How do you manage cross-functional conflicts and disagreements in your customer satisfaction survey process?

1 Define your survey objectives

Before you design and launch your survey, you need to have a clear and shared understanding of what you want to achieve and why. What are the main questions you want to answer? How will you use the survey results to inform your decisions and actions? Who are the key stakeholders and what are their expectations and needs? Having a clear and aligned survey objective will help you avoid confusion, duplication, and inconsistency in your survey design and analysis.

2 Choose your survey method and sample

Once you have your survey objective, you need to decide how you will collect and analyze your data. What is the best survey method for your target audience and budget? Will you use online, phone, email, or in-person surveys? How will you ensure that your survey sample is representative, reliable, and valid? How will you deal with non-response, bias, and errors? You need to coordinate with your cross-functional teams to ensure that your survey method and sample are appropriate, feasible, and consistent with your objective.

3 Design your survey questions

The quality of your survey questions will determine the quality of your survey data. You need to design your questions carefully, following some basic principles of survey question writing. For example, you should avoid leading, ambiguous, double-barreled, or jargon-filled questions. You should also use simple and clear language, appropriate scales and response options, and a logical and consistent order. You need to collaborate with your cross-functional teams to ensure that your questions are relevant, accurate, and comprehensive.

4 Analyze your survey data

After you collect your survey data, you need to analyze it to extract meaningful and actionable insights. You need to use appropriate statistical methods and tools to summarize, visualize, and interpret your data. You need to check for validity, reliability, and significance of your data. You need to identify the key findings, trends, patterns, and gaps in your data. You need to communicate with your cross-functional teams to ensure that your analysis is clear, valid, and aligned with your objective.

5 Report and act on your survey results

The final step of your survey process is to report and act on your survey results. You need to prepare a clear and concise report that summarizes your objective, method, sample, questions, data, analysis, and findings. You need to highlight the main insights, implications, and recommendations from your survey. You need to share your report with your cross-functional teams and solicit their feedback and input. You need to follow up on your report and implement the actions and changes that you have agreed on.

6 Manage your survey process

Throughout your survey process, you need to manage your cross-functional coordination and collaboration effectively. You need to establish clear roles and responsibilities, timelines and milestones, communication channels and feedback mechanisms, and conflict resolution and problem-solving methods. You need to involve your cross-functional teams in every stage of your survey process and seek their input and buy-in. You need to foster a culture of trust, respect, and learning among your cross-functional teams.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?