Getting the Answers
How do you make decisions in your salon? Sales reports, personal opinions, staff suggestions, and hopefully customer reviews. What do you do when you want to dig deeper?
How about a questionnaire? A formal survey sent to your email database or a paid mailing list could provide great data, but we need to put in the work to create the perfect survey.
First things first- what do we want to learn? Be clear on our target goal to ensure that we are collecting relevant data. In layman’s terms, if we want to know what retail items to add to our shelves, we need to ask questions about shopping habits, favorite brands, etc.
Once we’ve defined our objective, we can begin a rough draft. There will be a few rough drafts. We only have one shot, so everything needs to flow perfectly.
In addition to figuring out the right questions, we need to figure out how to ask the questions. I tend to prefer a variety of styles to keep it interesting. All multiple choice becomes monotonous, so throw in some rating questions, maybe we a Likert scale or two.
We want to make sure our survey is not only opened but also completed in full. This requires more than interesting questions. We need to work on the order to make sure everything flows.
Once you think you have the perfect survey, you’re almost done. We’re going to want to test it out on 20 – 30 people to ensure everything is being interpreted correctly and staying on course.
After our sample test, we will most likely need to tweak the survey into its final format. If you are limited in how many emails you can send, you’ll need to decide to whom you’re sending the survey.
Creating and sending the survey is just the beginning, The fun truly begins once we have all the answers. Now we can analyze the data and make informed decisions.
You probably never thought about how much goes into a survey. Maybe you’ll be more inclined to fill them out, or maybe you’ll be less inclined to send them to your guest.
Regardless, surveys are a great way to collect data when done correctly. If you’re going to attempt to create one, always come back to your main objective. Review, refresh and then review again. Take your time, do it right, and reap the rewards of amazing data.