Receipt Survey Benefits

If you’ve worked in the survey research world for very long, you know how important a representative sample is for your research efforts. It’s not just about random sampling either. It’s crucial that you also have a high response rate, because a very, very low response rate indicates there may be something about those that responded that different from the rest of the population.

We’re all familiar with what happens in a variety of retail stores. You complete your transaction and the cashier tells you that you have been selected to complete a survey, often for a very small prize. Indeed, the prize is so small and the incentive so valueless that very few people complete the survey.

They simply shove the receipt in the bag and move on.

Most likely, many of these large businesses simply have no better way to gather information. They do not know or do not care about the risks of analyzing from poor response rate samples and they move forward with their research anyway.

But let’s assume that these companies recognize that their research probably isn’t representative of the population. What do these surveys tell them? Employee Ability – These customer satisfaction surveys are one of the only ways to judge employee performance.

While the same risks apply, the surveys are linked to an employee and any data is probably more data than they have otherwise, even if that data may not be 100% accurate. Negative Response Indications – One of the problems with poor response rates is that you usually get only the two extremes: the happiest and the most annoyed.

But for some of these companies, that may be enough. They may be interested in how many “annoyed” and negative responses they receive from the surveys, simply as a measurement of how effective the customer service is at the company. Gathering Information/Answering Different Questions – In addition, the company may not be looking at the information they receive as if it is representative of the entire store.

They may simply be trying to answer simple questions. For example, perhaps they changed something in the business recently. If they receive a lot of negative responses about that change, it doesn’t necessarily matter to the company if the sample is representative.

Negative responses are negative responses, and the company doesn’t want these responses to occur. Possible Representative Sample – Finally, it is possible that the sample is representative, or representative “enough.” Weighting and regression analysis can help companies ensure that the information isn’t cited as gospel as is, and in some cases it’s possible that the sample does seem to carry enough of the demographics of the store as necessary to draw conclusions. So while the surveys do, in theory, not provide nearly as much value as most surveys would indicate, they can still have a variety of uses to the company that runs them.

Customer satisfaction surveys are one of the few ways to collect data on your business, and for most of these companies the risks of misinterpreting that data are well worth the rewards. If you’re interested in learning more about customer satisfaction survey software that can help you run your business, contact SurveyMethods today.