In Business World There’s a good chance that at one point or another, you’ve probably relied on surveys to help give you helpful insights that help your business grow. However, you’ve also probably seen that not all the survey data you collect seems reasonable to use.
The reality is, when people feel like they’re under pressure to provide answers or if they’re in a rush, they often provide you with the answers they think you want to hear rather than the truth. This can create a “feedback gap” where the data may seem useful at first, but the actual insights are way off.
If you rely too heavily on those skewed results, you may create more risk for your business than if you didn’t use data insights at all. The good news is that getting better feedback doesn’t have to be too difficult, nor does it add too many incremental costs to your employee or customer outreach.
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Make the Survey Anonymous
If survey participants, typically your current employees, feel like any negative comments they leave might be used against them in some way, there’s a good chance they’ll simply “play it safe” with the survey answers they give. They’ll either soften their critiques or just skip the tough questions entirely – none of which will give you the honest results you’re looking for.
One effective way to solve this problem is by making your survey results anonymous. Most survey platforms let you toggle off the collection of names, IP addresses, or email signatures for submissions. This lets you reassure your participants at the top of the form that their identities won’t be recorded and that all answers are confidential.
Stop Using Leading Questions
How you phrase your questioning is an important factor when trying to get more survey responses. The formatting of the question itself can also often decide the answer before the person even starts typing.
For example, we all want to hear that our work is great, but asking “How helpful was our new feature?” is basically fishing for a compliment. It assumes the feature was helpful to begin with, which leaves little room for someone to tell you if they struggled with it.
To establish a reasonable baseline of how people really feel about the topics they’re providing answers on, you’ll want to make sure all your questions remain neutral in tone.
Instead of assuming everything went well, ask, “How would you describe your experience with this feature?” This is a small shift in formatting, but it allows your survey respondents to reflect their own experiences, not just confirm your own thoughts or ideas.
Keep the Survey Short
We’ve all been there – you open a survey and then see the progress bar at the top and realize you’ve got a long way to go. Survey fatigue is a big reason why many businesses don’t get highly accurate results. If a survey feels like too big a commitment, respondents will be less inclined to take the time to complete it. Instead, they’re just starting to click through just to reach the finish line.
If a question doesn’t directly help you reach your data collection objectives, they simply remove it. Even if a data point seems “nice to have,” it isn’t worth the risk of losing your participant’s attention if it distracts from the core information you’re trying to gather.
Use Smart Survey Incentives
You don’t need to have a huge budget in place to get individuals to finish your survey accurately. Even small incentives, such as a gift card or a promotional code, can make participants feel that you’re wasting their time.
Other survey incentives, such as digital rewards with no direct monetary value, can be worth exploring. For example, you could offer participants early access to new products or services, a helpful industry template, or a gated white paper or technical guides. These rewards deliver value to your target audience without requiring any additional investment.
Add an Attention Check
Submission bots or uninterested survey respondents can quickly degrade the quality of your data. To weed out types of submissions, insert a simple attention check in the middle of your survey. This is just a question that looks like a normal prompt but gives a specific instruction, like “For this row, please select ‘Strongly Disagree.'” It’s a quick litmus test to see if people are actually reading what you wrote and answering correctly.
If someone misses that instruction, you can assume their other answers are unreliable as well. It’s much better to have 50 honest, attentive responses than 200 responses from people who were just clicking buttons at random.
By filtering out these entries, you can be sure your final report is based on data from people who were actually paying attention.
Ask One Open-Ended Question
Multiple-choice questions are great for numbers, but don’t really give you the reason why your survey respondents chose a certain option. By adding at least one open-ended text box at the end of your survey, you give people a chance to express themselves more effectively. This allows them to raise points or issues you might have missed in your structured questions.
Often, these typed-out responses are where the most honest and specific insights live. Since they aren’t confined to your preset categories, people can be more specific about their frustrations or ideas. This qualitative data adds significant depth to your survey insights and can highlight the specific problems that need your immediate attention.
Get Better Results From Your Surveys
Ultimately, getting high-quality data from your surveys depends on how you design the survey and present it to your audience.
When you prioritize anonymity, neutral question formatting, and respect for your participants’ time, you make it easier for them to provide more accurate answers, yielding greater value from your investment in the process.
Author Name: Cindy Mielke
Author bio: Cindy is passionate about the incentive industry. In addition to her role as Vice President of Strategic Partners here at Tango, she is a Certified Professional of Incentive Management who proudly serves on two industry boards. When she’s not working, Cindy enjoys spending time with her family—including three cats, two dogs, and a horse—and sharing her love of nature as a Nebraska Master Naturalist.
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