Why Your Employee Survey Approach Doesn’t Cut It
In today’s digital age, we are bombarded by an incredible amount of inquiries of all sorts, from NPS surveys on websites to QR codes at store checkouts and, not to mention, countless emails. Our devices and heightened accessibility have created an environment of information overload, and while we all know how valuable our opinion is, it is hard to imagine that the majority of people make their voice heard when called upon. Faced with this barrage of surveys and inquiries, the healthy thing to do is put one’s head down and ignore most, if not all, of them.
Unlock great experience with the right insights and action at the right time
As Alan Porter notes in a recent article for CMSWire, the results of most surveys will probably never be used. However, I would go one step further than that and recommend not using the data from them. Think about it: if only a tiny fraction of the polled population answers, you will be dealing with both a small sample size and likely sample bias. Aggravated customers are going to voice their resentment, and die-hard fans may provide unconditional support. Other than people with too much time on their hands, that is all you’ll be left with. In statistical terms, results like these are called a sampling bias, meaning the collected data is skewed because the population providing answers is not representative of the whole.
But that doesn’t mean that you should throw your hands up and give up. Surveys are a great way to get insights from your users when used correctly. And all properly deployed surveys have one thing in common: they have stellar response rates. But the problem becomes, how does one achieve that?
Great Experience starts here
The first step, as Porter outlines, is having narrowly targeted surveys with questions that actually relate to users. When you receive a QR code pointing you to a survey at the supermarket checkout, you don’t really believe that your opinion will be valued, do you? For this reason, you’re likely to skip out on completing it altogether.
However, there is a higher chance you will make your voice heard if you understand the survey has a genuine interest in the point of view of people like you. This may be as simple as leading with something that shows an understanding of the audience being reached. For example, a message like “We know you’ve been impacted by the recent changes on our website. We’d like to know how we can improve that experience for you in the future” can go a long way. Right off the bat, whoever receives the survey sees that the entity deploying it is showing empathy and trying to improve, instead of pestering everyone with another generic “how are we doing?” survey.
Stand out
Another useful strategy is to make your survey stand out. If everyone sends surveys by email, users will start skipping all of them. It is then time to find different channels to make sure the desired audience is being reached effectively.
Both of these strategies are at the core of Nexthink’s Digital Employee Experience platform. The platform arms IT teams with: actionable insight into experience, the ability to gain real-time feedback direct from employees, automation to remediate issues and a new way to infuse experience across your IT ecosystem. With Nexthink Engage, IT and business leaders get feedback from their employees on how IT is servicing them. By using Nexthink Analytics, it is possible for organizations to narrowly target a certain segment of a company’s employees and gain insight on specific issues.
Get results
For instance, let’s say a customer wants to target only those who had problems with Outlook in the past month. They’re able to pop up the survey on the employee’s desktop and allow them to provide a response in a second with minimal focus-switching costs. With these tailored capabilities, our customers consistently get 5-10x better response rates over email, arming them with valuable, actionable insights that aren’t intrusive or inconvenient for the employees to provide.
These can be used to help focus efforts to solve the most pressing problems encountered by employees. As a result, their experience can be improved, and employees will feel heard by seeing that their concerns are addressed, ultimately leading to a healthier workplace environment and heightened productivity across the board.
What’s next
For a global enterprise company, Nexthink is the clear choice for gathering real-time feedback in context to solve the issues that matter most.
See Nexthink in action. Schedule a demo here.
