Question specificity is an important part of crafting your customer survey. Vague questions may not elicit useful information. On the other hand, overly specific questions may not be relevant to all of your survey respondents. Finding the right balance of specificity can impact the usefulness of the information you gather.
For example, let’s look at the following three questions:
A) How would you rate your experience with our services today?
|
Excellent |
Good |
Fair |
Poor |
B) How would you rate the quality of the services you received today?
|
Excellent |
Good |
Fair |
Poor |
C) How would you rate the amount of time you waited for service today?
|
Excellent |
Good |
Fair |
Poor |
Ideally, the information you collect should help you make decisions about your business. Question A is much less useful for future decision-making than Questions B & C. While it could be used for marketing purposes, such as advertising that “80% of our respondents had an excellent experience with our services,” it’s not very helpful in driving a specific action to improve your business.
Questions B and C are more specific in determining how the customer felt about the service they received: in Question B, the customer is asked to rate the overall quality of service, while Question C deals very specifically with the amount of time the customer waited before being served.
Question B can help a company gauge whether the quality of their services warrants enhancements, while Question C targets any concerns regardling how long customers are waiting to be served.
So be sure you know exactly what type of information you are looking for to start with and then word the questions accordingly. It’s the surest way to get just the right information and make your questionnaire as useful as it can be!