Employee and customer surveys enable businesses to gather important information, perceptions and insight from employees, customers and other groups (e.g. suppliers, shareholders, members, etc.) and then make better, more informed decisions. Surveys are the most effective way to quickly gather anonymous or identified feedback and suggestions from large numbers of people.

Some of the many types of employee and customer surveys that businesses conduct include employee satisfaction surveys, employee engagement surveys, employee opinion surveys, 360 leadership surveys, employee benefits surveys, IT customer satisfaction surveys, customer opinion surveys, customer satisfaction surveys and risk surveys.

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Organizations sometimes fail to achieve the results they should be realizing from surveys due to several reasons. These reasons include poor design, asking the wrong questions, failure to conduct the survey effectively, difficulty getting people to respond, inadequate analysis of findings, failure to communicate and take action on the results and other reasons. The purpose of this article is to provide tips for getting more value from a wide range of business surveys.

34 Tips that will help your organization achieve significant value and a strong payback from employee surveys and customer surveys:

Tips 1-6 focus on specific types of employee surveys and customer surveys. Tips 7-34 will help you conduct any type of survey more effectively.

1. Employee satisfaction surveys, employee engagement surveys and employee opinion surveys – These employee surveys should be conducted annually to get the greatest benefit in terms of identifying new opportunities, problems and measuring progress since the most recent survey and monitoring trends. Employees have extensive information how satisfied they are and how engaged they are in their job. They also have considerable knowledge and insight about customer satisfaction and needs. Employee satisfaction surveys, employee opinion surveys and employee engagement surveys should include questions that get at key issues that drive employee and company performance. Don’t be afraid to ask questions that you expect will gather negative responses, including satisfaction with compensation. When questions are worded effectively, they provide important information you need to know and act on. If you are not willing to ask the important questions, why are you conducting an employee survey?

2. Employee benefits surveys – Your organization may be providing benefits that are not in sync with what many of your employees need. Employee benefit surveys will tell you if employees are satisfied with benefits and what you need to change. Results from an employee benefits survey help your benefits decision makers to make better, informed decisions that can achieve greater value for benefits dollars spent by both your organization and your employees.

3. 360 leadership surveys – Many people believe that the most important driver of organizational success is its leaders. A 360 leadership survey provides feedback to individual leaders at any level of an organization about how they are perceived by their peers, direct reports and from leaders above them in the organization. When conducted for many of an organization’s leaders at the same time, 360 surveys also provide comprehensive consolidated information about the organization’s leadership strengths and weaknesses, and where leadership needs to be strengthened. Companies should consider conducting a 360 leadership survey every year or two. Hold leaders accountable for increasing their own leadership effectiveness and performance and that of their direct reports.

4. Customer satisfaction surveys and customer opinion surveys – Business to business customers and consumers have many companies that they can give their business to. Customers know what they want and expect when buying products and services. A customer satisfaction survey or a customer opinion survey gathers important information, opinions and insight from customers that can be acted on to make your company more competitive, increasing your ability to attract and keep customers. Depending on the types of products and services you sell, you should consider conducting a customer survey annually at a minimum and more often if you have large numbers of customers and a relatively high level of customer turnover. You need to find out why customers are dissatisfied, why they are going to your competitors and what you need to do to attract and keep more customers.