
Marketing Technology
A Beginner’s Guide To Survey Building Tools
By TechDogs Editorial Team

Share
Overview
They love me not…
Those are not the words of a lovesick teenager. Just thoughts every business has about their customers, every manager has about their team and every entrepreneur has about their investors.
Opinions are valuable – especially from your customers, employees and other stakeholders. Businesses use surveys to collect feedback that helps drive important decisions, plan new initiatives and take the guesswork out of delivering exceptional experiences. Ask and you shall receive, as the saying goes!
The market research industry goes back seventy years to the days of Mad Men, when companies distributed customer surveys over the phone, in focus groups and via (snail) mail. Now that we've entered the digital age, surveys (along with almost everything else) have gone high tech. Thanks to Survey Building Tools, conducting surveys over the internet using a mobile device, laptop or tablet is as easy as ordering your favorite food (just a couple clicks away!). If you are curious what makes these marvels of modern technology work and how businesses can best leverage them, this article is for you.
.png.aspx)
Are you satisfied with our service?
How would you like to rate this call?
How likely are you to recommend us to your friends and family?
Have you ever come across these questions? Who are we kidding, of course you have!
Today’s digital consumers are constantly confronted with surveys. They pop up in social media feeds, materialize in email inboxes after a purchase and overlay web pages as people browse the internet. That’s because feedback is valuable and survey question help businesses harness customer sentiment, so that it can be used to create better products, services and experiences.
In short – you need to know what your customers feel and the best way to do that is to ask them directly. Period!
Now that we know that surveys are the way to get into the mind of the customer, the bigger question is how. How do you take these surveys in the digital age? How do you know what to ask? As Rowena Ravenclaw puts it - “If you have to ask, you’ll never know. If you know, you need only ask.”
Decoding that puzzler for you, what we mean is that by now you must know that there’s always a tool available for survey creation. You only need to ask what this survey tool is all about. So, introducing Survey Building Tool – the what, the why and the how.
What Are Survey Building Tools?
Survey Building Tools are software that makes it easy to conduct surveys over the internet without the need to program (or build) surveys with code. The tools feature drag-and-drop interfaces that enable users to design surveys and facilitate survey deployment. Most tools include survey templates, analytics and reporting capabilities and can be integrated with other tech tools like CRMs, social media platforms, Ecommerce software and more.
Want to know what your customer thinks of your website? Present them with a 1-question popup survey as they leave your website. Want to know how they like the new shoes they just bought? Send them an email soliciting feedback on the product. Curious to know if your customer would recommend you to their friends (and why)? Send them a text alert asking them to fill out a 5-question mobile form. In short, Survey Building Tools make it easy to ask anyone just about anything from anywhere. Popular survey software and free survey tool includes Survey Monkey, Qualtrics and SoGoSurvey.
A History Of Survey Building Tools
Once upon a time, businesses solicited customer feedback using old-school analog techniques — over the phone, through the mail and in-person via focus groups and face-to-face surveys.
The long-running AMC series Mad Men, set in the 1960s, features a great example of an early survey-taking technique. In the episode titled Babylon, there’s a scene where a group of ad executives — all men — are trying to come up with ad concepts to sell lipstick.

At a loss, the men conduct an impromptu focus group where they survey women from the office while observing the ladies trying on different shades of lipstick through a one-way mirror. This gives them insight into what excites women about the product and what motivates them to select or reject colors. It is the female secretary, Peggy Olson, who ultimately pinpoints the key selling point that they pitch their client. By listening to what the women were saying, she comes up with her brilliant ad messaging angle. “I don't think anyone wants to be one of a hundred colors in a box.”
We’re no longer dependent on in-person surveys and focus groups to get consumer feedback. Modern internet-based Survey Building Tools emerged around 1999, with the launch of Survey Monkey (a free online survey tool) which was founded by Ryan Finley. Since then, Survey Monkey has sent out over 147 million surveys over twenty years!
In 2003, The Net Promoter Score (NPS) became a standard way to measure online customer satisfaction. The NPS measures the percentage of customers likely to recommend something (a product, service, brand, or company) online using a scale of 1 to 10. The lower end of the scale (1-6) is labeled “detractors” and the highest (9-10) are promoters.

In 2002, another Ryan — Ryan Smith — launched Qualtrics, an online research company aimed at helping organizations gather customer feedback through surveys. Today, they have over 5000 customers including many big-name brands like FedEx, Microsoft and JetBlue. After that, many more followed the suit and the rest is history (quite literally!).
Ever since, the basic functioning of these tools has been standard. Let’s look at how Survey Building Tools help you in getting the right feedback in the digital age.
How Do Survey Building Tools Work?
Survey Building Tools provide an easy-to-use interface for marketers and businesses who want to create and distribute surveys. Many also provide analysis and reporting functionality. Typical features of Survey Building Tools include:
-
Drag-and-drop survey building
interface and tools, questionnaire templates and design elements.
-
Question condition
tools that enable a variety of question types, formats and other elements (e.g., timed questions).
-
Answer condition
tools that provide answer-focused features such as showing/ hiding answers, conditional triggers and process flows.
-
Scoring algorithms/data analysis
for compiling survey results.
-
Survey distribution
tools that enable you to digitally share the survey via email, social media, SMS, apps/websites and more.
-
Response management
features that automate collecting, tracking and categorizing survey responses.
They’re quite the “room of requirement” for all your survey-related needs. The only difference here is that this room of requirement comes in different shapes and sizes AKA types.
Types Of Survey Building Tools
Here are a few common types of Survey Building Tools available:
-
All-in-one survey solutions
like Survey Monkey provide comprehensive question-building and analysis features.
-
User interaction tool
like Typeform and Jotform enable marketers to create dynamic surveys and forms and quizzes which can be embedded in a website, email, or shared via a link/ social media.
-
Live-action survey tools
like AskNicely collect live user information and track consumer sentiment of products, services and companies based on NPS. These tools are designed to work well in your tech stack, integrating with platforms such as Zendesk.
-
Form-building tools
like Formstack and Google Forms are user friendly, often free (in the case of Google) and focused on one main task — solicit responses via an online form. These are bare bone tools that don’t have many features.
Do you really need all that jazz? You can simply email your customers and ask for their feedback. Well, good luck with that! While we can’t tell you why your customers won’t get into the hassle of responding to descriptive painstakingly boring emails (duh!), we can tell you why Survey Building Tools would totally work for you.
Why Do We Need Survey Building Tools?
Survey Building Tools simplify the process of creating surveys and enable seamless distribution of surveys to your customers, prospects and users — no one-way mirror required. The tools make it possible for any business, regardless of size, to better understand their customers, prospects and market. Imagine sending emails for feedback to 10,000 customers and then collating them all to get some insights! #SayNoToDonkeyWork
You no longer need to usher a group of people into a room to get their thoughts on your product or determine the usability of your website. You also don't need to be a statistician to interpret your survey result. The software does it all for you!
In short, the key benefits of Survey Building Tools are:
-
Surveys are quick to create and implement compared to traditional survey methods.
-
Surveys/ feedback can be distributed remotely via multiple digital touchpoints.
-
They give businesses the ability to produce larger sample sizes due to ease of distribution.
-
The data is reliable — that is, the validity of data is good due to automated analysis.
- They’re convenient for users/consumers because they can be embedded throughout the customer journey, appearing when users are already interacting with your business online or when a recent purchase is still top-of-mind.
What makes them so special, you may ask? Everything!
Importance Of Survey Building Tools
Survey Building Tools are an important piece of marketing technology. Online surveys can help you determine customer pain points that prevent purchase and avoid problems in the future. Zendesk, a customer engagement and support platform, found that 39% of consumers will avoid a vendor for more than 2 years after having a single negative experience. That’s a long time to hold a grudge and a good reason why preventing future problems is critical to business growth.
Online surveys can also help you tailor your marketing messages to your customers because, to be frank, your assumptions may be off. For example, in the Mad Men episode mentioned above, one of the survey questions was, “Do you match your lip color to your hair or your outfit?”. The woman being surveyed gave it some thought, then responded, “No, but sometimes I match it to my nails."
If you’re a makeup manufacturer trying to sell lipstick, then understanding that women like to match their nails to their lips opens a host of possibilities from designing new product lines (e.g., lipstick/nail polish sets) to retooling your ad messaging and images to represent products in ways that resonate with consumers. Survey Building Tools not only help you get these answers but also get them quickly – and time is money, friends.
Now that we have dealt with the past, the present, why leave the future – here's what it holds.
Future Of Survey Building Tools
The future of Survey Building Tools is all about helping companies deliver exceptional experiences to consumers. Future tools will focus on the customer journey and gauging experience in specific categories (sentiment, decision-making, action and management). We’ll see an acceleration of these types of tools as they’re rolled into larger platforms. As companies continue to embrace digital transformation, the shift from physical to digital business practices requires a range of different tools.
One of the most exciting trends in survey tools involves leveraging Artificial Intelligence and conversational analysis to determine consumer intent, uncover trends and understand customer pain points.
Tools like Invoca’s Signal AI tap into conversational data from call centers, then use AI to group conversations into topics that help businesses identify trends, problems, needs and opportunities. We’ve come a long way from the clipboards and one-way mirrors of Mad Men – and clearly there’s a long way to go!
To Sum Up
All said and done, there are a million ways to get in touch with your customers and collect their feedback. Focus groups, calls, emails and what not – we are not denying that. Survey Building Tools are not the only way to take surveys. However, they are the only streamlined and efficient way to create, optimize, share and analyze surveys that’s a million times faster than all the snail-mail traditional techniques. They are the technology of tomorrow, aiding you get up the ladder of growth.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are Survey Building Tools?
Survey Building Tools are software applications designed to simplify the process of creating and conducting surveys over the internet. These tools eliminate the need for programming knowledge by providing intuitive drag-and-drop interfaces for designing surveys. They often come equipped with features such as pre-built survey templates, analytics, and reporting capabilities. Survey Building Tools facilitate the creation of various types of surveys, from short pop-up questions to comprehensive forms, and allow for easy distribution through multiple digital channels like email, social media, and websites. Examples of popular Survey Building Tools include Survey Monkey, Qualtrics, and SoGoSurvey.
How do Survey Building Tools work?
Survey Building Tools offer user-friendly interfaces and tools for designing surveys, including drag-and-drop functionality and customizable templates. They support various question types and formats and provide options for conditional logic to tailor survey experiences based on respondents' answers. These tools also offer features for distributing surveys digitally via email, social media, SMS, or embedded links. Additionally, Survey Building Tools often include tools for managing responses, analyzing data, and generating reports, making it easy for businesses to collect and interpret feedback from their audience.
Why do businesses need Survey Building Tools?
Survey Building Tools play a crucial role in helping businesses gather feedback from their customers and prospects efficiently. They streamline the process of survey creation, distribution, and analysis, saving time and resources compared to traditional survey methods. By leveraging Survey Building Tools, businesses can quickly gain insights into customer sentiment, preferences, and behaviors, enabling them to make informed decisions and improve their products, services, and overall customer experience. These tools offer convenience for both businesses and respondents, leading to higher response rates and more reliable data.
Enjoyed what you've read so far? Great news - there's more to explore!
Stay up to date with the latest news, a vast collection of tech articles including introductory guides, product reviews, trends and more, thought-provoking interviews, hottest AI blogs and entertaining tech memes.
Plus, get access to branded insights such as informative white papers, intriguing case studies, in-depth reports, enlightening videos and exciting events and webinars from industry-leading global brands.
Dive into TechDogs' treasure trove today and Know Your World of technology!
Disclaimer - Reference to any specific product, software or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by TechDogs nor should any data or content published be relied upon. The views expressed by TechDogs' members and guests are their own and their appearance on our site does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Views and opinions expressed by TechDogs' Authors are those of the Authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of TechDogs or any of its officials. While we aim to provide valuable and helpful information, some content on TechDogs' site may not have been thoroughly reviewed for every detail or aspect. We encourage users to verify any information independently where necessary.
Tags:
Related Introductory Guides By TechDogs
Everything You Need To Know About Electronic Health Record
By TechDogs Editorial Team
Backup Your Business With Enterprise Backup Solutions
By TechDogs Editorial Team
A Simple Guide To Manufacturing Execution Systems
By TechDogs Editorial Team
Why You Need Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Tools
By TechDogs Editorial Team
Let The Creativity Flow With Content Creation Platforms
By TechDogs Editorial Team
Everything You Need To Know About Integration Testing
By TechDogs Editorial Team
Integrate It Right With System Integration Software!
By TechDogs Editorial Team
Everything About The Payroll Management Software
By TechDogs Editorial Team
All About Enterprise Architecture Management Software
By TechDogs Editorial Team
A Beginner’s Guide To Competitive Intelligence Tools
By TechDogs Editorial Team
The What, Why And How Of Customer Analytics Solutions
By TechDogs Editorial Team
A Rookie's Guide To IT Operations Management Software
By TechDogs Editorial Team
All You Need To Learn About Server Virtualization Software
By TechDogs Editorial Team
Related News on Marketing Technology
Analog Devices Raises Quarterly Dividend By 7%
Wed, Feb 21, 2024
By Business Wire
AppLovin To Announce Third Quarter 2023 Results
Thu, Oct 5, 2023
By Business Wire
Join The Discussion