If you’ve ever sent out a lengthy, in-depth survey asking stakeholders for feedback and received an underwhelming number of responses, you’re not alone.
Your survey recipients are busy, after all. At the first sign of technical issues, confusing questions, or large blocks of text, many won’t hesitate to close the tab. It’s a challenge to keep recipients engaged enough to provide the invaluable feedback your organization needs and hit “Submit.”
Fortunately, there are many ways to improve your strategy and increase survey response rates. From using SMS apps to simplifying your language, these ideas will help you create engaging, accessible surveys and streamline operations in the process.
1. Define clear goals for each survey.
Before you create a new survey, clarify exactly what you hope to accomplish with the feedback. Why are you seeking stakeholder feedback, and what will you do with the data once you have it? Will it help you improve programs, engage constituents, or better understand customer motivations?
Depending on your audience and current priorities, you might set goals such as:
- Steward donor relationships by making them feel heard.
- Improve customer satisfaction and retention.
- Get insight into your event’s successes and challenges to improve the next one.
- Evaluate and improve patient satisfaction.
- Gather information you can use to personalize outreach for college applicants.
- Analyze and improve the quality of a healthcare provider’s care.
- Seek improvement ideas for your nonprofit’s website.
- Gauge and increase engagement with your alumni network.
Your core goals should guide every aspect of your feedback survey strategy, including which questions you ask, how you format the survey, when you send it, and which stakeholders you send it to.
For example, say your goal is to collect information you can use to improve donor stewardship. For this type of survey, Double the Donation recommends asking questions like “What engagement opportunities have you enjoyed the most?” and “Is there anything else our nonprofit can do to improve your experience with us?” Supporters’ answers will help you tailor outreach to their preferences and add new activities to your stewardship strategy.
You might send this survey to all donors once a quarter or first-time donors within 48 hours of their donation. To engage busy supporters, include mostly multiple-choice questions with a few optional open-ended questions for those with time to say more.
2. Make your surveys easy and accessible.
The best way to boost survey response rates is to ensure your surveys are easy for recipients to fill out. All stakeholders should be able to complete your feedback form quickly and seamlessly from any device.
Improve your surveys’ accessibility and secure more valuable feedback by using these tactics:
- Write questions using accessible language. Use simple language that anyone can understand, avoiding technical jargon and industry-specific terminology that might confuse recipients.
- Offer your surveys in multiple languages (if relevant). If your constituents are multilingual, translate your survey questions and instructions into all relevant languages so as many people can participate as possible.
- Leave some questions as optional. While you want to encourage recipients to answer every question, they may not feel comfortable or have time to respond to them all. Recipients should always be able to write “N/A” or skip a question if needed.
- Optimize online forms for mobile. Many of your survey recipients will access the form via phone or tablet, so it must be fully functional and easy to navigate on smaller screens.
- Consider automated text surveys. Sending surveys with SMS is a great way to get stakeholders’ attention quickly. Plus, you can make providing feedback even easier by letting them respond to survey questions via text.
With the right tools, you can also save your survey recipients’ time by prefilling fields like name, email address, and other basic information you already have. By following a personalized link, these stakeholders can access your feedback survey and skip right to the questions that ask for their opinions. Sending surveys via text also lets you skip collecting personal demographic collection if your CRM sends the text message asking your survey questions.
3. Collect and analyze constituent data.
To make the most of the feedback you receive, you must have strategies for recording, organizing, and analyzing that data. Simply sending out surveys may support your goals by showing constituents you value their opinions, but gathering insight from survey responses is the only way to truly improve decision-making.
Create surveys using tools that automatically collect and store response data in your organization’s CRM. For instance, if you use Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud or NPSP, your form builder should be able to flow response data directly into the donor profiles in your Salesforce database. This way, you’ll record donors’ preferences alongside information about their giving and engagement histories for future use.
Once you receive enough responses, analyze all feedback to note any trends or patterns in the data. Identify the most common answers or suggestions and discuss them with your team to determine next actions.
4. Use Salesforce-native apps to boost efficiency.
It’s essential to leverage survey tools that work in tandem with your CRM so you can easily collect and organize feedback data. For Salesforce users, this means using products that are native to Salesforce.
When you opt for Salesforce-native apps instead of third-party solutions, your organization can access the following benefits:
Invest in Salesforce-native apps that streamline form creation, feedback collection, and data analysis. For instance, a university could use Mogli’s Salesforce-native SMS app to create linear and branched surveys incoming students can take right from their text messaging apps. Or, by using both Mogli and Formstack, admissions counselors might collect basic information over text and then send prefilled forms for students to give more in-depth feedback.
The right solutions will boost your organization’s efficiency and quickly improve your feedback survey strategy. With streamlined form creation and data collection, your team will have more time to focus on enhancing the aspects of feedback collection that need the most attention.
After implementing these strategies, remember to thank everyone who completes the survey. Your stakeholders are more likely to provide feedback again in the future if they know you value their opinions. Show your appreciation with a thank-you email, text, or small appreciation gift, and let them know when you act on their feedback to boost trust.
