a hotelier’s guide to soliciting feedback -...
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Designing Smart Surveys A Hotelier’s Guide to Soliciting Feedback
DESIGNING SMART SURVEYS | TRUSTYOU
The world’s largest guest feedback platform
Designing Smart Surveys A Hotelier’s Guide to Soliciting Feedback
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DESIGNING SMART SURVEYS | TRUSTYOU
CONTENTS
Understanding Guest Survey Relevance
Using Surveys for Market Research
Researching Your Reputation
Recommending Survey Lengths
Offering Multilingual Surveys
Creating Your Survey Questions
Keeping Google in Mind
Achieving High Conversion Rates
Collecting Surveys On-Site
Practicing the Best On-Site
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A HOTELIER’S GUIDE TO SOLICITING FEEDBACK
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IntroductionMany different ways exist to solicit valuable feedback from your guests, and there are limitless possibilities of questions to ask and answers to receive. Before setting up your survey, there are certain precautions to consider. Making the initial effort to plan the survey thoroughly will encourage more responses and provide actionable and reliable insights into your guest’s experiences. With this in mind, let’s start the process from the beginning.
Understanding Guest Survey RelevanceThe notion of relying on feedback samples to measure attitudes and behaviors has grown from a mere curiosity to a dominant practice. Guest surveys are an essential tool for hoteliers: they allow them to gain valuable insights and market intelligence in order to identify and solve internal issues, improve services, and stay ahead of the competition. Hence, not taking part in this practice puts you behind the pack in terms of the aforementioned points.
Reviews increase the value of a hotel for travelers. According to research, 76% of travelers say they are willing to pay more for a hotel with better reviews. Hotels should make use of any opportunity to encourage their guests to actively review their stay: 81% of reviews are positive! A popular method is to actively encourage post-stay and on-site surveys, since they can be personalized and provide the guest with a feeling that the hotel values their opinion. Besides, more reviews equals
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better scores, higher rankings, and more bookings!
Although the most common way to collect online surveys is to send post-stay surveys, there are many benefits to collect customer opinions while they are on the property. The first relates to the time-sensitivity of reviews. During the experience portion of the guest travel-cycle, there exists a small window of opportunity for the hotel to make a huge impact on a traveler’s experience. Additionally, this is a source of much more reliable and actionable feedback since the experience is still fresh in a guest’s mind. Guests appreciate an outlet to express their feedback through meaningful channels, which creates trust between hoteliers and travelers.
Collecting surveys is only a piece of the guest feedback platform puzzle. Publishing these reviews online is where the value is replicated on scale. The following infographic shows a linear path for how each survey response with TrustYou Stars affects your overall reputation around the web.
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Our researchers found that reviews collected with surveys result in 8% higher scores. With TrustYou Stars, these average higher scores can have a direct impact because these feedback results are pushed to through TrustYou and impact the Meta-Review. When travelers search for hotels on sites such as Google and Google Maps, KAYAK, Skyscanner, and/or Wego, they are shown the TrustScore and data from TrustYou’s Meta-Review. Surveys from TrustYou also encourage guests to post their feedback directly on Google as a Google review, thereby impacting the quantity and quality of available content about the hotel. This increased content has a relationship with a hotel’s placement in search rankings:
“Google review count and score are also factored into local search ranking—more reviews and positive ratings will improve a business’s local ranking.”
We have discussed these topics in much greater detail in our blog and ebook: “The Facts About Hotel Review Scores and Rankings on Google,” or download our free e-book “All Things Google, A Guide for Hoteliers.” Hotels around the world already gather feedback in some form from their guests. TrustYou is the only all-in-one tool to offer feedback collection, analytic tools, and review summaries that tie every aspect of a hotel’s reputation together. Our case studies provide evidence of the powerful effects of TrustYou’s product suite; Analytics, Stars, and Meta-Reviews.
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Using Surveys for Market ResearchGuest satisfaction surveys can be used for many reasons including: direct guest feedback, improved hotel rankings on its own and third party sites, and conducting market research. The latter is an important functionality that should be used very conscientiously. TrustYou, for example, enables hotels to segment out a portion of their guest surveys for internal market research purposes. It remains important for surveys to still serve the primary need of gathering valuable guest feedback; however, as long as you accomplish this goal, you are able to utilize market segments from your property management system (PMS) to customize surveys to different groups.
Researching Your Hotel´s ReputationStart by researching your hotel’s reviews and ratings from review sites before you set up a survey. Discover which areas of your hotel are praised, and where there is room for improvement. This will give you an idea of which areas to focus your survey in order to learn which positive changes to make in your hotel.
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Recommending Survey LengthsKeep it short and simple. Remember, your guests are doing you a favor by providing feedback—don’t take up more of their time than necessary.
Typically, minimizing surveys to 1-2 dropdown/checkbox answers, 3-5 ratings, and one long text answer will still take your guest about 5 minutes to fill out.
As a general rule, avoid asking for more than 1-2 long text answers. Most long surveys are not completed.
Consider surveys you have taken where there are page after page of questions, filling it out becomes boring, tiring, or you become distracted and your feedback loses its value.
With every extra page you include, the response rate will dramatically drop.
While certain property types, such as all-inclusive resorts, require more questions due to the variety of services available to guests, there are ways to structure your survey in order to address every point while still keeping it short.
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Offering Multilingual Surveys If you plan on providing your survey in multiple languages, hire a professional localization service or have a native speaker write the translations. Online translation services, such as Google Translate, are helpful tools for communicating one-on-one in languages in which you aren’t fluent, but it often still provides incorrect translations. Many companies offer localization and translation services; but they can easily become costly. When in doubt, send the survey in your native language.
Creating Your Survey QuestionsTo give you an idea of types of questions you can create, here are the answer types possible through TrustYou surveys: • Short text – good for names, email addresses, address fields, etc.• Long text – good for written open-ended answers• Number – similar to short text, but will only accept digits: good for dates,
phone numbers, etc.• Score – a scale from 1-5 or 1-10, with 5 and 10 being the best: good for
“how would you rate…”• Dropdown – a menu with a list of options to choose from, only one can
be picked• Checkboxes – a list of options to choose from, many can be picked• Radio button – a list of options to choose from, only one can be picked• Net Promoter Score (NPS) – a value between -100 and +100: respondents
are surveyed on a 0-10 point scale and the NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of customers who are Detractors (0-6) from the percentage of customers who are Promoters (9-10).
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TRY THE FUNNEL TECHNIQUE:
Structure your questions using a method called the “funnel” technique. Start with a couple of broad general interest questions that are quick and easy to answer. This can serve as warm up for the guest completing the survey. Since you want to keep your survey short, this will only be a couple of questions. You can then move on to creating questions that correspond to different offerings at your property such as the check-in experience, room, service, etc. You may want to separate these into different sections to give your survey some structure. Using the “scale” answer type is the best way to structure these questions. You can then include secondary questions which only appear when a guest gives you a lower score. For resort-type properties, you might have multiple services about which you would like to receive feedback, you can create a question using the answer type “radio buttons” to ask your guest if they used the service or not. If they used the service, questions can then appear to collect more feedback. You can also use checkboxes to quiz your guests at the beginning about the services they have used and then have related questions appear based on the selections made.
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PARENT QUESTION: Parent questions provide the opportunity to ask relevant subquestions relative to the initial question. Subquestions are triggered when a specified answer is given:
PARENT QUESTION VS. PARENT AND SUBQUESTION
THROW AWAY QUESTIONS: Questionnaires often include “throw away” questions to increase interest and willingness to respond to a survey. These questions are about hot topics of the day and often have little
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to do with the survey. While these questions will definitely spice up a boring survey, they require valuable space that could otherwise be devoted to the main topic of interest. Use this type of question with caution.
WRITING STYLE: We often feel the need to make our survey questions as sophisticated as possible. Just because you have a luxury hotel does not mean you need to make your questions difficult for a child to understand. In fact, you should make your questions as basic as possible. You can include some wit if it fits with your brand, but everyone should be able to clearly understand what you are asking. Try not to use big words and instead use simple sentences and choices for the answers. Simplicity is still the best. In general, you should be precise and not ambiguous to make sure that you and the guest have the same understanding of the concept that is surveyed. You should always try to communicate in the same style as your guests.If you have to make your questions long, still keep them simple like this example:
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DOUBLE BARREL QUESTIONS: Asking two questions in one is called a double-barreled question. For example, “Was the internet service fast and affordable?” It may be fast but the affordability might not be there. This will make analyzing your results much more difficult. Avoid double barrel questions as they bias the result and it is not clear which aspect the guest was rating. Be clear and specific in your directions and in your questions.
OPERATIONS: A sign of a good survey question is that it fits the needs of your research. If you don’t know what you will do with the data, throw the question out. Keep your survey questions direct, to the point, and pertinent.
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Keeping Google in MindWith TrustYou Stars, your survey reviews can also be pushed to Google. After your guest completes the survey and clicks “send,” a Google review box will pop up using information from the free text box and the score your guest has already given. Keeping this in mind, it is important to have a long text box at the beginning or end of your survey where your guest can leave their overall impression of your property.
This text is also semantically analyzed and will influence your Meta-Review. Hence, it is important to not add too many additional text boxes to your survey so that the respondent is able to fill out all their comments within one. Please note that the free text box referred to above is in the standard questions settings in TrustYou Stars and not the custom questions.
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Achieving High Conversion RatesWhile the design of the questionnaire is the most important part of a survey, there are other details you should consider to reach high conversion rates.
Here are some tips to keep in mind:• Tell your guests they will receive a survey, how long it will take, and why
you’re sending a survey ahead of time. Your guests receive many emails every day. Letting them know to expect your message will allow the guests who are most likely to provide valuable feedback to look for it in their inbox. If you tell guests why they’re receiving a survey, they’re more likely to provide feedback. Example: “After your stay, we’ll email you a short survey so that you can give us feedback about your visit. It should take about 5 minutes to fill out.”
• Try to improve your process to collect guest emails to increase the quality and the quantity of the emails collected. This is essential to maximize your sample size and thus, the feedback collected. Make sure your staff is aware of the importance of collecting guest’s emails. You can motivate them to do so by setting up an email collection process with small incentives.
• Try to reach your guests before anyone else. When guests write a first review of a particular stay, it is very difficult to get them to write a second. Make sure to be the first one inviting them to write a review. Based on TrustYou experience with high conversion rates, the optimal time to send a post-stay email is two days after guest departure.
• Make sure your post-stay email is attractive and motivating. Pay attention to all the details: the subject line, the body and the look & feel. At this point, you have to make sure you capture your guests’ attention and motivate them to open your survey. Here are some suggestions to design high conversion Post-Stay Emails:
1. Design your email. Contact your webmaster agency and design a visually appealing post stay email according to your brand guidelines. Through TrustYou, you are able to upload the header image of your post stay email and change the text.
2. Draft a persuasive subject line.
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3. In the body, personalize the message including your guests’ names. Explain to them how important their feedback is for your hotel, let them know how long the survey will take and don’t forget to thank them for their time.
• Offering an incentive to increase the motivation can help increase the conversion rate of your surveys. This can range from a draw for a free stay to a gift voucher for your restaurant during their next visit. Incentives can also draw guests back to your property, so be wise with your choices.
Collecting Surveys On-SiteGet actionable feedback. Make memorable moments. Create relationships. Collect online surveys. Do all of this while collecting surveys from your guests during their stay.
BENEFITS
There are a lot of benefits to on-site surveys, the following are just a few:• Reviews are time-sensitive. Collecting your customers’ opinions while
they are still on the property allows the hotel to make an impact on a traveler’s experience directly after a review is submitted and prior to their checkout.
• On-site surveys are a source of much more reliable feedback as the experience of the guests is still being fresh in their minds.
• Having the ability to express one’s opinion during this stage also shows the customer that the hotel values their perspective and creates trust between hoteliers and travelers.
WAYS TO GATHER ON-SITE SURVEYS
Depending on the needs or type of the hotel, one or more of these methods will enable you to increase customer feedback. TrustYou ’s experience collecting surveys has provided us with
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a unique perspective about successful ways to gain on-site surveys:• Survey Tablets: Provide guests with a convenient way to submit their
feedback without directly asking them by placing designated tablets in waiting areas, lobbies, or high traffic areas, travelers have the opportunity to submit their comments and concerns if and when they have a spare few moments.
• Personalized Emails: Reach out to your guests while they are staying with you because you have the chance to make up for any issues they are facing. Finding out how to make their visit more memorable could be a chance to create the memorable moments they will likely not forget and share with others both in person and online.
• Push Notifications/Automatic Location Based Alerts: This tip is for the hoteliers targeting more of the tech savvy clientele. If you have a hotel app, you can push notifications to their mobile devices and encourage feedback on their most personal devices. This also generates personalized data for use in future dealings with the guest. For even further benefits, use the location features to detect when a customer is leaving and/or returning to the property to reach them at their most convenient times.
• SMS/Text Messages: If your hotel doesn’t have a mobile app (and many do not), you still have the option to push notifications to guests in an effective way. Hotel messaging services like Checkmate allow hotels to send SMS/text messages to guests with ease. No need for guests to download a separate mobile app to engage with you, they simply receive a text message the way they would from friends or family.
• QR Scannable Codes: The world hasn’t entirely caught on with the QR code trend, but they are still an effective way to make providing feedback both easier and a bit more fun. Consider using them in combination with targeted surveys, such as in a hotel restaurant or spa facilities, to get very specific feedback that can easily be turned into actionable improvements.
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Practicing the Best On-SiteOne of the biggest concerns for hoteliers is burdening or bothering guests with surveys. Our most valuable tip is to Keep It Simple. Since vacation time is valuable, it is important not to take too much time away from the guest. We recommend asking up to four questions to your guests in the on-site surveys and have a few sub-questions triggered when negative answers are given. For example, you could ask the guest if there is anything they should be aware of to improve experience with a yes or no question. using the radio buttons. If yes is selected, ask for a brief description using short texts, and add further dependencies to ask if they would like to be contacted by a staff member.
ConclusionDeveloping successful surveys is a science. Through careful planning, hoteliers can gain valuable insight into their property’s strengths and weaknesses. TrustYou Stars survey solution provides the tools to enable success whether your hotel is collecting guest feedback on-site or post-stay. Hotels can further maximize survey benefits through the utilization of the entire guest feedback platform. TrustYou Meta-Reviews and TrustScores are products of published survey results in combination with a hotel’s global reputation, which can be monitored and analyzed with TrustYou Analytics.
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