software; check with your software
provider to learn more about best
practices for using it effectively. The
type of survey you want to conduct
might also determine what kind of
software you should use, if any. “Spa
software surveys often focus on the
guest experience, like ‘how was your
therapist?’” Ducker says; this makes
them well-suited for generating quali-
tative data about specific aspects of
the spa experience. But if your spa
wants to send out a survey to answer
more difficult questions—such as
ascertaining why your customers go to
spas in general—a dedicated survey
software may be more appropriate.
While there is enterprise-level
software, such as Verint and Qualtrics,
for building extremely detailed
customer surveys, built-in software or
a free online survey tool will likely be
sufficient for a typical day spa. Despite
being free, an online software like
SurveyMonkey is still capable of more
advanced survey-building tricks,
including skip patterns—that’s where
a portion of a survey is hidden if it’s
not applicable to the survey taker.
Implementing this may sound
MEMBER TIP
Find creative uses for your data! One ISPA member spa
used the retail purchasing info in their spa booking
software to identify purchasing patterns. If a customer
purchased a moisturizer that typically lasted three
months, the spa would automatically send an email
three months after purchase asking the customer to
come back in to buy their next bottle.
challenging, but the online softwares
are designed to be simple to use,
notes Ducker. If you’re using a free
software, though, be sure to build a
test survey and take it yourself. The
survey will likely have ads—some of
which are more intrusive than
others—and it’s recommended that
you make sure the ads’ presentation
doesn’t conflict with your brand image
before you send it out to guests.
Once the data comes in, be leery of
focusing too much on any one
comment. It’s particularly easy to
dwell on a single bad qualitative
comment; to avoid this, try to think of
the qualitative data in a more quanti-
tative way. If there are two negative
comments out of 120 total submis-
sions, remind yourself that that means
98 percent of your customers had a
good experience. Look for patterns in
the data, too: while one person
mentioning that your spa’s linens felt
rough isn’t worth worrying about, ten
people saying the same beckons
further investigation. If you find a
pattern in qualitative data, use it to
inform your next survey by asking a
specific question: “How did you feel
about the linens used throughout your
service?”
You can also turn qualitative data
into quantitative data by changing the
type of question you ask; this is where
ranking- and rating-type questions
prove handy. Instead of asking, “What
was your favorite part of your
experience today?” ask them to rank
or rate specific components—
treatment, hospitality, pre- and
post-treatment relaxation, etc.
For spas, you’ll likely want to ask
more rating questions than ranking
questions; this is because rating
questions assign an absolute value to
an item, whereas ranking questions
assign a relative value to an item.
That is, ranking something only tells
you how it’s viewed relative to the
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