Snap the total solution
April 2002
When choosing a package for surveys and research, it is important that it has the capacity to deal with serious amounts of work as well as the flexibility to take very different kinds of research in its stride. It is in balancing flexibility with capacity and still maintaining superb ease of operation that Snap excels.
For many users of the Snap Survey Software package, it is the paper-based survey handling capabilities that make it attractive, offering superb control over the design of the form, then a choice of productive and reliable ways to enter the data, either through key-entry or scanning. For others, it is the highly integrated Internet survey capabilities, offering a price-performance ratio that leaves everyone purchasing Snap for their online research requirements with the feeling they got both the best solution and the best deal. Better still, Snap supports many ways of doing Internet research, allowing you to mix and match between pop-ups or intercepts on Web pages, controlled e-mail invitations or completely e-mailbased surveys, surveys on intranets, hand-held devices or remote interviewing kiosks. This flexibility allows you to overcome the restrictions of Web-based research and find an intelligent way to do online research in just about any context.
Speak to a typical Snap user, and you will find, as did this month's featured user, that it is not just the software that makes Snap customers happy, but the level of support and customer care they receive from Snap Surveys. Polk Audio is not a specialist research company: its business is in manufacturing and distributing high-quality consumer audio products, so it needed something that was easy to learn yet could be applied across the entire organization. It is a year since Polk Audio started using Snap software, so we thought it was a good time to share with you their experiences over the first year.
Polk Audio: the speaker firm that listens in a big way
Since 1972, Polk Audio, based in Baltimore, Maryland, has designed, manufactured and marketed high performance loudspeakers for use in home and car. Over the past year, the firm has also tuned in more closely to what its customers and consumers have to say, using an ever-increasing range of surveys carried out on the Web and by e-mail using Snap software.
To provide a focus to its customer and marketing research activities, the company formed a 'Voice of the Customer' taskforce (VOC) to explore research needs and topics, then gather the data using the most appropriate methods. For online surveys, VOC started by building surveys in HTML then transferring the data to Access or Excel for analysis.
Al Ballard, Vice-president of Marketing at Polk Audio and a member of the five-strong VOC taskforce, was concerned about the amount of time and effort it took to set up a survey and how inflexible the whole process was. He learned of Snap from the Internet. "After selecting a couple of packages that best fit my needs, I called some users for references," he reported. "I found that Snap's users were happy with the product and very happy with the responsive customer service."
I found that Snap's users were happy with the product and very happy with the responsive customer service
Since purchasing Snap a year ago, it has been used on over 40 surveys across the entire spectrum of research, from customer satisfaction through to concept testing, product development and brand awareness studies. Snap is also being applied successfully to internal human resource surveys. One Snap survey provides a permanent anonymous suggestions box. Snap has even found a role in recording data from customer service calls, and there are now plans to use Snap's OCR capabilities to scan paper-based surveys so they too can be processed using the one package.
A group of three people within Al's marketing team build the surveys and carry out most of the analysis in Snap too. Reports have gone to senior management, sales, product development and to other members of the marketing team.
But Al took a hands-on approach to learning Snap, and quickly became an expert user. "After installing the product, I attempted to build a couple of surveys while waiting for the scheduled date of the online training. This got me past the basics and onto more advanced construction and analysis questions in the training session."
The insight Al gained into Snap's other customers has since been backed up by his own experiences. "We have been delighted with the responsiveness and knowledge of the Snap customer service people," he said. Most questions have received an immediate answer on the phone. On a couple of occasions when the question was more involved, e-mailing the survey files to Snap Surveys was all it took the get the answer.
We have been delighted with the responsiveness and knowledge of the Snap customer service people.
Al Ballard is certain that, through using Snap, his company has a better understanding of its business. He commented: "With Snap, we are able to quickly construct, compile and analyze surveys. Before, this was much more time consuming and offered much less flexibility. Consequently, we are now doing more surveys and getting more insight into all aspects of our business."
Different research topics; different research methods; a single solution
Like many Snap customers, Polk Audio has moved away from the restrictions of using generalized software tools and databases like Word, Excel and Access to do research, and found not only is it much easier to do everything in Snap - from designing the survey to analysing the result - but also that the time you save allows you to do more surveys, more often and to a higher standard. For Polk Audio, this means having a better and more up-to-date understanding of its customers and its products in the market.
The range of different kinds of surveys and data collection activities Polk Audio has found for Snap in the first year, where no-one had any prior experience of the package, demonstrates the flexibility and also the ease-of-use of the package. Forty surveys in the first year also means Polk Audio is enjoying an excellent return on its investment.
But it was not technology alone that got Polk Audio up and running with Snap so quickly. Snap's innovation and flexibility also extends to its training programmes and its post-sales support. Classroom training, e-learning or custom training provide a range of cost-effective choices to meet everyone's different needs, and Snap's knowledgeable and helpful support specialists provide that vital safety net when you have tried something new that hasn't worked out the way you though it would, and now you're in a hurry.
Many other Snap customers, like Polk Audio, are finding that, as their research needs grow, Snap has the capacity to grow with them. Whether it is more kinds of research, more users, more surveys, more data or new ways to collect the data, the combination of Snap software and the people with the knowledge to help you achieve your goal, makes Snap the total solution for tomorrow as well as today.