Survey analysis is the process of drawing conclusions from the data that you have gathered from customers. It is trickier than building a survey. To begin analyzing feedback survey results effectively, follow these steps:
● Eliminate duplicate and problematic responses
The first step to analyze your massive data is by collating it and eliminating repetitive and problematic responses. This may happen because some people tend to fill your survey more than once. While the problematic ones are those who pick the same option for every question or may answer randomly in speed. You don’t need such responses to affect your overall analysis.● Categorize your results
To make sense of your survey results, start by grouping the data into different relevant categories. Creating a theme category is beneficial when you have a high volume of diverse data. While a data code helps to make your survey results descriptive enough to be easily understood by someone unfamiliar with the project. You can categorize it into types of result feedback, theme, and codes, including-- Generic positive, negative or neutral
- Price
- Department
- Website usability
- Feedback channels
- Customer service experience
● Create result codes
Coding every result correctly is crucial. It would be best if you created codes that are specific to your company’s service/product that the result relates to. Higher volumes of data are easier to code if you successfully manage to analyze any pattern.● Assign codes
Before assigning codes to the data, you should go through the data again and have a hang of how diverse it is. Then, as you move through your survey results, don’t hesitate to break down certain high-level codes. It will happen often and will help to maintain accuracy.● Calculate the frequency of each code
After coding everything, calculate the frequency of a particular feedback per code. Determine which codes are occurring the most number of times and try to form a pattern. A simple way to do so is by sorting the results alphabetically and highlighting the cells with the same feedback code. This will give you a total count on the spreadsheet.● Draw conclusions
The last step is to summarize your coded survey results. You can prioritize different codes to make your team understand better or can summarize the actionable results in a simple table.How to Interpret Survey Results?
To put the collected data to use, you must be able to interpret the results in a simplified form. However, interpreting survey results is a challenge for everyone. Here are some steps you can follow in interpreting data effectively and put it to use.
● Focus on the Right Questions
To effectively interpret any survey feedback, it is important that you ask only the right questions and keeps your survey short. It would help if you made sure that your questions are concise, speak to your audience, and really matter to your business.● Convert data into insights
Never share the result data in its raw form. You must first convert the relevant information into insights to share beyond percentages and data breakouts. Insights may seem like a recommended action and they ensure that you always get better feedback from your team.● Visual representation
After a brief reading of the data, you can start organizing your results. People are usually more convinced by data presented visually in the form of graphs like Likert chart, Bar graph or Sankey diagram. It will also help you to see a pattern.● Create a plan of action
After you have carefully interpreted data, you must go through the responses thoroughly and determine what responses require what action from you. These may include:- An appropriate response to the respondents
- Negative feedbacks draw more attention than positive or neutral ones. Therefore, the respondents with negative feedback deserve an appropriate and immediate response. You must do everything you can to solve the respondent’s issue.
- Facilitating changes
- After analyzing your results you must have come across some negative feedback too. They indicate that you need to improve your marketing strategies, resources, or support. So, it’s crucial to have this information mentioned in your results document so that you can discuss it with your team and facilitate improvements accordingly.
Should you use automated tools for survey analysis and interpretation?
The traditional methods of analyzing and interpreting surveys are outdated, very time-consuming, and can be subjected to human bias. Moreover, no one can completely ensure that no human error will cause inaccurate analysis.
So, when you are dealing with massive amounts of data in the form of feedback, managing the entire workload can become a daunting task. Therefore, using an online survey tool from a plethora of them available in the market is the best way to ensure errorless and fast survey analysis. According to your chosen criteria, these tools use machine learning to automatically assign the right category to a particular result and determine which feedback is useful. They also present the interpreted information in a more visual way that can be easily understood. You can choose the right tool for you depending on the amount of data, your requirements, budget, and the time limit.
Conclusion
Survey data is important to understand the behavior of your customers, and such feedback can significantly help in important business decisions. However, collecting loads of rough data will take you nowhere unless you unleash its potential by analyzing and interpreting the results. Having a robust step-by-step plan in place for the task will fetch you a lot of insight.
You can choose a survey tool or software with different features and benefits from the numerous ones available in the market. Choosing a reliable tool provides you with quick, easy, and errorless analysis, with the flexibility to adapt to your needs.
