Survey Software HQ

Spring tends to bring new life into the environment… trees are becoming greener, perennials are starting to sprout again, and lawns are starting to get back into shape. Springtime at Prezza means we are preparing for a whole new slew of technical goodies including: 1. New Checkbox Online Pricing and Packages 2. The release of our new Checkbox multilanguage kit 3. The release of an automated Ultimate Survey > Checkbox upgrade utility (this will be cool). 4. The unveiling of our Checkbox Mobile package - which lets people sync up data collected from mobile devices to a Checkbox server (wireless or through a docking station).

Join Prezza’s Christopher Park for this web-based presentation and demonstration which will highlight the new capabilities and features of the latest version of Prezza’s web-based form, feedback, and survey software, Checkbox® Web Enterprise Edition. Please join us, and feel free to invite a friend or two.

https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/634823430

By the way, if you missed this - you can still register and view the archive.

Jason O’grady over at ZDNet did a nice job articulating why iPhone was brilliant to pre-announce their iPhone. You can find the complete list here.

But Jason makes a great point on item #2.

[Apple gets] “Six months of free R&D by a rabid, foaming at the mouth, customer base. I’ve never seen so much press and feature suggestions for a product in my life. Why hire more QA people when you can simply pre-announce something and let the blogosphere do your research for you? (Although it baffles me why Apple hasn’t added a “suggestion” link to their iPhone pages.)”

Great point Jason.

But my question is this: why haven’t more companies adopted a strategic feedback collection tool to pull in opinions, bug fixes, feature requests, and more from their customers or prospects? In this era of group collaboration - where it is believed that external groups provide a critical component of decision making for any organization - it make sense to have a tool to power your feedback collection.

 - Brian

Three-quarters (73%) of the 1,060 UK employees questioned by Chiumento HR consultancy cited good relationships with colleagues as the main reason for enjoying work. Less than half (48%) cited financial rewards.

Only one-quarter of workers said they were “very happy” in their jobs, and one in five described themselves as unhappy.

The Chiumento Happiness Index, published today, also found that employees working for smaller businesses were more likely to be happy than those who work for larger organisations.

Some 86% of employees who work for companies with between 20 and 100 staff feel happy, compared with 78% of those who work in organisations with more than 1,000 staff.

Women were also found to be happier at work than men, with eight in 10 (82%) claiming to be happy in their jobs compared with 78% of men.

Source: Personnel Today
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Sending your customers a survey right after they’ve dealt with your helpdesk is a great way to collect feedback while the experience is still fresh in their minds.

Here’s an example of a survey Linksys sends out after a completed support call.

 What they did wrong

 ————————-

- No validation to check if answers have been filled out (I can skip to page 2 without answering anything).

- The layout is a bit clunky, I’d limit the matrix questions down to one important one.

What they did right

————————

- branded the survey with their logo - only 2 pages - nice and short

Today in New England, as the Patriots lost a nail biter to arch rivals the Indianapolis Colts, we have a good reason to be a bit unhappy.

However this interesting article is about today - January 22nd - and how it is considered the “unhappiest day of the year” by British social scientists.
“All is not doom and gloom, however, as a survey of 85 per cent of people in Britain expect to be happier in the future than they are now, a psychological study for Standard Life Bank found.”

Marketers are always looking to add data to back up their claims and marketing efforts.

I just got a 5 question survey from LinkedIn that asked me to see if I thought I was influential using 5 questions. The question choices were wording such that I wanted to “Strongly Agree” with everything….

- Are you an expert in a field?
- Do you give advice on certain areas?
- Do you blog or participate in online communities? Etc (these aren’t verbatim by the way)

I can imagine they will use this very effectively to add meat to their marketing. Here’s what I am guessing they are doing:

1. They could issue a press release claiming it’s one of the most influential social networking sites on the web simply to generate more buzz.

2. They may also be starting to try and convert free users into paying users, and this could be a step in gathering more serious users.

3. They could use it in a media kit - and let people know why should people advertise on their site. This could be a more profitable way to pull in revenue versus Google AdWords as they currently do today. I would guess they might move away from Adwords and sell ads on their own network - which they could make a lot more money on.

This survey of over 700 tech savvy readers of Network Computing goes into some depth on networking infrastructure, but should make an interesting flip through for most technology professionals.

 Includes:

- More hated buzzwords
- Customer thoughts on resellers
- Thoughts on open source
- Much more from the IT boss
- Despised “marketing blather”

I must say… many of these survey questions were primarily written by someone who sounds fed up with their own industry and therefore the tone of the questions are very incendiary. “Which Network Computing blather do you most despise?”

FULL ARTICLE
SLIDESHOW VIEW

So our local Boston, following in the footsteps of a growing national movement against partially hydrogenated oil which contain “trans fats”, has received a precedent to follow. New York recently voted to pass a ban on the unnatural chemically produced fats… Restaurants must comply by July 2008. A survey was conducted to some readers of local Boston Business Journal:

Should Massachusetts remove unhealthy items from menus? Yes 39% No 60%
I think this falls in line with some of the people I’ve spoken to.. “don’t tell me what types of foods to eat and not to eat.” Personally, I felt the same way until I dug into it. I thought… what the heck could be so bad against the occasional french fry binge… Check out these studies.

So I guess in this case, the survey results up above reflect a fierce stubbornness, an unhealthy ignorance, or maybe a bit of both… it would be similar to saying - let me choose whether I can feed my kids lead paint or not… it’s my household. In this case, I believe the government does have the responsibility to put out an educational campaign on what these substances are… and to ban them.

Source: Boston Business Journal

Loyal Survey Software HQ readers… since we’ve started turning this into a more informal, transparent blog aimed at providing some insight into our industry, we’ve seen a steady response from you. Traffic has doubled in the past week!

 Thanks!

We have to push our agenda every now and then (because after all, this is written by an employee of Prezza Technologies, a survey software company who lives in a large office building right next to Harvard University.

A Completely New Product Line

We have some very new products we are going to be officially releasing to the market although we have been testing them with some of our “bleeding edge” customers in order to understand which directions we should take in refining the end product.

I’m really excited about the possibilities for these products and I hope you will come back to this site or www.prezzatech.com soon for more information.

- Brian