Using Survey Logic Effectively

For your survey to be valuable, you need to make sure that you’re answering questions that are as specific as possible. The broader the question, the less likely you are going to learn much about what your company needs to do to make changes. It’s great to find out that your customers are satisfied or unsatisfied about a department or area of your product or store, but if the question is too broad it doesn’t answer the “Why,” and without that answer you can’t make changes.

Still, the more specific your questions are, the longer your survey becomes, and survey length is a serious problem. So you need to figure out how to both ask more specific questions while also keeping the survey length as short as possible.

The key here is going to be survey logic. There are several ways to handle this: One option is that early in your survey you ask a broad question about all of the potential sub sections of the survey, such as “Which of the following do you see needing the most improvement (check all that apply)?” Based on their answers, the survey will transport them only to the specific questions that are relevant to the answers they selected. That will cut down on all unnecessary questions while grabbing their opinion on the things that matter to them.

Another option is to have a question before each section, then sub-questions that stem from that answer. Such as “How satisfied are you with the customer service department?” Depending on their answer, they’ll receive either different questions or no questions at all, moving their way through the survey. Either way, you’re helping reduce the size of the survey while asking more specific questions that should provide you with more relevant and interesting data.

It’s certainly not a perfect solution, as any customer that chooses multiple items in the check all that apply list (for example) is going to have to fill out a very long survey, but even so, this may benefit your company, because: You will still get the data for the answers they do complete. Those that select a lot of choices likely have strong opinions they are more willing to share. Getting specific answers may be more valuable than shortening the survey and asking broad questions anyway.

While it is by no means a perfect solution, it is a solution that could and should provide you with very useful data.