Kate Tribe is the owner of Tribe Research.

In this interview we discuss:

• Tips for designing an effective survey
• How to use survey results to drive change in your business
• Why sharing survey results can get you more survey responses
• And, the pitfalls of asking leading questions

Enjoy this interview with Kate Tribe by listening to the audio version or by reading the transcription below.

Audio

Transcription

Suzi: Hi and welcome to herBusiness where we interview inspiring businesswomen and entrepreneurs. I’m Suzi Dafnis of the Australian Businesswomen’s Network. My guest today is Kate Tribe of Tribe Research, and in this interview we look at tips for designing an effective survey. How do you survey results to drive change in your business and the types of questions that get the best responses? Enjoy this interview with Kate Tribe. Kate, hi and welcome to herBusiness.

Kate: Hi Suzi, thanks for inviting me.

Suzi: Thank you for joining us. Tell us a little bit about what Tribe Research does.

Kate: Well, Tribe Research helps organisations to grow from a better understanding of their tribe. And we talk about someone’s tribe as being all their stakeholders – their clients, customers, staff and contacts. Essentially, we specialise in quantitative market and social research, so design surveys, collect data through online telephone and postal and then analyse the data so that organisations have insights from their tribe.

Suzi: Why is it important that we know our tribe, who you’ve described as being those who are stakeholders?

Kate: Many companies look to people who don’t know their business or organisation well to grow it, and the problem is that they’re ignoring their existing fans that are filled with mostly untapped information that they want to share but they need to be asked to provide that information. So, your existing tribe has views about your business and not listening means you’re not capturing this information. Often it can be something really simple. We did a study once where a business was wanting to know where people were at in the buying cycle and we explored the buying process using telephone interviews. And what the interviews uncovered was that people were mostly stuck because the phone system they had was simply challenging them and stopping them from getting to the next stage in the buying process. And so, when they changed their telephone system, their revenue increased ‘cause people could actually get through to the next stage in the buying process.

Suzi: That’s really interesting and I guess it obviously wasn’t obvious to them that they should ask or that by having that answer that they could change their business, so that’s very, very interesting.

Kate: Yeah, absolutely.

Suzi: And what is it that we should know about these people who are part of our tribe?

Kate: The first thing that’s really good to know is just who they are and it’s often something that people think they know about their, especially their customers but also their staff, but they don’t, by not really asking and looking at it in a quantifiable way, you can’t analyse other aspects about them. So, good things to know are demographics, for some businesses it’s good to know the industry …

Suzi: Right.

Kate: … where they’re based geographically and how to buy, if they prefer buying online or email or phone and how they like to communicate with you.

Suzi: They’re just a few of the things that obviously, I mean that tells us who they are.

Kate: Mmm hmm.

Suzi: And then how do we have that work in with perhaps our goals for business? How do we use what we know about our tribe help drive change in our business?

Kate: Well, I think it’s also then knowing other things about them in relation to those basic things on who they are. So, you know, one really good thing to find out is how they describe your business, so what messages they’re saying when they’re talking about you, and if that is conflicting with the messages that you’re saying ‘cause that allows you to drive change by looking at your marketing and seeing that the messages are the same. And the messages they’re saying could be negative and therefore you want to be taking what their negative messages are and doing something about it in your business so that those messages are stopped being put out there. And, if the messages are positive, you want to make sure your marketing is saying the same positive things about your business, ‘cause obviously they’re the things they highlight when they talk about you.

Suzi: Certainly Tribe Research has helped the Australian Businesswomen’s Network get to know our tribe better and I know that, once we ask the right questions, that information has been very valuable in us developing products and programs, even naming products and programs. And so I can totally vouch for being better informed – it really helps drive the business.

Kate: Yeah, and I think it’s also about designing it well so that you have the right priorities to change in the right direction. So, you know, by finding the information out correctly, you can then go in the right direction.

Suzi: And it is quite an art form, as I’ve come to know from having worked with you on a number of surveys, and I know you’re going to give us some design tips a little later on in the interview but at this point I want to talk about a model that I know that you work with and that is the feedback cycle. So, tell us, what is it and why do we need one?

Kate: Okay, so essentially the feedback cycle goes through a few different stages and we break it down to three stages and then two of those have sub-stages to them. And the first one is that you have to know your tribe, so you have to explore and ask questions and find things out to know them, but then you also have to analyse the feedback.

So, often people ask questions and then they don’t do the next step of analysing the feedback. And the next, the second big theme is what we call ‘Tribal Know-How’ which is where you need to get a clear head by going offsite and doing some planning and discussing the feedback that you analysed. You then need to go back and implement the ideas that you have generated when you have been at your offsite planning day so that your business can really drive change.

And then you need to communicate back; you need to tell your tribe that you’ve listened, you’ve asked questions, you’ve listened, you’ve gone away and you’ve thought about it and you’ve driven change in these different ways so that they then know about it and they can tell other people or act on the changes themselves.

If you then have a product they really like or really wanted, they can go and buy it from you or they can tell others that it’s now available.

Suzi: So, I’ll just go over those key areas again very quickly and see if you want to expand any further on those. So we’re exploring, we’re asking questions?

Kate: Yes.

Suzi: We’re then analysing what we’ve found?

Kate: Mmm hmm.

Suzi: We’re getting offsite and clear-headedly looking at what we have?

Kate: Yep.

Suzi: We’re then implementing these ideas to drive change and then we’re actually going back and communicating to the people that we asked the questions of?

Kate: Yes. Yeah, so if one of your basic questions is, “What priorities do you want us for, to develop training or events next year?” and you then don’t tell them that you’ve actually listened to that and just go and develop a whole lot of different events, then while they might see them come up in a schedule, they won’t be specifically looking out for it. But, if you go back to those people that participated or even the people that you invited to participate, you can then say, “We listened and we created this event schedule next year and we did it using the information that you gave us because we listened, and we want to provide you with what you want.” The other advantage of that is the people who didn’t participate in the survey, by you telling them that you listened, know that next time they might participate in the survey.

Suzi: Mmm.

Kate: So, actually completing the feedback cycle improves your response rates and that’s a big problem in, at the moment, with everyone saying that their response rates are declining.

Suzi: Right, and that’s something that you’re seeing at the moment, that response rates to surveys are generally … why is that do you think?

Kate: I think it’s because people just aren’t as engaged in businesses and I think, if you don’t have a really engaged set of customers or tribe in general, then they don’t feel they owe you anything in that communicating back cycle. But, if people are really engaged and they know you’re listening and they know that what they say will actually be used to develop an organisation or business, then they’ll be much more likely to want to share their time; to, you know, put what they’re doing down and answer your survey and provide you the feedback. So, it’s really all about engagement.

Suzi: I could spend hours talking with you about just how to have a more engaged client base, but I find it interesting that that actual last piece of communicating, not only to those who responded but those who didn’t, I don’t think that’s an obvious link that people would make. So thank you for that great piece of feedback there.

Designing a survey is what I want to talk about next, but firstly I want to ask how often should we be getting feedback from our clients. How often should we be surveying? Is there an ideal frequency in your mind?

Kate: I think it really depends on a few things; one, what your general buying process is or change process that customers relate to you on. I think mostly you would say annually is the best frequency to do a survey. It also encapsulates that part about how often you can get offsite and do planning with the information.

Suzi: Mmm.

Kate: And also about whether you want to do it as a periodical survey or whether you want to do it as an end of purchase survey. So, some service base businesses, at the end of every purchase or project they do a survey so that it’s fresh in the mind and it’s soon after the project, whereas an annual survey you’ll have some people who only just finished a project with you while others finished nine months ago and they’re going to have very different perspectives on that because you have an issue called … of bias from the time difference.

So they’re two different perspectives to look at about, but it’s also about how often you can get offsite and think about it so that you can implement the changes.

Suzi: ‘Cause there’s really not a lot of point in getting the information obviously and then it sitting there, which some of us may be guilty of having done at some point. Obviously, we use a professional services firm such as yours. Nonetheless, some people will put together their own surveys and then run them past an organisation like yours or do them themselves – what are some of the mistakes they often make, what are some tips that you would give us around designing surveys?

Kate: Well, we actually have on our website, we regularly post survey design tips and we’ve set it up as a blog post feed so that people can get the RSS feed from it. We’ve cut a few recent ones; one of the recent ones is ‘Introduction Essentials’ and it has a good checklist for an introduction, and one of the reasons why we posted this is we often see a lot of these things missing. One is:

“Who is actually doing the research, is it you or a market research company?”

“What is the aim of the research, why should people be putting aside the time to be giving you their time to provide feedback?”

“Why are they being invited?” Often people don’t know why they’ve got the link to do the survey.

“What is the closing date?” We see that missing all the time, it’s really easy to miss off, especially if a survey has gone through lots of different review processes and so you don’t know what the closing date is at the beginning.
“Is it anonymous and, if it isn’t anonymous, then what are you going to do with that information.”

So, it’s … it isn’t anonymous if you’re sending them a really long, personalised link or if you ask them to include their personal details at any stage. It’s not just non-anonymous if you’re not providing out information about them.

“Who will see their responses?” Often people want to know how broadly their responses are going to be shared even within an organisation, particularly if responses are linked to how they measure the performance of a salesperson in a business or something like that and they don’t … if you find out that your feedback is going to be directly linked to you and to a salesperson and that person’s getting a bonus or be told that they haven’t been doing a good job because of your feedback, that might actually bias the type of feedback that you give.

If there’s an incentive for the participant, it isn’t always applicable but it should be clear whether one’s provided. And to thank them for their time – we see that missing all the time, both in the cover letter and at the end of the survey when people just say, “That’s it, press submit.” So, they’re our main Introduction Essential tips.

Suzi: Great. Great, great. And so they should pretty much be in every survey regardless of what happens in between, as far as number of questions and things like that?

Kate: Yep, absolutely.

Suzi: All right, good.

Kate: Absolutely.

Suzi: Great.

Kate: Another one of our tips is … talks about survey bias and we actually created it into a video but it’s based on a true story of a colleague of mine who had a teenage son, and he got a great promotion and he was going to be moving from Sydney to Brisbane – he was very excited – went home and told his family that he had this great promotion and the whole family was going to be moving to Brisbane. And the teenage son really didn’t want to go to Brisbane and so he thought, “Well, I’m the son of a researcher. I’m going to go to school and I’m going to ask one question and I’m going to take the results back to my Dad.” So he went to school and he asked everyone that he could one question, “Do you want me to move to Brisbane?” and everyone came back saying, “No, no, we don’t want you to move to Brisbane.”

So, with lots of pride, he went back home and he said to Dad, “I’ve done a survey; no one wants me to move to Brisbane, I can’t go.” And his Dad very calmly said, “Okay son, I want you to go back to school tomorrow and I want you to ask another question.” And he, a bit nervously said, “Okay.” And the Dad said, “I want you to go back and ask whether they’re looking forward to having their holidays in Brisbane?” And of course he went back to school and everyone said, “Yes, I’m looking forward to having my holidays in Brisbane.”

So, that’s a … it’s not really a true survey-based story but, in a sense, it really easily encapsulates how, if you word your survey questions in a really biased way, you will send your participants to answer in a particularly biased way which, in certain situations, can be useful but, in other ways, it’s not a good thing.

Suzi: Mmm. I can see how if, for instance, you were trying to make a point, a political point or something for the media, that you could use that to your advantage. But, again, if you wanted to know the truth about a situation, it may not be.

Kate: Yeah, and that actually takes us on to the next survey design tip that I wanted to talk about, which is the Pitfall of Leading Questions, and that’s actually a video from a ‘Yes Prime Minister’ one and one of the great things about that video is that they go through a series of questions where there’s not one question which leads you to answer a particular way like the previous story, but a whole series of questions that build up a profile so that when the end very-evenly-asked question gets answered in a certain direction because the participant has been led to think in a certain direction by all the previous questions.

Suzi: Could you give us an example, perhaps not of a multiple series, but give us an example of some leading questions that you’ve seen asked?

Kate: I can kind of make one up.

Suzi: No, that’s fine. Yeah, great.

Kate: So, you could say, “Do you think teenage crime’s a big problem?”

Suzi: Right.

Kate: And then you would say, “Yes.” And then you’d say, “Do you think that we should ban guns?” and then you’d say, “Yes.” And then you can say, “Is teenage drinking an issue?” and it’s kind of not related to all the rest …

Suzi: Right.

Kate: … but, because they’ve been saying yes to the other two, they say, “Yes.”

Suzi: Mmm.

Kate: But, if you talk about teenagers being responsible as your first question and ask questions along those directions, then when you get to the end you say, “Is teenage drinking a big issue?” They’ll say, “No.”

Suzi: “No.” That’s great. Well, not that it’s great, not that teenage drinking is or isn’t an issue, but that being aware of not using leading questions unless you’re specifically doing it because, yep, because you’re trying to get a certain response.

Kate: Yep. Another example along those is where you put the satisfaction question in the order of your survey. So you can ask right at the beginning of your survey, “How satisfied are you with us?”

Suzi: Yes.

Kate: And it’s before they’ve really processed through thinking about the business and their interaction with it and they’ll give a completely blunt, you know, rating of it but, if you then ask it right at the end when they’ve gone through and they’ve answered a whole lot of questions about their past year of experience and what they’d like for development in the next year, then the satisfaction question will be very different or the answer can be very different at the end ‘cause they’ve gone through and they’ve processed a lot of the different thoughts about it.

Suzi: Great. And what sort of questions should we be asking?

Kate: In terms of open questions or just in terms of general things?

Suzi: Just in terms of do we ask, “Yes/No?” Sort of closed questions, or we do we ask questions where we give people the opportunity to answer openly?

Kate: Well, there’s a general rule that, if you ask something in an, in a closed response question, it will be marked ten times more than it would come up in an open response. So, if you ask an open response question that is around the same topic and it’s mentioned two or three times in a closed response question that it would be selected 20 or 30 times …

Suzi: All right, you’ve lost me. Could you give us an example of what one question done both ways could be?

Kate: So, if you say, “Have, what should be the priorities for next year?”

Suzi: Mmm hmm.

Kate: You’ll have a whole lot of people who will, and it’s an open response question, you’ll have a whole lot of people that say, “Oh, I’m not sure,” so they’ll write, “I’m not sure,” or they’ll not write an answer. Then you’ll have some people who will just put down something that comes to their mind when they that question. But, if you have that question and then you have a whole lot of options that they can select …

Suzi: Mmm hmm, mmm hmm.

Kate: … then people, by seeing them, would say, “Yes, that’s a priority.”

Suzi: Right.

Kate: “Yes, you should be doing that.” And so it actually will give you more useful information, unless you have really no idea what you should … thinking that should be there, and then an open response question can be useful.

Suzi: Okay, so when you have a direction and you’re looking for feedback to sort of narrow down your options, then perhaps a closed question but, if you really just want people’s ideas in free form I guess, that’s when you’re asking an open question?

Kate: Yeah, or you can also always have a, an other ‘please specify’ at the end of your list.

Suzi: Right.

Kate: And then you can, the next year when you do your repeat survey, you look at what those open response answers are and then put some of them into the list to see if they’re an increasing trend for more people.

Suzi: Mmm, wonderful. They’re some great design tips. Anything else that you would add at this point?

Kate: I think another thing about open response questions is often they appear as just being in ‘other comments’ at the end of your survey and people then don’t really know what to say, so it’s really good to give some direction so that you get beneficial feedback. So, some really good questions to put there is, “If we could make one implementable change that would improve your satisfaction, what is it?” Or, “What is one thing we could do differently?” Or, “What is the main reason you utilise our services?” And that will actually target them to think about certain ways that they could provide you with specific feedback that you can then take away and think about.

Suzi: Mmm, because you’re still leaving it open but you’re saying, “Give me one thing,” or you’re still directing the focus. That’s great and, of course, if you’re listening and you want to have access to these great design tips on an ongoing basis, then we will make sure we give you the details on our website to link through to Kate’s site and get the RSS feed to be able to get those design tips. I know that I see they sometimes pop up on your Twitter account and they’re always great and they’re always really easy to implement. So, yep, so look out for those on Kate’s website and do follow her on Twitter if you want access to some of those tips as well.

Kate, thank you so much for joining us and we’ll leave people with all your contact information so that next time they’re looking at getting to know their tribe a little bit better, they have a great resource to check in with to make sure that they’re on track to do that well. Thank you again for joining us.

Kate: Thanks Suzi.

Suzi: Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed this interview with Kate Tribe of Tribe Research. Learn more at triberesearch.com.au.

This is Suzi Dafnis of the Australian Businesswomen’s Network, a national training and mentoring organisation for businesswomen. If you’re ready to be connected to inspiring women who are making a difference to the business landscape, ask us today about our membership programs. And for more interviews with inspiring businesswomen, visit our website at www.abn.org.au.

End of Interview.

About Kate Tribe

Kate started Tribe Research in 1997 and has developed it into an innovative and creative company focusing on accessible ways for business, non-profit and government sectors to grow from a better understanding of their tribe.

She is the Research Advisory for the Australian Businesswomen's Network; and a member of the NSW Australian Market and Social Research Society Committee as the Chair of the Independent Researchers Group.

Connect with Kate Tribe

Email: ask@triberesearch.com.au
Facebook: Tribe Research
Twitter: Tribe Research
LinkedIn: Kate Tribe, Tribe Research
Blog: katetribe.com/blog
Survey Tips: triberesearch.com.au/category/survey-tips