A perception survey is an important tool for organizations to find out what their target audience thinks about their products and services. In fact, it is so important for the companies that they run it at various levels. The outcomes of these surveys can help the stakeholders with key insights that can affect their strategy and define a path further.
But before we talk, let’s delve into: what a perception survey means, different types of perception surveys, various survey question types, and sample perception survey templates.
What is a perception survey?
A perception survey is a research study carried out to understand the opinion of the target audience, be it employees, customers, students, or patients. The method of conducting a perception survey can vary depending on the type of project and timeline. It can be a verbal, online, or paper survey. It can also be conducted with a group of people as an interview.
The length of the survey can range from just one question, like an NPS survey, to a full-length questionnaire templates. Depending on the depth of your study, you can decide on the number of questions in the survey.
Types of perception survey
A perception survey can be carried out at different stages of a customer journey. An organization can conduct this type of survey to understand whether the customers perceive their business to be environment-friendly, responsible, lawful, modern, a game-changer, and more. A perception survey can also be carried out to know what people think about the pricing, quality, support, and value for money.
Here are some of the most used types of perception surveys.
Step #1 Brand Perception
A brand perception survey finds out how people perceive the brand of a company and how they relate to the message. It mines the answer to the question,” what comes to your mind when you hear of our brand name?” For instance, gym wear companies want their brand to be perceived as a symbol of fitness, action, and youthfulness. They can run a survey asking respondents to share their thoughts on the company’s logo and brand name.
Free Brand Awareness Survey Template
Step #2 Customer Perception
A customer perception survey is conducted to know what users think about the products, services, and organization. It can range across customer service, design, manufacturing process, delivery, and usage. Remember, an individual’s expectations significantly impact their perception.
So, conducting a customer perception survey helps organizations understand the challenges faced by customers, their experiences, and their improvement areas. It offers organizations insights into how they can provide better products and services.
Free Customer Satisfaction Survey Templates
Step #3 Culture perception
A culture perception survey is usually carried out to gather the opinions of employees. It collects data on whether the employees consider the workplace to be friendly, open-minded, trustworthy, comfortable, fair, and more. However, it can also be conducted by a business to understand what people outside the organization think of the company’s culture. Or, it can be carried out by state governments for tourists to know what they think about the culture of their country.
Step #4 Product perception
A product perception survey results map the consumer’s assumptions versus actual product usage experiences. At times, the consumer may expect the product to provide a certain level of performance. This type of survey finds out if the product actually met their expectations. If not, how different was the survey from consumer assumptions? To collect such data, one can ask, “On a scale of 1-10, how well did we meet your expectations?”.
Step #5 Health and safety perception survey
As the name suggests, a health and safety perception survey is conducted to know if the staff perceives the workplace as safe (from a medical and hazards point of view). It can also explore the angle of physical safety. For instance, with the increasing number of gun violence incidents, a school or university can create a safety survey like perception survey to know if the students feel safe on their premises.
Free Workplace Health and Safety Survey Template
Questions used in a perception survey
Multiple choice questions: These types of survey questions let you select one or more options to submit your answers. The survey administrator can customize the question and option settings and thus, have complete control over the presentation of the text.
Graphical questions: These question types include: the star-rating question, thumbs up/down question, slider question, and smiley face question. You can set the answer scale as per your requirements.
Ordering questions: They include rank-order questions, constant sum, and drag-and-drop questions. They are used to understand the order of importance the respondent gives to a set of options. Ordering helps you determine the relative importance given to each option and thus offers insights into how respondents make choices.
Matrix questions: These question types have rows and columns in answer choices. Rows represent various topics, while columns represent option scales. It lets you make optimum use of space and create concise online surveys.
Open-ended questions: When a limited set of choices cannot bind the answers, use open-ended text questions. With this type, the respondents can submit their answers as text.
Example perception survey template with sample questions
Below are some sample questions you can use to create a perception survey of any kind. Or, you can use one of our 350+ free survey templates. You can customize the questions as well as the survey design. Use survey logic to customize the flow of your survey. With our skip logic functionality, you can make sure to present only relevant questions to your respondents based on their answer choices.
- What do you think of our [brand] or [organization]?
- On a scale of 1-10, how well have we met your expectations?
- What comes to your mind when you think of our [brand] or [Tagline] or [logo]?
- How would you describe your emotions for our [product] or [services] or [organization]?
- How was your experience using our [product or service]?
- On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend us to your friends and family?
- Do you have any other feedback or suggestions?
Conclusion
If you want to explore how to create a free online perception survey for your organization or want to learn more about the best practices, connect with us. We’d be happy to help!
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