Whether you are formulating a questionnaire for your staff or planning one for your customers, it is important to bear in mind the length of your survey.
A staff survey that is too long will discourage people from completing it. Nobody has 45 minutes free to answer a customer survey during working hours.
Any longer than 10 minutes and you risk having people drop off and ignore it entirely.
The exception to this is when you include interactive questions or audio-visuals, as this higher level of engagement will encourage more people to answer your questions.
Many long surveys often require an enticement for people to complete them. While this can give you good numbers on paper, it may give rise to a question of validity as some participants may have completed it solely to obtain a reward.
This means any decisions you make based on the results of your survey may not be the best choices as they are not really representative of all your clients.
Another issue posed by overly detailed surveys is the risk of 'satisficing' where people choose the first option that looks like it could be a reasonable answer, rather than reading through to select the best and most appropriate choice.
Others may simply select 'I don't know' as this is a much faster way to get through the survey, while another group may just randomly choose responses. This can be of particular concern if there are mandatory questions.
These long surveys will not only bore or confuse customers or staff but can also jeopardise any future surveys.
People will be less likely to answer your queries the second time around if they had to commit so much time in round one.
A free demonstration of a PeoplePulse survey could set you on the right track where your survey length is concerned. Why not try one today?
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