{"id":36642,"date":"2021-11-16T17:03:57","date_gmt":"2021-11-16T17:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/?p=36642"},"modified":"2022-09-28T05:17:58","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T05:17:58","slug":"how-to-increase-survey-response-rates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/blog\/how-to-increase-survey-response-rates\/","title":{"rendered":"You Ask, We Tell: How Do I Increase Survey Response Rates? Should I Shorten My Survey?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019ve been looking back over my 20+ years of various research consulting roles and during that time, I\u2019ve continuously fielded questions from clients and others within the industry. In this blog, I\u2019m going to focus on one question that continues to come up in conversations with CX practitioners and data analysts and my answer may surprise you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Do I Increase Survey Response Rates? Should I Shorten My Survey? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

My first instinct when asked this question is to ask, \u201care you really interested in only increasing your survey<\/a> response rate<\/em>, or are you interested in getting more responses?\u201d Those are two different things. Survey response rates are the percentage of responses you receive from the survey invitations you send out. Responses<\/em> are the absolute number of responses you receive, regardless of response rates. In many cases, you can actually increase the number of responses you receive while decreasing survey response rates by sending out more invitations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In most cases survey response rates matter little in terms of your sample providing representation of a population. What\u2019s most important is the absolute number of responses you have. For example, if I\u2019m trying to represent the United States population of approximately 325 million people, I only need a little over 1000 respondents for a confidence level of +\/- 3 percentage points. It doesn\u2019t matter if those 1000 respondents are acquired from sending a survey invitation to 5000 people (20% response rate) or 100,000 people (1% response rate). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only caveat here is that a lower survey response rate may be an indicator that some sort of response bias<\/a> is occurring: certain types of people may be responding more in comparison to other types. If that\u2019s the case, it doesn\u2019t matter how many responses you have. Your sample will still not represent the population. If you fear response bias, you should do a response bias study, but that\u2019s a topic for another blog post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Usually, when I point out to clients that they should be more interested in increasing the absolute number of responses they receive rather than just increasing survey response rates, they agree. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Begin By Increasing the Number of Outgoing Survey Invitations <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You should begin your efforts to increase responses by deciding if it makes sense to send out more survey invitations. Below, I\u2019ve identified three specific things you can do: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Consider Doing a Census: <\/em><\/strong>Some CX programs still engage in sampling instead of sending survey invitations to all eligible customers. If your program is sampling, consider doing a census. This will both increase the number of responses you receive and give you the opportunity to identify and rescue more at-risk customers.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
    1. Scrutinize Your Contact Data:<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>Are a significant portion of your records getting removed because contact information is either missing or wrong? If you obtain customer contact information from business units, such as stores, hotels, dealerships, etc., it\u2019s important to look at sample quality at the unit level. It\u2019s also helpful to examine the amount of sample records received from business units compared to their number of transactions. Units with low samples in proportion to their transactions probably need to focus on better ways to obtain customer contact information.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
      1. Invite All Customer Segments: <\/em><\/strong>Are you missing some segments of your customer population? Not obtaining contact information for specific customer segments often has to do with information system issues. For instance, in the earlier days of automotive CX research most companies only surveyed warranty-service customers. They didn\u2019t survey customers that went to a dealership and paid for the repair\/service themselves (customer-pay events). The reason was simply a system issue. Companies didn\u2019t receive those transaction records from their dealerships. Now, most automotive companies have remedied that issue and they survey both warranty and customer-pay service customers.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

        Next, Revise Your Survey Invitation<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

        The next step is to look at your survey invitation process and the survey invitation<\/a> itself. You should look for two general things. First, is there anything that might prohibit customers from receiving the invitation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n