Every day, week and month, your patrons’ inboxes are inundated with customer surveys. From your local pharmacy to retail stores to restaurants to your local municipality, there isn’t an organization (or business) that is not seeking their feedback.
And you don
’t want your patron survey to just add to the “clutter” – and their survey fatigue.
Survey fatigue is becoming a more common problem for any organization – or school district – that wants to collect regular data. It can occur because of the aforementioned large volume of surveys sent for customer feedback (survey response fatigue) or because of the length of time it takes to complete each one (survey taking fatigue).
If your school district is thinking about running a survey, there are ways to reduce “survey response” and “survey taking” fatigue for your patrons. Having conducted hundreds of phone and online surveys for clients, here are our top five tips:
- Limit the number of questions – 30 questions for telephone surveys and 10-12 questions for online ones, plus a few quick demographic questions.
- Test your survey to ensure it doesn’t take too long to complete – eight to 10 minutes for telephone and five to seven minutes for online.
- Make sure all the questions are applicable for the intended audience. And take it one step further by considering “skip logic” to ensure your respondents see questions relevant to them.
- Don’t over-survey your patrons. Ideally, if you plan to send out a regular survey, it should only be annually or biannually.
- Ensure your patrons know their voices are being heard and the district will use their responses for planning future projects, improving the climate, etc.
Making an effort to reduce survey fatigue will increase your chances of patrons responding to your surveys and getting the data you need.
