by Winnie Hsiu
March 4, 2011 3:28 PM
We have all been approached by those people in the mall trying to get you to answer questions for their survey. Simple question and answer formats have been used as marketing tools for years in the self storage industry as well as many other businesses. When done right they can provide a goldmine of information or possibly give you a virtual haystack in which to find your needle.
It is absolutely amazing what people will tell you when you ask the right questions. Of course the main trick there is in asking the right questions in regards to what you want to know. With the right questions, a self storage facility can find the secret to success in business.
Keeping customers happy and finding out what attracted them to you in the first place can be an invaluable tool. Often times when we engage in marketing efforts we are never sure exactly what will work. When you do something that makes a customer want to stay it sure pays to know what that is so you can replicate that action for other customers.
The answer to those questions and more can be found through the right survey questions. There is no tried and true method to making sure that you are asking the right questions though. One way that is suggested to make sure you do is to consider what exactly you are hoping to find out prior to devising your questions.
There is one common mistake that you will have to be careful of. Too often when people are trying to be specific with their questions (to find out specific things) they make the mistake of creating the questions in such a way as to guide the person to one answer over another. After writing your questions give them to someone else to look over to get another opinion on them to ensure objectivity.
Being clear about what you want to find out about your self storage facility in your questions will also make it easier to sort through the data you do collect. If your questions are too general than you are likely to get back a large amount of information which you will then have to spend hours sifting through. However, if you are a little more specific in what you ask than you will get less data to sift through (but more precise and valuable data).
There is an old saying:
“Do something good for a customer and they will tell one person, do something nasty to them and they will tell everyone that will listen to them.”
Through asking the right questions you can hopefully find out to make sure you don’t do something nasty.
Sources Used:
“Survey Says…Charlotte session to focus on querying your storage customers and knowing the right questions to ask.” SSA Globe; March 2011.
"Why Conduct Surveys?" GreatBrook; 04 March 2011.