The Power of Surveys

I'm a fan of surveys.

I've used surveys throughout my career to help me gauge helpdesk customer satisfaction, effectiveness of communications/training and sometimes to determine how well an I.T. project is going (from my customers' perspective). There are dozens of survey tools available, but typically I use Survey Monkey for its ease of use..

I only have a few rules about surveying.

1. Surveys should be made of not more than 8, clear, concise, unambiguous, well thought out questions.
2. Each survey should take less than 2 minutes to complete.
3. The survey results are always shared with my team and my customers, usually posted on a portal for everyone to see - whether good news or bad.
4. Most times, the last survey question is an open ended one. How can we improve? (the experience, process, training or communications).
5. I usually allow anonymous responses (I send out the invitations to specific invitees, but don't track the responses by individual). I really believe it allows for more open, honest feedback.

As long as you limit your surveys to important issues and don't spam your employees or customers, my experience is that most people will fill them out.

Sometimes you find out more than you bargained for.

We were conducting a post system implementation review and wanted to find out how our customers' "go live" experiences were. While I knew that many sites were struggling with the new system, I suspected that part of the reason was the (low) level of priority that local management had given to preparing for the project.

And so I did something a little sneaky.

I prepared one survey, but sent it to two distinct groups; Managers and End Users. The survey results for the two groups were pretty consistent until we reached a question about site readiness for the "go live".

While the majority of management thought their sites were well prepared, 85% of their employees felt they weren't! We identified a clear disconnect between site management perceptions and those of their staff.

Based upon the open ended question at the end of the survey, it was clear that the site management were not nearly engaged as they said they were. According to employee comments, managers rarely spoke about the importance of the project, never updated employees on progress and didn't allow adequate (or in some cases ANY) training practice time for the employees to get comfortable with the new system.

While we conducted site readiness assessments before we went live, we made the mistake of asking the managers only.

Lesson learned.