Research & Surveys

Using data to make decisions

Research is an effective method of making sound business decisions. At Gordian Business, we specialise in creating customised surveys that provide data that is relevant to your needs.

Our online surveys start as a blank piece of paper that then develop based on the information you want the surveys to provide. Our experienced research team use one-on-one interviews with key respondents to uncover important issues.

Surveys are an important way of measuring employee and customer satisfaction, as well as gaining invaluable feedback to build performance.

Surveys

Successful companies judge their performance based on a set of criteria that includes financial indicators and also customer and employee satisfaction. Today's market realises that factors that cannot be as easily quantified as dollars, are crucial in decision-making.

To stay competitive, organisations must collect and understand vital information such as the needs, opinions, satisfaction levels or intentions of the people who matter most: customers, prospects, and employees. Data allows an organisation to make informed business decisions.

Surveys provide organisations with the opportunity to strategically position themselves by discovering what clients' value and aligning performance with expectations. A survey is an excellent way to gain insight into your market, and then direct resources, time and money to high-value activities.

People usually appreciate the opportunity to give feedback. The survey process itself is known to increases loyalty, as customers' realise their opinion is valued and the company cares about the impression it makes. Involving the customer in the decision-making process allows them to feel an important part of the business.

Surveys are growing in popularity across every industry as a way to listen to clients. Companies are increasingly using surveys to measure their reputation across broad areas such as social and environmental performance. At Gordian Business, we specialise in measuring customer feedback, employee satisfaction, training needs, employee performance, and 360-degree feedback.

Gordian Business has extensive experience in conducting surveys for both small and large organisations across a range of industries. Unlike most of our competitors, we customise our surveys to target specific clients. This customisation ensures the data is relevant to our client's needs, enabling specific questions that generic surveys cannot include and using language appropriate to the sample group.

Advantages of conducting a survey:

• Identify your company's strengths and weaknesses
• Direct resources to high value activities
• Make decisions using real data
• Show prospects data that illustrates your company's strengths
• Identify and target performance gaps

Examples of our Surveys

Gordian Business is experienced in creating professional online surveys that generate high-impact data. Data from internal or external surveys or both allows for better decisions to be made. Examples of recent surveys include:

• Employee Satisfaction Survey for veterinary clinics across Australia. This paper-based survey yielded 575 responses and provided invaluable feedback that enabled practice managers to improve employee loyalty and retention. Many practice managers commented they thought they 'knew what their employees thought' but were staggered by their results and have requested to conduct the survey annually to measure and improve their performance.
• Skills Analysis Survey for investment and corporate managers at one of Australia's leading banks. This online survey was created to measure the training needs of the bank's management team. The survey was emailed to managers, and received a response rate of 75%. The results enabled senior management to make informed decisions about where to allocate its resources and money into training. It meant the managers had "buy in" to the training schedule, as they had requested it and the training targeted the most-needed skills.
• Performance Feedback in the form of a 360-degree survey, at a large Australian confectionary manufacturer. This survey was conducted online with unique logins and passwords for each respondent. It assessed the strengths of team leaders and areas for improvement, by peers, managers and subordinates. The results formed part of a program on leadership, giving participants insight into how others perceive their management style, making the workshop on leadership more meaningful. 360-degree surveys are most commonly used to analyse areas of professional development, and more recently as tools of performance appraisal.
• Client Satisfaction Survey for an international pharmaceutical company, conducted online in Australian and New Zealand. The survey gained feedback from key contacts within a partner organisation, helping to build the relationship between companies. The survey compared the importance and performance of the company's products and services. By measuring the gap between what customers value, and how they perceive the company is performing, the pharmaceutical company was able to focus its time and resources to highly-valued activities.

Advantages of a web survey

At Gordian Business, we recommend conducting surveys online. Web surveys provide valuable information quickly, easily and affordably; and achieve higher response rates than their traditional mail and telephone surveys.

Further, the data can be easily integrated into existing Client-Relationship-Management solutions This closes the gap between internal data and data from asking the customers the organisation serves.

Some of the advantages include:

• Full control - mandatory fields
• Quicker - changes can be implemented sooner
• Higher response rate
• More efficient
• Tailored for more meaning (e.g. names of respondents)
• Filter questions
• Cheaper (no data entry required)
• Environmentally friendly

This process can be completed prior to a conference so that the data can be applied to any presentations. Otherwise it can be conducted post-conference, using the conference to identify some critical drivers within the business.