Designing a questionnare

[Big Jim]

Hello,

Have any of you run a questionnare before ?
What questions did you ask, what did you acheive from running the questionnare ?

I want to try and gain some sales somehow and I think if I can gather "some" information it can in someway help me.
My problem is I am not sure what the information I should gather should be or what to do with it once I have it.
The questions I have come up with so far are
Age
sex
Town
how many pcs in household
how old is main pc
what is main pc (ie tablet smartphone laptop/desktop)
what is most important when getting a repair done (service/price/turnaround/reputation/ ???)

Beyond that I am a little stuck.

 

[ComputerCorner]

How do you plan on distributing this questionnaire and gathering the information?

I'm not sure how you have determined that a questionnaire can help you if you don't even know what to do with it.

 

[Big Jim]

I have determined I am not busy enough
I have also determined that companys spend a lot of money each year on market research.
I have detrmined I need to know more about what attracts people to a computer repair shop in order that i can do that and increase my flow of people.
The issue with my shop is LOTS of traffic passes but very little footfall (although I have only really put a decent display of accessories in about 3 days ago)

 

[ComputerCorner]

Yes, companies spend a lot on market research. Big companies with massive budgets. Are you capable of spending a lot of money to determine what your customers really desire?

If you don't, you should spend more time researching what other people have learned in order to get a better idea. It will cost you only time. I'm sure this forum has a lot to share.

Asking customers that walk through your door will not really benefit you much. They already walked in your door! You need to know what everyone else wants or needs. I doubt many people will voluntarily spend time on a questionnaire unless there is some reward, which costs you a lot of money in order to gather sufficient data.

 

[nesrinamb]

I'm currently designing one and should be ready by this Monday since I got a big 4th of July car show that my company is going to be at promoting our products and services

I will be giving away a kindle fire and to get a raffle ticket people have to fill out a questionnaire. The area where this car show will be at is in an area where something the average incomes for a household is over $100,000 a year.

I will be asking regular question such as name and address and email

All the entrants are possible lead and i will be qualifying them by asking several questions.

First what are you selling: I'm selling peace of mind because my monthly proactive maintenance services cuts down catastrophes from happening

My Target Audience:

1) small and medium businesses

2) the managers and owners or at least people who are able to influence the decision to buy (manager, owner, CFO, CEO, CTO) even the companies own network guys as my company could be their when they get overwhelmed to take the load off but not their jobs (will be kinda hard to convince them of the last part).

3) businesses with 4-100 computers

4) businesses which may have the same customers as me but not be my competitors

Goals during event: get one new customer per hour . (yes I just said that)

Goals after the event: Qualify leads and start sending letters to those that are more likely to need my service or currently need my services

Current Questions:
Do you own a business?

Role in company?

Number of employees?

1-2
3-5
5-12
12+

Do you or does someone else run regular updates and backups?

• I do
• My Tech Guy
• No one currently does it

What is the most common problem you experience with computers (blank area to tell about the computer issues) this is where i talk to them for 10 min just asking question about their business i don't sell i just have them talk about themselves and add in places were i say "oh that can be done fairly quickly"

how bad is the issue?, how does it affect your business? have you tried resolving the issue?

theirs more stuff to it i will post it once its finished through Google forms

 

[16k_zx81]

Ummm... To be frank, I think more valuable information is what people have thought of your service after you have provided it.

The information you are looking into spending time and effort obtaining should be readily available from your actual customer contacts. In other words, you will ascertain this from just talking to your customers, without it taking time or expense as a separate project.

The more useful (and harder to get) data is honest feedback from customers about (a) whether they will use your service again (and why) and (b) whether they will recommend to family and friends (and why), and most importantly, as much negative feedback as you can get.

Here's why; your non-return customers will generally just go elsewhere. No explanation. If you can find out from them what the issue was, you can ensure its built into your service protocols in future. In this way you maximise customer retention and word-of-mouth referral. Compliments are easy to get, because customers like to give them. We hear on a daily basis how great we are, which is nice, but it only tells us to keep doing what we do already, which we know (hence the compliment). What we do not often hear is where we went wrong, particularly if its a relatively 'minor' issue in the customer's mind. Thats why I say this is the information thats actually worth seeking out. Without knowing how we have sucked, its hard to continually improve

Probably not the answer you were looking for, but TBH I think market research on this scale is probably not going to particularly meaningful (sample size, representation, t-distribution, and all of that jazz) Any statistician will tell you its an extraordinarily iffy proposition.

.

 

[nesrinamb]

@16k_zx81

I already do that but yes there should be time spent on past customers but i am spending time on my questionnaire to get leads and qualify them so I'm not cold calling people who have no intention of using the service or want to look into it any time soon

 

[Big Jim]

My original idea was that I was going to offer a free health check to anyone that filled out a questionare.

This worked 3 fold

1 - it gets people in the door
2 - I get my name recognised
3 - if there are problems with the pc I can upsell
4 - I have the potential to gather data that I can put to some use.

The town I live in is pretty small ~9000 inc surrounding villages.
So reputation spreads quite quickly (bad in particular) I am still new here, 2 more guys doing repair work
1 - established quite some time, also does web work, report are that they used to be very good but standards are slipping, not as well know as they are on a trading estate rather than town centre
2 - very well know, has the town name as the business name, has an appaling reputation of ripping people off, not doing the job properly, some of the stories I have heartd about these guys is just laughable (these guys are the reason I started up, if they can make money out of it doing the job so badly then surely I can if I look after people) They have a shop in town centre quite a bit more for sale than me but there prices are very very high.

I just want to get my name recognised and let people know I am here, I am just outrside the town centre no other shops nearby and town centre footfall generally does not walk past my shop, howeverr the one way system in the town pushes probably 70% of town traffic past, so advertising is key for me, whatever I can do to get people in the door at the minute is good.

 

[nesrinamb]

that's great for you but you have to realize that most people just don't value a health check you will likely only get a few people willing to go for your offer.

You have to offer something that people want.

People need AV software and backup software but who is willing to fill out a survey for this......not many.

People want an iPad people want free movie tickets people want free money. Offer them that,

Im currently offering a Kindle fire in a raffle for filling out a survey. Their will be 100 flyers in goody bags for classic car show participants at a 4th of July event.

I'm also giving out 2 free reusable grocery tote bags to the first hundred who fill it out.

If you want to get your name out i suggest go to a local festival or event. One member got together with the boy scouts and gave part of the money he gave to the boy scouts. They did the marketing he did the work and they got some money. The people feel good because they got a working computer and some money went to the boy scouts.