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Survey Software Buyer's Guide
Table of Contents
- What is the meaning of survey?
- What is Survey Software?
- How does Survey Software work?
- Is it worth investing money in Survey Software?
- What are the features of Survey Software?
- What are the benefits of the Survey Software?
- What are the buying factors to consider before choosing a Survey Software?
- How to choose good Survey Software?
- Questions to ask a vendor when buying Survey Software
- How Much Does Survey Software Cost?
- Conclusion
For running a successful business for a long period of time, it is imperative to understand your customer needs. Once you know what they want and what their pain points are, formulating solutions becomes a cakewalk. With that being said, one of the easiest ways to know their opinion about your service is to run a survey. It will not only help you improving customer retention and loyalty but also optimize customer acquisition. However, doing the same is not an easy task as it requires formulating separate survey sheets according to different types of customer group and anticipating their future needs with predictive analysis. In this regard, the need for survey software goes imperative.
What is the meaning of survey?
A survey is a means to gather information in a well-structured format from individuals. Each participant is asked the same set of questions in the same manner. To draw insights on the topic of research. The intent is to generalize the gathered information into results in the context of a larger population. Often referred to as questionnaires, they collect details via a printed questionnaire, online forms, over the telephone, or in-person.
What is Survey Software?
A customer survey software is nothing but a platform that facilitates you to run customer surveys with ease on every channel possible such as website, mobile, email, SMS, chatbots, etc. The survey management software shows up with a list of powerful and action driven questionnaires in front of your customers and helps you decide the best course of action required to make customers love your service/product even more. The survey analysis software makes powerful predictions about the future behaviour of your customers so that you can take actions when they need it the most.
How does Survey Software work?
An online survey software helps you create, customize and modify surveys for your customers with a simple virtual interface. The presence of 100+ prebuilt questionnaires as per specific industry niche will save you time and effort. You can initiate the process through any channel such as email, SMS, or chatbots on your website. The presence of best online survey tools will help you anticipate your customer needs and will suggest you about the same. The software can attach the periodic survey reports collected to employees’ daily routine thereby giving them a clear picture of what to do next.
Is it worth investing money in Survey Software?
A business starts with marketing to earn desirable profits at the year-end. Let’s make an analysis of the importance of a market research survey software starting from backward. We know the profit of a business depends on your service quality. Once you gain a solid grasp of understanding on what your customers want, you can easily tailor solutions that will make good money for your hard efforts in the market. Initially, you need heavy marketing but once you penetrate into the market and stayed little longer without losing quality service, future orders come from old customers and from their referrals. Now, standing tall on your business quality is important. That calls for keeping a constant tap on frequently changing customer needs. If a software application through virtual survey platforms can give you the same information, don’t you think it is worth investing your money in?
What are the features of Survey Software?
Survey software helps individuals create, design, send and analyze different types of surveys for their companies or businesses. As a single software holds various functionalities assisting the companies to achieve maximized profits, they are often deemed necessary for enhancing productivity and reducing wastage of time. Loaded with numerous facilities and tools, one can easily create a personalized survey using simple yet powerful tools within the software. So, let’s start our journey by learning about the various aspects of the software briefly.
› SURVEY BUILDING TOOLS: In a survey software, the first functionality provided to the customers to create customized surveys is the drag and drop feature, layout and design, in-built templates, and many more. Using these readily available tools one can easily create a customized survey and share it to the social media platforms to gain customer insight on the products which are the subject of one’s study.
› QUESTION SETTING FACILITIES: Numerous survey software allow their customers to input random questionnaires on exciting topics, customize them with audio or video clips to encourage customer engagement, and more. Moreover, one can also set a timer with every question which automatically skips the question after the timer has gone off.
› ANSWERING OPTIONS: Similarly setting responding options is also easy, as the software can be used to set the preference for both manual input as well as clicking on options. Furthermore, to attract the inflow of conditional traffic triggers can also be assigned with the correct options to keep the customers hooked.
› SURVEY TEMPLATES: Many online survey software facilitates their customers by providing readily available templates which come in handy while launching a new survey. While polls and forms are the most common templates, many advanced ones like dichotomous questions, bipolar questions, and rating scale types are often involved.
› EMAIL INVITATION: The online survey software also comes with email sending facilities which helps companies to generate and share bulk emails to interested participants. This helps in intimating the participants to join the upcoming survey in real time without the need for explicitly jolting down each mail and sending it individually. With some simple clicks, the software will be ready to showcase its wonders.
› MULTILANGUAGE SUPPORT: Businesses and companies have to interact with the global market on a daily basis and hence, creating a survey with multilingual support is often highly advised. This generally comes with a spellchecker and auto-translator which automatically translates the contents of the survey into the preferred local language.
What are the benefits of the Survey Software?
The online survey software essentially completes almost all the tedious tasks for companies starting from simple tasks to the most complicated ones. No wonder the popularity of the software has been gaining tremendous popularity since recent years. To achieve a deeper insight into the software and how it has been helping the companies and businesses to flourish, let’s study the plethora of benefits the software provides.
› CENTRALIZED DATA STORAGE: The online survey software uses centralized storage for storing the various responses made by the audience to ensure that the data remains safe and intact. Similarly, as the data and answers are stored in a single server, retrieving information for sales and marketing purposes can be achieved in real time and with utmost feasibility.
› FLEXIBLE PLATFORM: Another added benefit of the online survey software is its flexibility. One does not need to design and create different survey templates for conducting surveys on separate aspects. Preferably with a simple drag and drop, changing the questions or merely reassigning the questions to a newer audience with a few changes can solve the situation.
› EXPANDING THE COMPANY’S REACH: As the survey platforms use email invitation amongst other kinds of communication channels, the company or business can detect and reach its audience within no time. One can easily reach a wide range of customers differing from each other in terms of the demographics, industry, profession, and interest in real time.
› GATHERING MARKET INSIGHTS: Marketing strategies change every day and hence having a detailed report on the marketing insights of how your company is performing in the global market can save you from a lot of headache in the future. These reports are collected from feedbacks and reviews, which can then be transferred to pie charts or graphs for storing purposes. Furthermore, many survey platforms also provide real-time analytics, hence, providing the company with the updated results.
› PROVIDES A SUSTAINABLE WAY OF CONDUCTING SURVEYS: Rather than being pen and paper-based, the advanced customer survey software is completed online which proves to be a more sustainable way while conducting surveys. This helps in tackling the exploitation of papers, time and money required for printing, sharing, and more.
What are the buying factors to consider before choosing a Survey Software?
Choosing customer survey software for your company or business can be overwhelming, but there are some points worth-remembering when it comes to selecting good software. These points are as important as deciding to hire software for your company. Hence, to help you out we have hand-listed some of the most crucial points, so be sure to check them out below.
› CHECKING THE NECESSITY OF THE SOFTWARE FOR YOUR COMPANY
Although the survey management software comes in handy while creating surveys, every company may not it. For example- An IT product developing company may not need the software until and unless they also put importance to other aspects such as getting market insights on the product. Hence, it is always essential to ensure that your company indeed requires the software for smoothening the survey processes.
› ANALYZING THE REQUIREMENTS
Every company has its own set of conditions which it looks for fulfilling with the help of additional tools. Thus, noting down the requirements before choosing the survey management software, can help in narrowing down the vast list bearing all the available software in the market, to a few perfect ones.
› ESTIMATING THE NUMBER OF USERS
When it comes to the software’s necessities, one software differs from another in respect of the number of users, facilities and tools availed, and more. While some software allows a small number of users to operate, others may enable a larger group to utilize the software. If the company needs the second type of software, then investing in a small sized one can be in vain.
› LOOKING FOR THE ONE FITTING PERFECTLY INTO THE BUDGET
Budget is an essential part of a company or business as almost all the decisions and progress of the company solely depends on the size of the budget. Hence, looking for the perfect software can be executed correctly, if the company or an individual estimates the final budget beforehand. Furthermore, this also helps in cutting down the risks of investing in expensive software which can prove to be a massive dent on the pocket.
How to choose good Survey Software?
Being able to choose the best survey software among the heaps of many can prove to be an intimidating affair for both beginners as well as professionals. This is because each software is adorned with its own unique set of strengths as well as weaknesses which makes it different from others. While one survey analysis software can have expertise in providing personalized tools for creating innovative surveys, another may be hardwired to offer real-time analytics and reports on the market insights of the product. To help you choose the best survey software, let’s learn some of the crucial points which come in handy while looking for the perfect software for your company.
› SIMPLE INTERFACE: The best survey software is always coupled with a simple and user-friendly interface which makes them the best option for companies and firms to work with. It also eradicates the need for hiring staff with prior technical knowledge or expertise with coding skills. Hence, anyone and everyone can work with the software.
› COMPATIBILITY WITH EXISTING TOOLS: Numerous best online survey tools come with compatibility for existing tools which makes the integration better. Hence, one need not have to worry about searching other business tools in case the existing tools gets rejected by the market research survey software. This saves both times as well as wastage of resources and finances.
› MULTIPLE PLATFORM ACCESSIBILITY: Understanding the need of customers to have increased platform accessibility, a number of software developers have devised the best online survey tools with mobile convenience. This helps to keep a track on the analytics and reports of the surveys no matter where the employees are present.
› REVIEWS: The reviews left by the previous customers have a crucial impact on deciding the quality of the software as well as the services offered. Thus, looking at the criticisms one can separate the worst performing ones from the best survey tools. Hence, this increases the chances of landing with the perfect market research survey software for your company.
Questions to ask a vendor when buying Survey Software
1. How many ready templates/themes do your survey software offer?
2. Does the system have the flexibility to adapt to my distinct requirements?
3. How interactive are the questionnaires?
4. What will I be able to personalize, and which features need to be used as is?
5. Does the product allow respondents to skip questions?
6. Is the software capable of pulling answers from a survey section into another without any hassles?
7. Does the product come in with automatic randomization of questions and answers?
8. Can you explain in detail the analysis and reporting offered by the system?
9. Is the software mobile-friendly?
10. Will I be able to create surveys on my webpage?
11. How easy is it to embed surveys into websites?
12. Where does it stand with regards to ease of use?
13. How does the software simplify information and project sharing?
14. What kind of security mechanism does the software pack in?
15. How long does it take to run backups?
16. What does the implementation process look like?
17. What would be the learning curve?
18. How often do you launch new releases and system updates?
19. Do you have clients in my niche?
20. What are your maintenance and support policies? Do you have an in-house support team?
21. How prompt is your service?
How Much Does Survey Software Cost?
The pricing structure of the best survey tools differs from one another as the availed facilities and means finalize their price, the total number of users using the software, as well as the time duration for which the software has been hired. While the lowest pricing structure starts from $7/month, the highest price can reach up to $199/month. Moreover, various survey software also allows their users to avail the ‘pay-as-you-go’ option which can be used to install additional tools once the fee has been deducted. However, many experts highly advise that before buying a premium plan, one must try out the free basic version of the software to be on the safe side. Afterward, if the software successfully manages to fulfill all requirements, one can go with the premium plan with no regrets.
Conclusion
Now that you have understood everything about a survey software well, it’s time to put your understanding into use. Make a list of your requirements, plan your budget and start looking for the best survey software that can meet your organizational needs with ease.