Ask a stupid question

By David Bomphrey

Everyone knows that if you ask a stupid question, you’ll get a stupid answer. What goes unsaid is that people sometimes don’t realise their questions are silly.

The classic example is the customer survey that forces people to invent opinions they don’t have. If you ask people what they think of your website the moment they arrive at the home page, you’re not going to learn anything useful about your order process.

In the same way, if you force people to tell you where they heard of your site so they can submit a registration, they’ll most likely pick the easiest option or just pick one at random. If you ask for personal data customers think you don’t need, they will revolt by filling in nonsense.

Blinded by office politics, companies can unwittingly ask leading questions, which only serve to return answers that reinforce their views. Such data can be valuable ammunition in the board room, but will do little to help the business. If you decide the answers before you begin, it’s not worth asking the questions.

Everyone wants a slice of the action. If you succumb to pressure from across the business to add questions, you’ll end up with a survey that tires participants and almost certainly generates a lot of data that can’t be actioned. The survey loses its identity, which will demotivate participants from completing it. They don’t mind helping improve your website or customer service, but they’ll shy away from giving the whole business an MOT.

Any ambiguity in the questions can leave you wondering what each respondent meant with his or her answer. Questions that demand concentration are expecting too much, so keep them snappy and don’t expect people to differentiate between ‘pretty good’ and ‘fairly good’ on a scale of one to ten.

To use surveys well, you have to decide at the outset what the goal is and how you will use the resulting information. Craft questions – with the aid of an impartial professional – to elicit honest and meaningful responses. Explain the purpose of the questions to participants, and demonstrate you’re listening by following up after the survey. Invite people to enter free text answers, but gather statistical data too so you can home in on those that matter.