Tips: question types for customer surveys
Many different question types and formats are available for your customer survey. In the LamaPoll survey tool, you will find templates for both individual questions and complete surveys on this topic. Choosing the right question type or format depends on many factors:
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Do you want customers to give a rating or answer a question?
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Should customers compare or explain?
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Which devices will customers use to complete the survey? (Apple products generally do not support Flash animations, and older versions of Internet Explorer may not support certain functions either.)
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How much time do customers have to complete the survey?
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Are any questions repeated?
Ranking questions – drag and drop
Ranking questions allow customers to drag important items upwards and less important items downwards. However, very old browsers cannot handle this type of question. An alternative is an input question that allows customers to distribute a set number of points between more and less important items as they wish.
Matrix questions – compact but unappealing
Matrix questions have the advantage of allowing you to ask about many aspects at once in a relatively compact format. However, they very often lead to high abandonment rates. A long table with lots of small boxes and circles to click can be off-putting. You should therefore consider whether you really need that much information, as you risk receiving fewer responses overall.
Tip: Sometimes it is better to use lots of short questions rather than one long matrix question, even if this makes your customer questionnaire much longer. A matrix question is more compact, but it offers no variety and can cause considerable frustration.
Multiple-choice questions – the classic option
Multiple-choice questions are the classic choice among question types. You can vary and customise them as you wish and add comment fields and ‘Other’ options. They can allow either a single or multiple selections and can be displayed horizontally, vertically, in a drop-down list and in many other ways. Multiple-choice questions are not limited to simple yes/no questions. You can also use images as answer options, display live results, assign rating points in the background (see rating questions) and then analyse them. Multiple-choice questions offer considerable flexibility.
Rating questions – richer than multiple-choice questions
Rating questions are similar to multiple-choice questions, except that points, or ratings, have already been assigned to the answers. This can make analysis considerably easier because, in addition to response frequencies, you obtain averages, variance and more.
Input questions – interesting but difficult to analyse
Input questions are perhaps the most versatile question type of all. They support multi-line comment fields, short ‘Other’ fields, date entries, validated email address fields, whole numbers, decimal numbers, times, introductory text and much more.
Other question types and functions
Besides their type, questions can also be distinguished by their function, for example:
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ice-breaker or introductory questions at the start of the customer survey,
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transition questions,
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buffer questions,
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follow-up questions,
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filter questions to screen out irrelevant target groups,
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control questions to check the truthfulness of responses.
Questions can also be distinguished by their degree of standardisation, for example by how they are phrased (directly, indirectly or in a more complex way), among other criteria.
