Writing a customer survey from a blank page is a slog, and that's why so many surveys end up oddly shaped. Break the survey into the five logical sections every survey needs (intro, attributes, outcomes, closing, thanks), and the drafting work shrinks dramatically. Here's the template, with what each section is for.
![How Survey Question Wording Can Skew Responses [Video]](/_astro/how-your-words-can-influence-survey-results.atDzw1jQ.jpg)
How much can a single word in a survey question shift the answer? Substantially more than most survey designers think. This short video walks through a real example, "easy" vs "difficult" in the same question, and shows why word choice quietly biases your data before the respondent even gets to the scale.
The Australian Privacy Principles came into force on 12 March 2014, and they have specific implications for the way customer feedback programs are run, particularly the direct marketing rule (APP 7) and cross-border disclosure rule (APP 8). Here's a non-lawyer's walk-through of what changed and what to update in your feedback program. Caveats apply; this is not legal advice.
Statistical analysis is a vast field, but the bit you actually need for customer feedback is tiny. Master a handful of techniques and you'll outrun ninety percent of the teams working alongside you. Here are the only statistical analyses you need, what they're for, and how to know when to reach for each one.
Hair and beauty salons have the same customer-feedback opportunity as any other small business, and almost none of the templates fit. This page pulls together the Genroe material most relevant to salons: how to design the survey, what to ask about, how to publish it, and how to analyse what comes back, with the specific tweaks that suit salon-style relationships.
Customer surveys exhibit a marketing version of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: the act of surveying changes the customer being surveyed. Dholakia and Morwitz's HBR research tracked surveyed customers over two years and found they were three times more likely to open new accounts, half as likely to defect, and more profitable. Here's the effect, the explanation, and what it means for survey design.