How to Survey Some Customers?

November 13, 2018 5:49 PM

My partner asked me if I had any ideas about best practices/resources in direct consumer research (surveys) and I was all ... create a questionnaire on SurveyMonkey? Surely there must better and more robust solutions for pros with a (limited) budget? Where do marketing people go when they want to survey their customers?

They want to know which of several new products aimed at making juicing whole fruits and vegetables more convenient is prefered by an existing group of customers.

posted by notyou to Grab Bag (6 answers total)

A surprising number of pro research departments use Survey Monkey. If you have a relatively simple survey with no complicated skip logic or piped text (taking the text/answer options from one question and incorporating it into the formatting of another question), it serves most people's needs quite well. If you're just doing basic concept testing for a one-off project as you describe, this could be just fine. Survey Gizmo is a similar option.

Larger research departments/firms will usually opt for something like Qualtrics or Confirmit, which are both very robust in terms of customization, question types, and analysis tools. They're also helpful if you need a service to help recruit respondents. It sounds like you already have a list that you are recruiting from, and if it's a one-time project these are inappropriate as they usually operate on a contract basis (i.e., access to the platform and x number of recruited participants for a year for around $10,000+).

Here's a helpful article that can help you see what each platform provides and reviews for each.
posted by Fuego at 6:29 PM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

Marketing people use Qualtrics, or at least that's what we used back when that was a part of my job a career ago. (Also it is probably way more spendy than SurveyMonkey)

You can also ask things with Typeform and I really dig the thought they've put into the experience.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 6:52 PM on November 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

There are a lot of variables with surveys. I've had extensive experience with most of the enterprise grade versions, and conducted an RFP for this.

SurveyMonkey is used a lot for ad-hoc data collection. But your partner should consider where the respondents are, how often they expect to survey customers, what privacy guarantees may be expected, and lots of other questions along those lines. Personally, I'd run my own small RFP - documenting requirements and interviewing vendors. You can call sales and run through a consistent list of questions. Then make a selection.


If this is for an enterprise, I'd run a formal RFP.
posted by heigh-hothederryo at 6:57 PM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

SurveyMonkey is pretty good. You probably want to hire a consultant to put together your questions, mine the data, and make a presentation, but that's really all you need.
posted by xammerboy at 8:15 PM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

If they pay for an MS Office subscription, they should have Microsoft Forms included. I've used it an found to to be fine for our company, and easy to use and collaborate with. YMMV
posted by Laura in Canada at 12:11 PM on November 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

I do marketing-ish work for a non-profit and use Survey Monkey on a regular basis. It is a lot more flexible than most people realize, but it does take a bit more work than other software.

I was able to design a trivia quiz that takes into account which questions you got right or wrong (out of 8 questions) and sum up everything at the end. It was complicated, but it worked.
posted by tacodave at 5:13 PM on November 14, 2018 [1 favorite]