good corporate investment, surveys should demonstrate value well beyond their cost.

Difficult to do? Yes, if you think only of the intangible benefits of surveys. Letting customers and employees know you value their opinions is an important intangible benefit of customer surveys, but does it translate into increased loyalty? Tracking customer satisfaction over time makes for interesting charts, but can it lead to rising sales? Can you translate employee survey or 360-degree feedback results into greater productivity or reduced costs?

To be able to answer "Yes," and to realize the full benefits of any survey, you should be able to answer these three questions before you begin:

* What business problem is this survey intended to help you solve?

* How can you quantify the benefits of the survey program?

* What is your follow-up strategy?

Below we describe specific steps you can take to answer these questions.

OUR TOP 3 ROI STRATEGIES:

1. Don't conduct any survey unless you have a compelling business reason to do so.
2. Quantify the value of your survey before you begin.

3. Have a follow-up plan in place - make it publicly known and execute it as promised.

1. DON'T CONDUCT A SURVEY UNLESS YOU HAVE A COMPELLING BUSINESS REASON TO DO SO.

A "compelling business reason" begins with a clear business problem you want to solve. "Finding out what customers think about our services" can lead to a survey with no clear focus, which means no clear action plan will emerge from results.

So begin by stating the problem, then identify the decisions and actions that will be affected by the results. Here is an example:

Problem: We're losing business from some of our most profitable customers, but we don't know what influences their decision to go elsewhere.

Decisions affected: How best to allocate resources between new products, product enhancements, service improvement, and marketing for maximum retention of profitable customers.

Desired result: In the next three months, increase loyalty by 15% within our most profitable customer segment(s) while maintaining or increasing current margins.

Clarity of purpose helps you keep surveys brief. Brevity improves response rates and enables you to survey more often. Frequent, short surveys mean you can make plans and decisions based on timely, targeted feedback rather than waiting for results of that annual ritual, the 150-item employee or customer survey.

2. QUANTIFY THE VALUE OF YOUR SURVEY BEFORE YOU BEGIN.

Are you losing valued employees and finding that the ones who stay behind are your weaker performers? Unwanted attrition costs you time and money in recruiting, selection, and training replacements. It also frustrates managers, and inhibits productivity. Reducing unwanted attrition by a mere 10% can easily repay the cost of a well-designed employee survey.

Focusing that annual employee "satisfaction" survey on organizational effectiveness can help you to identify sources of both poor performance and attrition. Is it inadequate infrastructure? misplaced incentives? fear of layoffs? management overload? Conflicting goals? Supplement surveys with often surprising and powerful insights from exit interviews or anonymous online focus groups conducted by an independent third party to protect employees' anonymity. [Learn more about online focus groups at www.surveycompany.com/onlinesurveys/focusgroup.html.]

ESTIMATING ROI: First, estimate the cost of replacing a good employee (typically 1.5-2 times their annual salary and benefits), and multiply by your annual voluntary attrition. Then assume you are able to use survey results (and possibly other data as well) to cut the attrition rate by some conservative percentage, say 10%-15%. Subtract the "new" from the "old" total attrition cost. Then compare this to the cost of designing, implementing, and reviewing survey results and making targeted changes. If you don't come out ahead, you may be paying too much for your surveys!

The same kind of analysis applies to customer surveys.

A good survey can help you understand the root causes of attrition (customer or employee). That means you can target resources to address those causes. Targeting beats relying on a shotgun approach or letting the status quo continue to cost you valuable customers or employees, draining dollars from your bottom line.

3. HAVE A FOLLOW-UP PLAN IN PLACE - MAKE IT PUBLICLY KNOWN AND EXECUTE IT AS PROMISED.

Don't leave respondents wondering if you have ignored their input. Closing the feedback loop builds credibility and good will. Plan to implement strategies such as these, and you'll easily double the return on your survey investment.

* Within 1 week after closing the survey, send out a follow-up message summarizing highlights of the survey results (for example, response rate, percent satisfied overall, and highest- and lowest-rated items). Let everyone know when more detailed results will be available and where.

* Let employees know they will have an opportunity to participate in follow-up discussions within a month after the employee survey is completed.

* Require managers to present departmental results and develop action plans with team members.

* Within no more than 3-4 weeks after closing an employee survey, post results to the company Intranet

* For customer surveys, require account representatives to contact key customers to review their responses, especially when ratings are low.

* Publicize changes and results of changes implemented in response to survey feedback.

Does promising to close the loop mean you may have to report negative results? Definitely. Won't that damage the company image? Not if you respond promptly and candidly, and show you are willing to learn from employee or customer input. As an added benefit, you are likely to notice an improved response rate next time you survey, because people know you are paying attention.

For more information...

Contact us for a FREE 15-minute consultation to help you estimate ROI for your survey program. Call us toll-free, 877-666-2486, or send email to ROI@gainensurveys.com.

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