Getting to know your clients is a long-term process. One of the best ways of gathering information about them is through customer surveys that use wise questions. There are numerous survey question types that you can use. So many, that you can actually get confused – unless you read this article!
We will cover different types of survey questions, share some best practices for creating effective questionnaires, and include a few good survey questions to ask.
https://survicate.com/blog/types-of-surveys/
A good survey question helps you gain definite customer feedback and inform business decisions. Its asked timely and simply. A good survey question meets a respondent at a relevant customer journey stage or touchpoint. It delivers explicit answers, are short and candid, encourage replies, and feel effortless.
Another essential trait of a good survey question is that it must always deliver value that will help you improve customer experience.
Whenever you think of conducting surveys, we think of two things
There are many types of survey questions. Always formulate survey questions to help extract the right data. Let’s now look at the survey question types you can choose from.
Open-ended questions require respondents to speak up instead of choosing one of the answers given. They allow respondents to share their ideas freely so that they might catch insights you won’t expect—pair open-ended questions with closed questions to grab more context.
Open-ended questions make sense when closed-ended survey questions aren’t enough, like in a Customer Effort Score (CES) survey.
Bear in mind that using too many open questions in one survey can discourage respondents from completing it, so use them when such input is indispensable!
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Free-to-Use Customer Onboarding Feedback Survey Template
This open-ended question asked during the onboarding process will help you discover why your customer chose your product. It allows them to share their thoughts and emotions, which wouldn’t be possible if you selected the closed-ended question format.
Closed-ended questions are a survey question type that offers a limited list of answers to choose from.
Compared to the above survey example, this survey format minimizes the effort required to collect insights.
Your respondents don’t have to write a single word to answer your closed-ended question, as all they have to do is click on the appropriate option. Closed-ended questions can help when you want respondents vote for alternatives. Let's say you hesitate and customer voice will help you segment customer base better.
They are also a great choice when looking to collect a high volume of answers – if all people have to click, you can expect a high response rate.
So, what are the benefits and shortcomings of this survey format?
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Free-to-Use "How Did You Hear About Us' Survey Template
Such a question would allow you to find out how your customer found out about your company. When using such a survey format, we recommend adding the option “Other,” which – if clicked – would allow the respondents to write their answer in a text form.
Nominal questions are nothing else than scale-based and closed questions. However, in this survey question type, numbers are used only to tag an answer to make it easier to categorize and analyze.
This survey question type can be used to collect answers to both objective and subjective matters, which makes them especially popular for psychological and medical evaluations. Let’s now look at the pros and cons of this survey type.
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Free-to-Use Demographic Survey Template
Among others, such a question could be used for demographic and census purposes. It could, for instance, be used to determine how many respondents would choose to vote from one of the above locations, if you were to hold an election.
Likert scale is another popular survey question type, where respondents are asked to answer on a scale. The types of responses range from one extreme to another (such as “strongly disagree” vs “strongly agree”, or “terrible” to “superb”).
There are four key areas you can evaluate within this survey example: Not familiar, Slightly familiar, Moderately familiar, Very familiar and Extremely familiar.
While the opposite edges of the scale require a strong stance, this survey question format also gives you the option of a neutral response that falls right in the middle of the scale. Likert scale surveys are great for when you want to quickly collect answers to a number of aspects.
A hotel could, for instance, ask for an evaluation of cleanliness, perceived standard, outdoor facilities, or dining. Further in this piece, we’ll provide you with survey question examples such as this one.
Time to assess the pros and cons of this survey question type.
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Here is an example of a Likert scale question from our free survey template library. As you can see, it allows you to rate a few aspects of a company’s offer, all in a single view. You could opt for such a survey to keep track of the overall customer experience health.
Free-to-Use Likert Scale Survey Template
These type of rating scale surveys, as the name might already suggest, have a set order of answers on the options list. As opposed to nominal questions, ordinal question responses are always linear, which means you can better see the relativeness between each consecutive answer.
Rating scale questions allow you to quantify responses on areas such as perceived value, satisfaction, or feelings, i.e., such that are often subjective in nature. As you might have already guessed, the above-mentioned Likert scale question is one type of such a query.
Rating scales are among good survey questions to ask when you want to understand the variety of emotions or preferences among your respondents. That’s what makes them a popular market research survey method.That being said, let’s summarize the advantages and disadvantages of using them.
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Rating scale survey questions let you rank beliefs and personal convictions, in a quantifiable form. A very good example of the rating scale question is the NPS survey that helps assess the sentiment around a brand.
Free-to-Use NPS Survey Template
One of the simplest survey question formats, they are also known as ‘polarized’, as they offer only two, strong stances as answer options. Therefore, they are best used when you want confirmation that a process was successfully finalized, or wish to confirm an assumption you have.
Yes or no questions make a great element of a conversation flow. In the example below, you can see the chatbot conversation flow, where different types of survey questions appear one after another.
Btw: Do you know that Survicate offers Intercom Messenger Integration? See how it works.
What are the pros and cons of these simple survey question types?
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Free-to-Use Newsletter Feedback Survey Template
Here, you can see a question on how interesting your newsletter was for your clients. This particular survey has the additional "neutral" option, but you don't have to include it if you're after more polarized results.
A multiple-choice question is a survey question type that lets respondents select more than one option from a list of predefined answers. It’s useful when you want to evaluate a particular situation in more detail, and give respondents more options for justifying their point of view. For instance, to find out why they decided to choose your product over a competitor’s.
When it comes to the benefits and drawbacks of using this type of survey question, they are as follows
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You can use a multiple choice questions to prioritize the next topics for your blog! Include this question in your next reader interest survey.
Free-to-Use Reader Interest Survey Template
As indicated by its name, picture choice questions are closed-ended questions that include images as answers instead of just plain text. You can use them either when it’s easier to present answers in an image format, or to enrich your text answer to make the survey more engaging. They work well when you want to review visual aspects of something such as your logo.
Here are the pros and cons of using this type of survey question.
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Free-to-Use CSAT survey template
In this type of CSAT survey, emojis replaced a numerical scale to help the respondents convey their emotions better.
Matrix questions are presented in a table format, allowing you to include a few questions in a row, with the same response options. You can either use the Likert scale or rating questions in your matrix. This type of survey question can be very useful if you want to evaluate a customer experience, for example.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using matrix questions?
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Free-to-Use Voice of Customer Survey Template
A matrix question can be used in a Voice of Customer type of survey to discover which aspects of your product matter the most to your customers. This well help you prioritize development areas.
Dropdown questions allow you to present your answers in a scrollable list. It’s a good choice of a survey question type if you’re planning to include a lot of answers, for instance, if it’s a demographic question.
Dropdown questions tend to be less overwhelming than multiple choice questions, as respondents have to scroll through the list to view all their answer options.
Dropdown questions also have their pros and cons.
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Asking demographic questions, including age will give you good insights about your target audience. That's why it's a useful question for buyer persona survey types.
Free-to-Use Buyer Persona Survey Template
A ranking question is a type of survey question where you ask respondents to order answers in terms of their importance. This helps you achieve two things: gain an understanding of how people feel about each option provided, and see how popular each option is. They can help you decide which product features to prioritize or even what type of blog post to write.
Ranking questions might be more time-consuming for respondents, so if you can use a different question format instead, then do so. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of using ranking questions.
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Ranking questions help discover which aspects of your service are the most important to your customer. Here's an example of a ranking for a food delivery service:
With the types and examples of survey questions to ask now clear, it’s time to discuss some of the best practices. Make sure to give the tips below a thorough read to ensure that you’re selecting the best survey format that aligns with your use case and are getting the highest possible response rates. Let’s begin with the common mistakes you should avoid.
With the common mistakes out of the way, it’s now time to discuss good survey ideas to follow.
By asking good survey questions, you can address a variety of use cases and expect a number of benefits. These include, but are not limited to:
To get a full overview of what surveys can help you achieve, we highly recommend giving our other pieces on the blog a read.
To sum up, make sure that your survey questions are asked in a simple, straightforward manner. You should avoid leading questions, as well as using jargon, as it can potentially put off respondents. Whenever possible, adjust the surveys format so that there are as few questions and steps as possible. All of this will help collect relevant results and boost your response rates.
With a customer feedback tool like Survicate, you’ll be able to ask all of the above-mentioned survey questions (and others of your choice). Now, on the 10-day free trial, you can test all Business plan features. Simply sign up here and start collecting user feedback today.
Originally published by Kasia Kowalska and Anna Rubkiewicz.
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