Customer’s inertia to respond
Let’s face it, no one likes filling out surveys. We let out a collective groan and rolled our eyes at the prospect of filling out paperwork. “Why do people hate filling up surveys?” has been a nagging question amongst marketers. This general dissatisfaction with form-filling and filing has unfortunately spread to questionnaire responses.
It does not help that the survey landscape today is brutal, to put it mildly. Organizations, from mom-and-pop stores selling homemade bread to multinational conglomerates, bombard us with forms and questionnaires on a daily basis. So drastic has it gotten that a term has been coined for this very phenomenon: survey fatigue.
What is survey fatigue?
Survey fatigue, also known as respondent fatigue, is something surveyors have observed en masse, irrespective of the type of survey being conducted or the kinds of questions asked. It is when respondents feel overwhelmed and “fatigued” by the sheer volume of surveys that are thrown at them on a daily basis. What this leads to are rushed and incorrect responses, partially filled questionnaires, and often a complete refusal to engage with surveys. This reduces the pool of the target demographic that will engage with your survey, and ultimately contribute to improving the accuracy of your results.
To put it simply, people have really grown tired of filling up questionnaires: one study showed that over 70% of customers give up halfway through filling out a survey. This would inevitably leave you with two-thirds of your data being incomplete at best, and inaccurate at worst.
Now, to answer the question “Why do people hate filling up surveys”? the reasons people hate surveys.
Reason #1
Things don’t change in spite of surveys
Your survey respondents are very likely, or bound to be, your customers. In fact, that faction of your customer base that engages with the brand regularly would largely be the ones going out of their way to fill up your 10-minute feedback forms. It should then be a no-brainer that this group—of loyal customers—should be retained (and increased) for the good of the organization.
What loses their interest very often is the lack of resolution they receive. A simple acknowledgment of the feedback they have provided or the thoughts and feelings they have about the company’s offerings that they have shared is what they want to see after filling up the survey. Not doing so leaves a sense that the company is indifferent to the concerns of its target customer base, and leaves an overall impersonal feeling in their minds.
A possible solution to Reason #1
Acknowledging the respondent’s feedback
A simple solution is sure to deter this cause of survey fatigue. It is to keep the respondents in the loop. After the survey is filled up and submitted, it is important to send an immediate acknowledgment—that their queries have been noted and that they will be notified of changes incorporated—by means of either text or email.
Merely paying lip service wouldn’t suffice. People these days often feel as if companies merely “pose,” i.e., pretend to engage with and show interest in their customer base, but in reality, continue to proceed with business as usual. It is important, then, that you keep them in the loop until there is some resolution in the medium term. A continuous spamming of messages is sure to annoy them; it is all about treading the line between apathy and annoyance. The easiest way to proceed then would be to send a confirmation message (stating that their feedback has been recorded), a subsequent “processing” message (that their feedback is being deliberated), and a conclusive ‘accounted for’ message (that their feedback was valuable and has been accounted for). It is important to show your respondents that you are listening.
Reason #2
Repetitive, invasive, and impersonal questions
Respondents hate it when surveys begin asking the same thing in different ways. Consider being asked, three or four times, what income bracket you belong to. Or irrelevant questions, such as being asked what kind of clothes you prefer to wear in a car company survey? Or even the same type of question, like rating something out of 5, five times in a row? It would be infuriating, to say the least.
Such repetitive questions and question types are sure to drive down the respondent’s engagement with the survey and are sure to flood your data with inaccurate responses, caused by customers getting bored and annoyed by answering the same thing over and over again. They would choose responses arbitrarily and incorrectly, just to get it over with. This is sure to give you all the wrong insights and leave you with an unusable set of data.
Similarly, questions that seem controversial or invasive to the respondent are sure to have them intentionally fill out the wrong responses, to position themselves as an archetype they conjure in their heads. This is of no use, as ideals are sure to have no grounding in how they behave in person. Controversial questions are also bound to leave the respondents flustered at the thought of having been asked something so personal, often having them leave the survey unfinished. An example of this would be asking what the respondent thinks of gay marriage. They may either try to project a false image of being progressive or flat-out refuse to fill out the rest of the questionnaire. This isn’t to say that a fair share of people will engage with such questions with enthusiasm. But the possibility of there being a good deal of inaccurate and incomplete data is equally high.
Customers also hate feeling like they are one among the masses. Disinterest is sure to abound when all the respondents are sent a generic message (text or email) with the same set of questions. Using a generic questionnaire for everyone would also yield fewer insights into your demographic’s choices and behavior, than what a more detailed, personalized, and case-by-case set of questionnaires can produce.
A possible solution to reason #2
Be concise and personal
All the above problems seem to intersect and can be addressed together by making your questions matter. Similar questions may help in narrowing down and obtaining precision insights on the demographic being surveyed, but this repetitiveness will lead to fewer engagements and often inaccurate responses. Having data is thus more valuable than having more precise data. It is best to do away with the repetition and be concise with the questions asked. For example, instead of two or three questions that narrow down to a specificity, a single question can be used to indicate the respondent’s class bracket.
Similarly, the ordering of questions can change the extent of the respondent’s engagement. Having many of the same types of questions (on a scale of 1–10) five times in a row, for example) may cause some respondents to rush through and arbitrarily choose options. It would then be best to insert a different question type between every few similar question types to break the monotony and improve engagement and response accuracy.
While it is advisable to do away with controversial questions, sometimes the need arises to probe the respondent’s personal inclinations and beliefs. In such situations, it would be best to find workarounds that provide insight into the question indirectly. For example, if you need to accurately know the customer’s income bracket (as many often do instinctively lie about this), it would be best to ask them questions like how often they vacation in a year, what is the cost of their phone, if they have an air conditioner in their home, and the like.
Instead of sending generic questionnaires, it is better to tailor the questions to their feedback on the purchases they have made from your organization or their feedback on the services rendered to them. This is sure to make them engage better with the survey, as they may feel obliged to share their feedback and experiences on something that is asked only on a case-by-case basis.
Reason #3
No compensation for filling out the survey
This has to be the most logical reason people hate filling out surveys, but it is very often overlooked or deliberately discarded just to save on costs. In fact, many companies these days fail to reward their respondents for the time and effort they have taken to fill out your survey. The few companies that do so half-heartedly toss a few gift cards or a small cash amount to a handful of respondents, under the guise of “winning a prize.”
The truth is, people don’t want to be part of a raffle with a meager payoff for their efforts, they want some compensation. In today’s economy, people truly value the time-money trade-off and failing to acknowledge its prevalence is just unwise.
A possible solution to reason #3
Compensating for the respondent’s time and effort
Surveys take time and effort on the respondent’s part, and some form of compensation is a way of acknowledging their enthusiastic participation. Telling your respondents that you will be compensating them with a gift card or a discount code is guaranteed to boost their engagement with the questionnaire, consequently improving the quality of the data and the insights generated.
The type of compensation and the amount can be decided based on how long the questionnaire is, the type of people being asked, and how sensitive the questions are.
