Jeffrey Henning in his article Do phone surveys have a future? argues that while phone surveys have suffered at the hands of online surveys there is still a place for the telephone in the market research process. A point which I completely agree with.

While online surveys are essentially our bread and butter we have recently completed a number of recent projects where telephone interviews have been used successfully to capture the type of data that an online survey could never get.

Online surveys are great at quantitative data collection and are pretty good at qualitative surveying but they don’t allow for the type of probing questions which are quite often essential in qualitative research. (e.g. I see you rated the service as poor, why is that?, what would you do if you were in charge?)

The added bonus of telephone interviews is that respondents are generally far more candid with their responses compared to self completed surveys. Why? – I figure it has something to do with the fact that people are generally reluctant to commit their more sensitive views in written form.  Additionally, writing down your responses takes far more effort that just telling someone what you think.

To sum up, more than often we use telephone surveys to collect qualitative data so we are able to establish the lay of the land. The findings from the telephone interviews can then be used to implement an on-going monitoring which can be done effectively  by online surveys.

One of my favourite market research strips from Dilbert.

In the article “Online feedback’s a healthy choice” the point is made that online surveys can provide restaurants with a cheap and efficient ways of receiving feedback from patrons.

While comment cards have long been used by restaurants to get feedback they can create an issue when it comes to the collation and analysis of the feedback data. Most survey tools will offer a built in reporting tool which can do this job easily for you. Much better than having a bunch of comment cards lying around gathering dust.

The biggest issue that any restaurant will have in implementing a feedback system using online surveys will be getting patrons to actually login and participate. Incentives can go a long way in motivating respondents to login and complete your survey and promotion of your survey is equally as important.

I would suggest placing the survey URL on the bottom of your till receipts so that every customer receives an invitation after each time you  dine. If you want to get really flash you could issue a unique id number with each receipt and get the respondent to enter this in the survey. This will enable you to track purchase data along with satisfaction data.

If you make the effort to ask your customers what they think of your service make sure you ask for their email addresses and permission to send news updates, special offers or go the whole hog and start a newsletter. Inviting your customers to complete a survey can be a great way to start a conversation and relationship that can go on for years.

While online surveys are a great way to capture customer data they are by no means the only way. When asking your customers for feedback you want to eliminate as many steps as possible and make it as easy as possible. Requiring the customer to login to a website may deter only most keenest.

This is why we also use BigEars. BigEars is able to capture customer feedback via telephone. It is great for both quantitative and qualitative feedback and enables customers to be able to provide feedback by simply phoning a freephone number and answering an automated survey over the phone. How’s that for ease of use?

And if you are keen on online surveys we have some fully supported options, DIY options or we can even point you in the direction of some decent free options.  Talk about choice.