What’s the ideal response rate?
I am not a statistics expert. I know the basics: I can write reasonably balanced questions, I know which questions to ask to get the information I’m interested in, I know what is and is not a random sample, and I can use Excel to an extent where I can organize and make sense of the data. I am not a math guy, but I do find the numbers behind customer service interesting.
Most of the time, the numbers I get from surveys just confirm common sense and/or my original assumptions, but I also do learn things about the company and the customers in question just about every time. They’re worth doing, especially considering they cost relatively little and don’t take that much time.
However, a question that always plagues me is how much of a response rate is enough. I’ve seen response rates for various surveys range from 3 or 4% (for long, annoying surveys) to more than 70% (for short, direct surveys). I’ve used incentives to increase response rates and then I’ve run incentive-less surveys.
The most recent survey I ran for a client saw response rates increase by about 7 percentage points when a fairly reasonable incentive was added. The first time around, I worked with the client to run a short and simple survey that ended up yielding about a 13% response rate. Then, we added an incentive, ran the exact same survey and sent it to a slightly different group, and saw the response rate go up to go about to about 20% (which I still thought was kind of low). The randomly selected person who won the giveaway was delighted and I am confident that he is now a customer for life (despite the fact that he rated the company positively anyway).
Companies I have worked with have had survey response rates that are all over the place. Some companies just seem to have more responsive customers than others. Some surveys tend to attract more attention than others. A lot of it seems kind of random until you’ve done it a few times at the particular company.
With that in mind, is anyone aware of a good response rate that yields accurate enough results and is still manageable to obtain? I like to aim for about 30% in the surveys I do, but that is often a little bit too optimistic. What would you say is a good response rate and how would you go about achieving that?
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Larry Streeter said:
Jul 17, 08 at 9:44 amWe use two different customer surveys at our company.
Incident surveys are sent to every customer who phones, chats, or emails our Support team (customers will only receive a survey once every 90 days; we don’t want to be “spamming” them
. Our response rate on these transactional surveys is usually around 20%.
We also send a customer satisfaction survey to 1/12th of our customer base each month. This survey is more geared toward the overall customer experience (product, service, value to you as a customer) and our response rate averages around 35%.
Best practices to help us achieve these response rates include keeping the survey brief (6-10 questions) and by providing the status bar showing the customer how far they have progressed in the survey. There is nothing more irritating then to find yourself deep into a survey with no idea how much further you have until the end.
If you’d like to learn more about survey best practices, you can visit our website http://www.constantcontact.com, click on the Learning Center tab and view a number of tutorials. Even if you use another service, the information may be helpful for you to achieve the response rate you’re looking for!
Service Untitled said:
Jul 17, 08 at 7:47 pmHi Larry,
Thanks for your comment.
20% is a decent response rate and is in line with what I have been seeing at other companies. 35% is a good response rate for that survey. Do you usually include any sort of incentive with that?
All of the surveys I run for customers are usually one page, so they know exactly how much it is. I like showing the status as well.
Thanks for the link as well!