I’ve spent some time lately, thinking about Chris Anderson’s concept of the ‘Long Tail’ and how it applies to a satisfaction questionnaire.
As an illustration of a long tail distribution, I’ve copied more than 1,300 lines of data into the bottom of this post. Each line is a keyword phrase or ‘search term’ that visitors used to find The Satisfaction Questionnaire Blog – along with the number of visitors sent by the phrase in parentheses.
Not surprisingly, the phrase ‘customer satisfaction questionnaire’ ranks at the top of the list, having brought 130 visitors to the blog over the past few months. The rest of the phrases are listed in rank order, from most visitors to least. (Where there’s a tie in rank, the search terms are sorted alphabetically.)
The first thing you’ll notice is that a relatively small number of searches sent a large number of visitors. Of the 1,323 keyword phrases brought in from Google Analytics, the first twenty represent about half the total volume of visitors. Anderson might call these the ‘blockbuster’ keywords (the red area in the image above). The remaining 1,303 make up the distribution’s very long tail – shown in green.
By the time you get to the 18th phrase (2% of the way down the list), the number of visitors per keyword has fallen to 7. By the time you reach keyword #180 (14% of the way down), you’ve hit unique search terms that represent only 1 visitor apiece, i.e., 86% of the keyword phrases brought only 1 visitor each.
Take a moment to scroll down through the list…
What’s the Lesson for Questionnaire Writers?
Or for business owners or bloggers?
By intention, this blog is optimized for a handful of those keywords, say five or six. Thankfully, most of the ‘intended’ terms show up near the top of the list. That means I was able to anticipate, given the subject and likely audience of this blog, several important phrases that readers would enter into a search engine to find it.
Were I to be evaluated on how well I anticipated the remaining 1,300+ variations, I’d clearly be given a failing grade!
Why? It’s nearly impossible to predict the exact thoughts, words or context that people bring to a search.
The Same is True with Answers to Survey Questionnaires
It’s just as difficult to predict the range of responses to a survey question.
That’s why we’re better off asking respondents to voice opinions in their own words rather than choosing from a set of answers we make up for them.
One of the reasons we ask customers for feedback is to view our businesses or blogs from a different perspective. To help us step outside the business and see it from a different vantage point. If we limit respondents’ feedback exclusively to answer choices we prepare ourselves, we lose the opportunity for gaining insights from their unique perspectives.
It’s undeniable, from a practical viewpoint, that verbatim (open-ended) responses can be challenging to analyze. Often, this type of data can’t be summarized by a single number, manipulated statistically or reported as a ‘top-box’ score. And, to be fair, open-ended questions are not the right approach for every situation.
But, as with the distribution of keywords below, a rich source of value lies out beyond the easily anticipated answers – out in the long tail. For this blog, 53% of the visitors and 98% of the search terms come after the top twenty. That’s just over half the traffic! But, more importantly, it’s the vast majority of keyword phrases – each of which has the potential to contain an idea or concept or opportunity I hadn’t yet considered.
Always Ask the Open-Ended Question
With a satisfaction questionnaire, I typically ask respondents to rate their likelihood of recommending a product or service on a 0-to-10 scale. Those ratings yield an easily analyzed metric. But, I always follow up by asking what it would take to improve their rating – using an open-ended question that allows them to offer their own ideas in their own words. To say what’s on their minds.
Research questionnaires are about more than classifying people into buckets – they’re about listening to what customers and readers have to say. And how they’d like to see us improve.
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Suffice it to say that there were MANY search terms with just one instance! (The really long tail!)
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