Surveying Customers?
Are there proper proceedures for surverying consumers? Does anyone out there know of a good survey application (preferrably free!) that can be used to survey consumers? I am looking to survey my target market to measure their current satisfaction level but dont know what the best way of reaching these customers. I also am unsure of how to code and measure this data once I have received it. Any suggestions would be great... Thanks Launch Pad!
customer surveys
A lot depends upon what kind of business you have and what kind of information you are seeking. I'm more knowledgeable about "brick and mortar" businesses than e-commerce so my response is going to be from that point of view.
google.docs is a great tool, but I'm getting the impression that when you are saying customers in your question you are really talking about "potential" customers and means you haven't had any contact with them yet. If this is the case there is a good chance that your email will not be answered or that it will end up with their junk. You might have to resort to "old-fashioned" methods and simply pick up the phone and start cold calling people to, at the very least, tell them about your survey, sell yourself a little bit, and ask for "permission" to send survey so they can help you.
You wanted to know about coding as well. I've looked at goggle.docs instruments before, seen it used, but never used it myself. I don't know if it will code the data for you and then display the results or if it as even able to transform the data into something meaningful once it has been coded. I hope someone else can answer that one. However, let it be said that survey design is a very sophisticated field and you should get advice from a someone knowledgeable and well versed in it.