How Bad Are We? (Survey Invite Review #1)
I received survey invitations from three different companies over the last three weeks. Each takes a starkly different approach to wooing participation. One of them I admire; the other two offend me.
The invitations brought to mind two feature-length articles we wrote for our newsletter subscribers in 2017: Building a Better Customer Satisfaction Survey and A Snazzy Revamp of Survey Invitations.
Over the next three posts, let’s take a look at these survey invitations, one at a time. They offer perfect examples illustrating what Versta Research considers best practices (and things to avoid!) in deploying customer satisfaction surveys.
Here’s the first one, reproduced verbatim, except for the company name:
We’d like to offer our apologies for the departure delay you experienced at ORD (Chicago). We would like to offer you an opportunity to participate in a review of our processes and communications.
Please take a moment to share your experience by taking this survey.
We know your time is valuable, so thank you for your feedback. We look forward to welcoming you onboard again soon.
Sincerely,
The Bad Airlines Company
What they did right:
- The invitation is short, simple, direct.
- The visual design (which you can’t see) was well done, and it had a big yellow Start Survey button prominently displayed in two locations, including one “above the fold.”
What they did wrong:
- This is a less-than-fully-sincere survey. It is mostly a communications ploy to apologize for bad service.
- It focuses on them, and they even say so. They want to learn about their processes and communications, not about you and your experiences.
- They do not tell you how long the survey will take, and they give you no good reason why taking it will benefit you.
If your company really cares about doing a survey right, each of these “rights and wrongs” relate to easy best practices that you can learn about and put in place. It just take a little thought and a tiny bit of effort. Here are two great places to start learning even more: Building a Better Customer Satisfaction Survey and A Snazzy Revamp of Survey Invitations.
