Improving Your Response Rate – Part I

Introduction

DesignFacilitator subscribers often ask what they can do to get people to respond to feedback requests. Many factors affect the likelihood of a recipient responding to your feedback requests. The factors include, but are not limited to, the recipient’s

• Quantity of email in the inboxes
• Email service and manager’s spam settings
• Reaction to the email’s subject line
• Perception of the time and effort required to reply
• Discomfort answering questions they may think are about you personally
• Perceived benefits of answering your request (Will it really make a difference?)
• Ability to remember to complete the survey later if it cannot be finished now

In this article, I will offer some tips you can use to improve your response rate. First, I will address what you can do before you send the feedback request. In Part II, I will discuss principles you can apply while creating and following up on the survey.

Prepare the Recipient

Your client comes in Monday morning and the phone is already ringing. She answers the phone and pulls up her emails. Twelve new emails and another 23 in the junk mail (possible spam). She quickly scans the spam and almost instinctively asks: Does it appear safe? Did I expect it? Does it have a believable benefit? Do I want to see this? If the answer to any question is “No”, she deletes the message.

What if one of those discarded emails was your feedback request? To prevent your survey from winding up in the Trash folder, talk to your recipient before sending the request!

• Regardless whether you talk face-to-face, by telephone or via email; preparation or ‘pre-notification’ is critical. Use whichever format you desire, but be sure to let them know the survey is coming. That way, even if it was misdirected to their junk mail box, they will recognize it as valid business mail.

• People are often just as uncomfortable giving personal feedback as they are asking for it. That is why DesignFacilitator’s surveys are about your process, not about you. Explain this to your recipient ahead of time to help ease any apprehension he may have about telling you about you.

• Your recipient may have experienced surveys that branched to more questions, or said they contained five questions and in actuality, each question contained multiple questions. DesignFacilitator’s surveys typically take 2 – 3 minutes to answer. They do not ‘branch’ to additional questions. A question is one question, period. Your recipient will always know the number of questions up-front.

• You might explain that this is NOT a sampling survey sent to thousands of people. It is a specific request to evaluate the services you provided to that person so that you can fine-tune your process to best satisfy his needs. Although you cannot pay for his response or offer a chance to win $5,000, the incentive you offer is even more valuable: a designer or consultant whose process is tailored to the client’s needs.

In Part II, we will discuss concepts and actions you can apply while sending and following up on the feedback request.