Pulse January / February 2020 | Page 37

The Art of the Survey THERE ARE TWO KINDS OF DATA: quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative is what one typically thinks of when they think of data: numbers. Quantitative data can tell you your average retail spend per customer, or what percentage of your customers had a great, good, neutral or bad experience. But quantitative data often stops there; you may know that 10 percent of customers had a bad experience, but you may not know why. That’s where qualitative data comes in. Qualitative data is, essen- tially, everything else—it’s the stuff you can’t quantify, like a handwritten feedback response from a customer or a comment from an employee. Qualitative data should play an important role in guiding your decision making as a spa leader, and it’s often gathered through surveys and feedback forms. But what makes a good survey? How do you know which questions to ask? “The first start to crafting any question, quantitative or qualitative, is ‘what is the end goal?’” says Crystal Ducker, ISPA’s VP of Research and Communications. A guest’s time is a precious commodity, and it’s best to only ask them questions if the answers will lead to meaningful, usable qualitative data. “Ask yourself if knowing that data point will change what you do,” adds Ducker. Once you’ve determined the end goal, the next step in forming a question is to be as specific as possible—a good question is a specific one. For example: imagine you want to know whether your team is properly greeting your guests. Instead of asking “How was your experience today?” on your customer feedback survey, request the following: “Please describe how our staff greeted you at the front desk.” The phrasing of the latter question hints at the third step in crafting a good qualitative data question: ask the question in a way that encourages description. Ducker suggests “reading the question back to yourself to see if it’s something that you could answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ If you can, then you haven’t written an effective question.” The heart of qualitative data lies in the details, so you want your survey-taker to explain their experience or describe something, rather than giving a perfunctory answer. As for building out the survey itself, feedback cards in your spa can do the trick—but there are more modern and sophisticated ways to poll your customers. There are a variety of online platforms, such as SurveyMonkey, Zoho and Typeform, all of which have free and paid versions available. Your spa’s booking software also likely has a customer feedback system built-in to the Quick Tips for Building a Customer Survey Whether you’re creating a one-off survey to send to your mailing list, a new customer feedback form or a general-purpose email follow-up survey, here are some top tips for building a survey that generates meaningful data. ANONYMOUS? KEEP IT THAT WAY. Clearly state at the front of the survey if it’s anonymous or not. If it is anonymous, it’s important to keep it so—once you lose the survey-taker’s trust, they’ll never respond completely truthfully to one of your surveys again. INCENTIVES ARE KEY. Surveys without incentives will receive fewer responses than those that offer an incentive. Find out what your audience will find valuable—like a chance to win a gift card—and offer it as a reward for taking the survey, if you can. KEEP IT SHORT. If it’s a short survey, such as a customer comment card, never have more than two big, open- ended questions. The more open-ended, qualitative questions that you have, the less likely they are to give a high-quality, detailed answer for each—or to even fill out the survey at all. JANUARY/FEBRUARY ■ PULSE 2020 35