Smart employers regularly utilize an employee job satisfaction survey, an employee exit interview survey, and occasionally use surveys to ask employees about their attitudes, suggestions, and preferences.  Employee surveys are also useful to collect information or employee feedback as to the effectiveness and usefulness of employee training and informational meetings. Employee surveys can reveal unfounded and potentially dangerous rumors which are circulating among employees. Employee surveys should be considered to solicit employee input before initiating organizational change or changes in employee work rules, pay or benefits.

The data from an employee survey provides the employer with useful information to keep the organization on the right track. No one knows better the strengths and weaknesses of an organization and its management and then the employees who are responsible for delivering the employer’s product or service. The employees know what is working and what could work better. They are your greatest information resource. A survey allows an employee to share their concerns and perceptions with you in a safe environment. Employees who might never have the nerve to speak up in a large meeting or stop by your office to share an insight or observation will often be comfortable offering their thoughts in a well constructed survey. This is especially true if the employees know from your past actions that you will seriously consider their input.

Today almost every employer has a business email system and/or a business web page which makes doing an employee survey easier than ever before. If you are a small company without a lot of technical support there are survey software packages which allow you to easily design an employee survey, distribute it to employees and provide a convenient way for employees to return the survey.

Survey software often comes with employee survey templates and customer survey templates in one package. Survey software tools range from simple to complex and many software distributors offer simple survey software tools for the first time user that can be upgraded at a later date to include more complex survey and analysis tools.

When looking for survey software it is important that you are comfortable with the data analysis tools incorporated in the software.  Developing and delivering the employee survey is only half the battle. It is important that you have the capability to easily sort, analyze and interpret the data. Information from an employee survey or job satisfaction survey is powerful but only if you understand it and use it to make changes or confirm current practices are working.

The key elements you need to think about when designing a customer satisfaction survey are: what are the right questions; is the survey in a format that is easy for the customer to answer; and how will you compile, interpret, and using the data you gather from the survey to improve your customer relations.

Traditional customer surveys were conducted in person while the customer was at your store of office or by telephone or a mailed survey after the customers had concluded their business with you. Today email and online customer satisfaction surveys are more popular choices.

Once you collect your customer’s email addresses an email or online survey is easy to deliver and easy for you to create and update. The email or online surveys are convenient for the customer to respond to, and the information provided is easy to compile and sort for your information and use. You can even set up an automatic response thanking the customer for returning the survey.

There are customer satisfaction survey software products available that allow you to easily create customized customer satisfaction surveys and to analyze and interpret the data with built in cross tabulation and filtering tools. These customer satisfaction software products range from basic to sophisticated and variations of the customer satisfaction survey software  is used by small business owners with little or no technical support and Fortune 500 companies.

Regardless of the method you use to deliver the survey you need to keep it simple. A good survey should take the customer only a few minutes to answer.

Ask the customer what you need to know. Don’t load the survey up with esoteric questions. Ask relevant questions like:

• Are you satisfied with the purchase you made?
• Are you satisfied with the service you received?
• Are you satisfied with our company overall?
• How likely are you to buy from us again?
• How likely are you to recommend us to others?
• What did you like about our product?
• What didn’t you like about our product?

You will get a higher response rate if you offer incentives to those returning the customer satisfaction survey. Maybe a coupon, cash or offer to enter the respondents in a contest or drawing.

Regardless of the delivery method you need to ask these questions in a timely manner after the customer receives your product or service. If too much time elapses between the time the customer makes the purchase and the time they answer the survey the responses will be less reliable. As time passes recollections fade and the customer may even be confused as to which company or product you are asking about making the customer’s answers totally useless for your purposes.