What are Dynamic Surveys?
Dynamic surveys are surveys where the questions change based on previous responses. Unlike static surveys, where all respondents would see the same questions, dynamic surveys enable respondents to see only the questions that are relevant to them. In this post we discuss benefits of dynamic surveys, what to consider in survey design, and business use cases.
What are the Benefits of Dynamic Surveys?
The reality is that there will always be a significant percentage of your audience that will never complete, let alone start, a survey no matter what incentives you offer. While a “good” response rate will depend on the audience, channel, and purpose, most sources cite a benchmark far below 50%. Therefore, it’s important to create an environment that encourages survey completion among those that start. This is where dynamic surveys can help. Dynamic surveys can minimize response fatigue (or survey dropout/abandonment) in a couple ways.
- Shorter Survey Length: In general, the longer your survey, the more likely your respondents are going to drop out. Dynamic surveys can reduce the number of questions a given respondent will see while maintaining the granularity that you need to gain meaningful insights.
- Greater Personalization: In addition, people tend to be more receptive when they feel understood and are interested in the subject matter at hand. Dynamic surveys eliminate irrelevant questions for a given respondent and in essence, tailors the survey to that individual.
As an organization, you not only benefit from more data due to higher response rates but also from higher quality data. Dynamic surveys reduces the likelihood that respondents will answer questions that they’re not qualified to answer.
What Factors Affect Response Rates?
There are many factors that can affect survey response rates. Here are some of the main ones to consider when designing a dynamic survey campaign:
Survey Design
The goal of your survey design should be to achieve survey objectives while maximizing response rates. We already mentioned survey length and personalization as factors that influence response rates. In addition, here are other survey design features to consider:
- Survey Questions: Are the questions and answer choices easy to understand?
- Survey Flow: Does the survey flow in a logical manner?
Audience
Who you target can greatly impact response rates. However, your target audience is usually dictated by the purpose of your survey. For example, customer satisfaction surveys are usually triggered by an event, such as a customer service call or purchase. On the other hand, pulse surveys usually require probability sampling (simple random, cluster, systematic, stratified random) in order to draw statistically significant comparisons between groups and time periods.
Survey Invitation
As mentioned earlier, people are more likely to respond to topics that appeal to them. Therefore, your invitation should capture relevancy and excitement. In addition, your invitation should include expectations such as time commitment, the type of information they would be providing, and what you will do with this information. Respondents that know what to expect ahead of time are more likely to complete the survey.
Incentives
While some people may not find the survey topic interesting, they may find value in a gift card or cash. However, while this may increase response rates, incentives may also decrease data quality. Respondents may provide disingenuous or vague answers in order to quickly complete the survey to get the incentive. Therefore, it might make sense to first send out the survey without an incentive and test into incentives only when necessary.
Reminders
People often are busy and forget. Reminders can help improve response rates as long as they’re not too frequent and too obtrusive (which may have a negative affect).
Business Use Cases
Often when people think of surveys, they think of customer satisfaction surveys or market research surveys. However, the underlying technologies for dynamic surveys can also be used to simplify and manage workflows in an organization. On a high level, we mean the ability to create dynamic user interfaces, collect data through those interfaces, persist that data throughout the session, and action off that data. These technologies not only enable organizations to create surveys that are dynamic, but also enable organizations to create better user experiences. Here are some “non-survey” use cases for dynamic surveys:
- Online Applications: Typically when someone applies for a loan, credit card, insurance, membership, job, etc. online, they go through the same application process as everyone else. However, through dynamic surveys, you can tailor the front-end experience to the individual.
- Content Generators: When content is replicable, you can leverage dynamic surveys to simplify the authoring process. Content can be html/css code for a landing page or in our world, business rules for a particular decision. Users would simply input what’s unique about the content (headlines, thresholds, etc) to generate the final content.
- Simulators: When a business process cannot be easily tested, you can leverage dynamic questionnaires to simulate and test that process.
SMARTS™ Dynamic Questionnaires
SMARTS™ Dynamic Questionnaires is a powerful tool in the SMARTS™ decision management platform that enables organizations to design and execute dynamic surveys for all of the business use cases discussed above. In addition, Dynamic Questionnaires can be combined with Orchestrations, our decision management workflow tool, to create Business Apps, easy-to-understand user interfaces that enable non-technical users to easily accomplish decision management tasks in a no-code manner. Through Dynamic Questionnaires, organizations can deliver seamless customer experiences, whether the customer is external or internal.
Learn more about Sparkling Logic’s SMARTS™ Data-Powered Decision Manager and our Low-Code, No-Code capabilities.