Author Archives: Jason Buchanan

The subscription economy has been alive and well for many years now as companies strive to grow a base of monthly subscribers and increase their value.

You can get a subscription for anything from shavers to vegetables to television, and in many cases it makes sense to pay a small fee per month rather than buying individual items.  Netflix and Spotify are wonderful examples where the monthly fee is more cost-effective than buying each show, movie or song individually.

The problem is that sometimes, the thing a company wants you to subscribe to isn’t used enough to gain value from a monthly subscription.  If you are using something once every 4 or 5 months, it starts to make less sense.

This can most certainly be true of online survey platforms.

Whilst most online survey platforms come in the form of a monthly subscription, the reality is that most people only need to run a survey every now and then.  Certainly not monthly, which means the majority of the time your credit card is being charged without any value being received.

Don’t get us started on the complicated subscription options that are usually on offer, which hold many features back unless you pay for the top-tier option.  Frustrating for sure.

Tandem offers Pay-As-You-Survey

If you only do a few surveys a year, Tandem Surveys is the choice for you.  With us, you only need to pay for the surveys you launch.   Data is retained for 90 days, which means you have plenty of time to launch a survey and understand the results.  And if you want to keep the survey results to compare later surveys, you can pay a very small monthly fee to keep the data retained in your account.  Still way more cost effective than a full monthly subscription.

What this means is that you can sign up for an account and evaluate all of the features without having to commit to a subscription.

If you haven’t already, sign up for an account and check Tandem out for yourself.

Like most Business Leaders, you are probably constantly looking for ways to improve one thing or another to remain competitive.  It might be internal initiatives to improve things for team members.  Or it might be tracking progress with improvements to products and services.

In these scenarios, it is just as important to be able to measure any progress that is being made to understand whether initiatives are having an impact.

For this, you can use Tandem Surveys.  Here’s how to do it.

Create a few simple scale questions

Tandem has a number of question types available, the best one to use for measurement is a scale question.  An example is 1-5, where one is the negative answer and 5 is the positive answer.  ‘How satisfied are you with life at work’?  Extremely Dissatisfied to Extremely Satisfied would be a common scale.

Our suggestion is to create a few simple scale questions, and to also include a text question in order to gain context about the answer.  For example, you might simply ask ‘Why did you give that answer’ and offer a text box for someone to give further information.

Ask, and repeat

After you have received the first set of answers to your questions, you will know your baseline to work from.  The answers to this first survey will be meaningful, but it will be difficult to know how meaningful because there will (usually) be no prior data to work from.

Here is where Tandem becomes super-powerful.  A few months later, you can run exactly the same survey questions and the answers can be quickly compared against each other on the same dashboard.  Tandem comes with this ‘Comparisons’ feature with all paid plans.

Instantly on the dashboard, you can see how much progress has been made.  Over the course of 12 months, you will have an excellent indication about your progress.

It is that simple.

If you need help planning the measurement of progress for your initiatives, we are here to help.  Simply contact our support team to get started.

The main reason people conduct a survey is to collect important information to make better decisions.   It might be to improve an existing product, or perhaps improve an upcoming experience.  Perhaps to understand the satisfaction of suppliers or how happy employees are.  Perhaps to know what others think about a specific topic.

Whilst many people will use surveys to ask positive questions like ‘how well we are doing’ (e.g. a product or service or employment relationship), it can also be important to collect information about what isn’t working or what they don’t want.  Some people can accidentally think it sounds a bit negative to ask these sorts of questions because it draws attention to negative things.

However, it can be extremely useful to know what people don’t want or don’t enjoy or don’t like.  Often, these problems are the things you most need to know because, once you know them, you are in a position to do something about.

An example is a restaurant.  A customer really enjoyed the food, but didn’t like the music in the background.  Whilst they could have been a repeat customer, the music was a turnoff and so they don’t come back, preferring to go to another place where the food is also good.  I am sure you can think of an example that is relevant to you.

With Tandem Surveys, a great way to discover problems is to ask an open-ended question to ensure you properly understand the full context, and then use our AI Reporting feature to help summarize the text-based answers.  It helps to ensure you don’t need to rely on any assumptions because people are giving you all the information you need.

As always, if you have any questions about surveys and how to get the most from Tandem, simply contact our support team.

One of the major reasons why people conduct surveys online is that it is easier and cheaper than contacting everyone individually and asking them all the same questions.  In an instant, an online survey can be delivered to hundreds and even thousands of people at the same time in exactly the same way.

Whilst this is great, one of the mistakes people often make when doing surveys is forgetting that convenience can be a trap.  Sure, it is easy and convenient for you to create and publish a survey for the world to answer, but if the data isn’t meaningful, and doesn’t lead to a correct insight, you won’t be able to make the best decisions.

At best this is a waste of time.  At worst this leads to making incorrect decisions which create all sorts of other future problems.

That’s why at Tandem we encourage people to use open-ended questions to understand context.  For example, instead of simply asking someone to rate the satisfaction of a product or service on a five point scale, you could ask ‘What was your first impression of our product’ or ‘What didn’t meet your expectations?’, or any relevant question.

But doesn’t this create more work for me?

This is usually the first thing that comes to mind upon the realization that asking open-ended text questions means trawling through lots of text-based answers.  Normally, this is a time-consuming and confusing exercise because everyone has answered the questions in different ways.  What are the common themes?

This is possibly the most important feature of our Premium Plans, the ability to analyse and summarise text-based data into common themes and suggested actions.  Through the power of Artificial Intelligence, it’s like having another team member do it all for you, but completed almost instantly at a fraction of the cost.

So remember to include text-based questions in your surveys and make use of our AI Summary feature in our premium plans.  To learn more about how you can get more from your surveys through text-based questions, simply contact our support team.

Communities play a very important role in all societies, a way to bring people together with common interests and shared experiences. If you are the leader of a community, whether it be a sporting organisation, church or community group, understanding the opinions and concerns of community members is something that is likely on your mind.

If so, Tandem Surveys is created for you. We have made it easy to keep a finger on the pulse of your community by asking a few simple questions on a regular basis. It’s not just about knowing current opinions, but also about understanding how things are changing over time.

Here are a few tips to help you do this in a meaningful way.

Create a reason for giving feedback

Just because you have questions for people, doesn’t mean they will answer them. We have found that an important reason why people will answer surveys is that their answers will be recognized and heard. By providing a clear reason why people should participate, it increases the chances of this actually happening. Tell people how the information will be used, and after each survey make sure you are providing everyone with a short summary of the results and the actions that will come as a result.

Keep questions simple and easy to understand

People simply don’t participate in surveys that are difficult to answer. People simply have better things to do with their time. By making questions clear, easy to understand and easy to answer, you are more likely to have more people participate. At Tandem, we support this by presenting survey questions in a really simple way.

Check in regularly, but not too regularly

None of us like being asked questions too often, but similarly people will give their feedback on a regular basis if they know it is for a good reason. Depending on the type of community organisation you run, and how quickly things change, you might find that you send question to your members every few months. Some are doing this monthly, but you will know if this is too often.

As always, if you have any questions about how to engage with your members and successfully use surveys to keep a finger on the pulse of your community, get in touch with us or book a demo with one of our team.

One of the common mistakes that people make when conducting surveys is forgetting that people are giving up their time to answer your questions.  Even if you are paying them an incentive to compensate in some small way for their time, the reality is that they are still giving up their time for you and what you want to know from them.

Their responses are often invaluable, but only if they actually respond!

You see, it is easy to think of the people answering your survey as merely ‘respondents’.  When this happens, chances are that the survey being created for ‘respondents’ is going to be all about you and the questions you want to ask.  It is easy to expect that respondents will simply answer any and all questions you send their way.  Afterall, the job of a respondent is to respond, right? 

But this is not really how it works.

The people you want answers from are constantly being offered plenty of other things to occupy their time and attention, and if a survey hasn’t been developed with this in mind, you are highly likely to lose them during the survey, or not even have them start the survey.

There is nothing more deflating than creating a survey and putting it out there to the world, and nobody responds.

Think of respondents as ‘customers’ of your survey

This probably sounds like a simple idea, and it is.  Instead using the term ‘respondents’, think of these people as customers.  Like any customer, you want to delight them, take care of them, and make it all about them.  Simply by doing this, you start to reduce the chances that you will create a survey that nobody wants to respond to.

With this as the starting point, you are in a better position to collect better information and be able to make better decisions.

The main reason anyone would conduct a survey is to discover what other people think.  And therefore, understanding and interpreting survey results is a very important part of the process.

Whilst individual survey results are always interesting, the power of surveys is often to compare the results with previous surveys that have run to see what has changed.  This of course requires the survey questions to be the same from survey to survey, although our advice is that you keep a core group of questions the same, and then change others depending on priorities and circumstances.

The problem is that comparing survey results can be a time-consuming exercise, and often a very manual process. Ideally, the results of questions that are the same can be displayed next to each other simply and easily to instantly see what is changing over time, and this is what you get with Tandem.

The key to Tandem’s reporting power is the use of Tags.  Throughout the system, whether it be an audience that is uploaded into the platform, or individual survey questions, a ‘Tag’ can be added to almost anything in the platform.  A Tag is simply an identifier that links pieces of information together for the purposes of reporting, and you will notice that throughout the platform, there is a place for a Tag (e.g. survey questions, surveys and individual recipients).  For example, let’s say you conduct a survey in September 2023, and then again in February 2024.  You could add the tag ‘Sep23’ to the first survey, and ‘Feb24’ to the second survey, and then generate a report using each Tag, and then compare these surveys.

Instant comparison of data.

If you have any questions about comparing survey results over time simply and easily, please get in touch with us and we would be delighted to help you out.

If someone doesn’t believe that their answers in an employee survey are truly anonymous, your chances of getting to the ‘truth’ are significantly reduced.

There are a number of differences between surveys conducted with employees compared to other audiences like customers.  The main one is that employees have a boss who influences their day-to-day experience at work, whereas customers don’t.  A customer’s experience is all about your product or service, whereas an employee’s experience is as much about the people they work with, and their boss, as the company itself. 

This is an important thing to remember when designing an employee survey, because whilst customer survey’s rarely need to be ‘anonymous’, employee surveys are often described as anonymous to encourage truthful and honest feedback.   In our experience, a team member would rather give ‘good’ answers than face the wrath of their boss for giving ‘honest’ feedback.  Who wants to make their life any harder at work!

However, many employee surveys are not genuinely anonymous.  Whilst a summary report of the answers is usually an aggregate of all the responses, the survey software itself, in the database, offers survey administrators a detailed report of exactly who said what for each question.  And when this is available, there is always the possibility that a survey Administrator will be asked to reveal who said what in specific cases.  If employees feel like this is happening, the chances of them answering truthfully to describe situations where truth is important become much lower.  Or if a survey company is being used, the survey company can often see exactly who said what, and team members can feel that if pressed, they will reveal who said what.

This is why at Tandem, we have created a genuinely anonymous mode for employee surveys.   When anonymous mode is selected, even Administrators cannot see how each individual answered each question.  If someone doubts this, an Administrator can invite a person to take a look at the software itself.  It simply can’t happen.  With complete confidence that surveys are genuinely anonymous, you are likely to get access to what is really happening within your organisation with Tandem.

If you have any questions about anonymous employee surveys, please feel free to contact us.

In our last blog article, we suggested that a company’s people are a wonderful source of suggestions and ideas about how to improve what the company does, ultimately leading to better experiences for customers. Afterall, a company with a growing number of happy customers is one that has a bright future.

However, tapping into the Inner IQ of the company is not necessarily something that many companies do particularly well. Whilst many companies already do employee surveys, these are often mostly focused on an employee’s experience and less about how to improve what the company provides to customers. Whilst business leaders are often in a very good position to look at big picture improvements, it’s often the little things that can make a big difference. It’s the people who are doing their job every day, who are closest to the action, who are in the best position to suggest any number of improvements that could be made, but they are rarely asked in any meaningful way. Imagine how many simple and easy-to-implement ideas there might be across the entire company right now!

Our suggestion is to do this by creating what we call a Performance Improvement Drumbeat. Rather than conducting a single survey, think of it more as a repeatable process to help collect valuable information on a regular basis as part of a continuous improvement program. Tapping into your company’s Inner IQ.

The first step is to decide on whether this is something that you are willing to commit to properly. There is nothing more frustrating for team members than being asked to identify potential opportunities for improvement and then nothing is done with this information. People will not participate in the future, and the opportunity will be lost. You are better off not doing anything at all, than conducting any form of data collection and not doing anything with the results.

If the answer is yes, this sort of exercise is something the company should be doing and is willing to take action, the next step would be to communicate this to everyone. It can be as simple as spreading the word through teams and asking them to be on the lookout for things that don’t make sense, or are getting in the way of them doing a great job. You want to tap into the expertise of the entire team, and a great way to start is to get them thinking about these sorts of things in advance of any official activity being conducted. Anything they are noticing is likely to be relevant because they are closest to the action.

The next step is to set up a simple survey in Tandem asking for their suggestions and ideas. The trick is to not create a situation where people are just complaining about things, we want to ask in a way that ensures everyone is offering constructive suggestions that will not only improve their own experience, but also lead to the company creating better products, services and experiences.

Within Tandem, you will find a library of just a handful of important questions that you can ask all team members. These are all open-ended questions, which is a really important because context is extremely important. It’s the only way to do this properly, however the issue with this is usually that it is hard to analyse large amounts of text data.

We at Tandem have solved this problem with our paid membership plans, which come with our text analysis tool. Not only will these answers be automatically summarised, Tandem will also be able to offer suggestions about what to do next.

And of course if you need our help, you can always get in touch with us and tap into the expertise of our experienced team.