As we continue to adapt to the conditions caused by COVID-19, businesses and institutions are finding it more important than ever to stay connected in an unobtrusive, meaningful way. Pulse surveys can help you do this.
Customer experience surveys are at their core a communication method – designed to be quick for customers to answer, and easy for you to interpret. Our pre-built Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and Customer Effort Score (CES) survey templates measure sentiment systematically through our customer satisfaction software, but tracking those particular metrics may not be your top priority right now.
This blog post walks through how some of our customers have created pulse surveys from Delighted’s survey templates to meet their in-the-moment needs. All you have to do is modify the initial survey question in Delighted’s CSAT or NPS tool.
These pulse surveys don’t measure NPS or CSAT, though they use the same rating scales. They purely help you communicate quickly with your community and deepen customer understanding during this unprecedented time. Hopefully these examples can be useful to you as well.
Co-opting the NPS survey template for an educational pulse survey
With the directive for educational facilities to close for the rest of the school year, many institutions have transitioned to fully remote classes. This opens up various new considerations for educators, including the question of how to check in on student progress.
Karl Barksdale, a professor at Utah Valley University, has come up with an efficient solution. Instead of asking the traditional “How likely are you to recommend…” NPS question, he’s updated it to read: “How far along are you in work on your research paper due on Wednesday?” The same 0-10 rating scale still applies.
By tweaking the Delighted NPS survey template, he now has a weekly pulse survey for checking in on students in different classes to see how far they’ve progressed ahead of big due dates. His pulse survey is easy to understand and answer, and Delighted’s reporting features are still there to help him stay on top of responses.
The modification helps him stay in touch with his students so he can proactively reach out to anyone who might need help.
Using a pulse survey to gauge the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on your merchants for on-demand services
A European restaurant delivery service has pivoted their NPS survey entirely to ask: “How much has your business been affected by Covid-19?”
They had noticed fewer restaurants using their service, and wanted to dig in on why. The standard NPS question was no longer relevant, and didn’t net them the feedback they needed.
They need to know:
- What new pain points their merchants are experiencing
- What they can do to help
Their pivoted survey, complete with follow-up multiple choice questions, helps them figure out what programs will help mitigate the impact of social distancing orders for their restaurant line of business. For instance, do they need more resources around pick-up, help handling the influx in order volume delivery, or better safety guidance?
They can easily leverage their existing Delighted build to roll the new survey out to multiple geographies, and manage the responses.
Adding another survey touchpoint to monitor supply chain logistics needs
Another one of our customers, a logistics management company, has been heavily impacted by supply and transportation disruptions. They needed a way to measure how customers view their offerings relative to what support they actually need.
Though they historically use NPS surveys, the question was not specific enough to what they were trying to understand.
For them, the answer was to create a dedicated CSAT project, with additional multiple choice questions to ask customers what resources they need and what they could do better.
Creating a yes-no pulse survey to scope childcare resources for frontline responders
The availability of resources for frontline responders is paramount right now. To evaluate that quickly, all you might need is a quick “yes” or “no.”
Early on in March, an institution in Seattle reached out to us to see if we could help them implement a short SMS survey to help monitor the availability of childcare facilities for frontline responders. Email surveys would be a no-go, since they would get lost in the noise of all the other email communications going out.
Together with Qualtrics, our parent company, we were able to help them create a quick SMS text survey to ask hundreds of facilities if they were open, with follow-up questions around their capability to care for the children of first responders.
In Delighted, you could easily create a yes-no pulse survey with our thumbs survey template, and reach your customers in whichever channel is best for the moment: email, web, or within your app.
For more information on how to stay connected tactfully, take a look at our previous posts on improving the customer experience during uncertain times.
Create a pulse survey for in-the-moment needs
If you need to create a pulse survey, it’s as easy as modifying your initial survey question. Just make sure the answer scale (0-10, 1-5, thumbs up or down) is still appropriate. Also check out our guide on examples of biased survey questions to avoid common questionnaire pitfalls.
