Case study: Multi-lingual employee feedback survey
Summary
A large market research company were asked to carry out an employee survey for a world-wide retail catering organisation, operating in 26 countries and employing over 20,000 people. Opinion-8 hosted survey technology was chosen in order to offer the IVR survey option to front line staff, whilst a more in-depth online survey was completed by managers.
The challenge
The market research company were commissioned to carry out a multi-lingual and multi-brand European employee feedback survey for the client, covering their front line staff and managers in 5 European countries. Unified and separate reporting was required across languages, brands and locations, down to retail unit level. Data collection was to be done all over Europe with all reporting and analysis in the UK. The survey needed to be accessible by frontline staff within a catering environment with no easy on-line access. A web survey was therefore not a practical option, and a paper-based survey would have been extremely resource-intensive to distribute, collate and analyse. The client wanted to know quickly whether or not staff at different outlets were completing the survey, in order to be able to boost participation if necessary. Staff on the other hand needed to be assured that their responses would be anonymous, and could be given in confidence.
The solution
Opinion-8 survey solution was selected to conduct the employee feedback study, after conducting an initial pilot. Two variations of the survey were developed, tailored to the job function and working context of staff. An in-depth on-line survey with 49 questions and 3 open comments was devised for managers. A shorter IVR version of the survey with 18 questions was developed for front line staff who had no on-line access during working hours. They were given the option of calling a freephone number to participate in an automated telephone version of the survey. The survey script was amended to work as a recorded telephone interview, and the script was translated and prompts recorded in the four different languages. Survey invitations were then emailed survey to all local managers giving the link URL for the relevant language version of the managers on-line survey. Attached to these emails were promotional posters with details of the free phone telephone number for front line staff to call for the relevant language version of the automated telephone survey, with employees in one country able to select their preferred survey language. All the managers therefore had to do was to print off the poster and display in their outlets for staff to see. Follow-up email reminders were sent out after the initial invitation. The telephone survey took around 3 minutes to complete. Staff completed the survey by calling the given number, listening to the recorded questions and giving their answers by pressing the buttons on their telephone keypad.
The benefits
- The market research company were able to provide a highly cost-effective multi-lingual, multi-brand employee feedback study for their client.
- The client gained comprehensive feedback from employees in 5 different European countries. During the 6 week period when the survey was operational (in field) more than 7,200 IVR survey and 3,100 web survey responses were received from front line staff and managers. Drop-out rates were very low with almost all questions completed both on IVR and on web surveys.
- Easy access to the survey enhanced response rates: Front line staff were offered the choice of participating either by telephone or on-line. The automated telephone interview option allowed employees without internet access to participate in the survey during work time, ensuring feedback from this group of staff.
- Confidentiality and anonymity were maintained despite the fact that the survey was completed over the phone in a busy working environment, encouraging participation and also honesty of feedback.
- No additional costs were incurred for data collection and analysis, as the Opinion-8 survey system automatically collates and analyses responses. The emerging and final results could be viewed by project managers in both companies on a secure website accessed by a unique user name and pin number. Easy to use graphing tools provided simple visual representation of the results, whilst the raw data were also available to view and save as an Excel spreadsheet.
- Instant on-line reporting meant that the survey could be managed in real time. Reports on completion rates could be run down to brand and retail unit level, enabling the client to identify units or brands where staff had not been properly informed about the survey or were not completing it for other reasons, and take action to address this.
About Square Systems
Square Systems is a UK-based developer of integrated software solutions for contact centres. Square Systems specialises in leveraging open source technology for application in contact centres. Applications include automated customer satisfaction monitoring, interactive voice response (IVR) systems, speech recognition, Voice over IP (VOIP) and computer telephony integration (CTI).
Please visit www.squaresystems.co.uk