Survey design best practices

Survey structure

Digital surveys include questions that can be compared across a customer journey. These in-the-moment surveys are also streamlined to integrate within the online user experience.

Survey structure.

To customize surveys, review and edit the pre-built surveys in Digital and tailor them based on a company's operation and brand voice. Remove questions that are not relevant and edit question wording, as needed. If applicable, update the respective translated surveys for questions with changes.

Pre-built surveys.

Overall metrics

Applies to General Intercept only. The survey begins with brand-level Likelihood to Recommend (LTF) question, which is a powerful predictor of future spending patterns and a measure of positive word of mouth in the industry.

The Overall Website Satisfaction question is useful for measuring an overall score for a particular interaction through the Digital channel; it can be useful for comparing against scores for other channels.

Primary Reason for Visit + follow-up questions

Applies to Always-on and General Intercept only. Gather additional data on the primary reason for the customer visit and whether the customer was able to complete the purpose of the visit. Ask whether the customer attempted to accomplish this task via another channel. This can be helpful in determining what motivations drive traffic to the website and uncover areas where customers are consistently unable to complete a task.

Primary Reason for Not Completing Purchase

Applies to Behavioral Intercept only. Focus on understanding the reason why customers are not completing the purpose or goal of their website or app visit. This information can then be used for service recovery or closing the loop with the customer, depending on the underlying issues identified.

Open-ended feedback + contact information

An open-ended comment box is displayed so that customers can enter any additional thoughts they had and provide more details on their experiences. Additionally, the survey ends with an optional section to provide customer contact details to facilitate close-loop activities.

Survey length

Surveys should be kept as short as possible while still effectively being able to gather useful operational feedback. Surveys are an extension of the customer experience and, in the case of Digital, embedded within the experience itself. Only asking those questions that are necessary improves that experience and demonstrates respect for customers' time. Since the goal is to have surveys appear as short as possible, dropdown menus are preferred over vertical picklists. To improve response rates, Medallia recommends that Digital surveys are less than 10 questions long and contained on a single page.

Survey scale

Medallia supports these survey scales within surveys: 1-5 (5 point), 1-7 (7 point), 1-10 (10 point), and 0-10 (11 point). Medallia can only accommodate one of these scales across all three strategic surveys.

Medallia recommends an 11-point scale from 0 to 10 because 11 points allows for granular data with more differentiation than scales with fewer options. For instance, it is easier to tease apart those experiences that elicit a 10 from those that elicit a 9 to highlight top performers. An 11-point scale aligns with the NPS methodology, allowing for industry comparison. In addition, utilizing an 11-point scale on Digital surveys allows for comparison and alignment across the organization when viewing feedback.

Medallia can also support a 1-5 scale, as a shorter scale is often more user friendly on a digital platform. However, selecting a scale could have implications as programs expand to other parts of the business.

Scales.