Documentation’s Online Survey

Last year, the documentation team created an online survey to capture client feedback about our help content. We’ve done surveys in the past, and while we typically came away with valuable information, we always wished we’d gotten more responses. So this time around, we tried something a little different. Instead of the survey being a one-hit-wonder, we decided to leave the survey up indefinitely -- or as long as our users keep responding.

So far, this approach has worked well. The survey went live last year, and to date, we’ve received over 300 responses. Now, when we evaluate the data, we have more information to base our decisions on, and we can compare response trends from quarter to quarter.

What do we do with the information?
The whole purpose of this project is to improve our help content, both in the help files and user guides. We review survey responses on a weekly basis. When we need more clarification about something a user said, or when users have problems with our documentation, we contact them (just the users who give us permission). All this feedback is then compiled and shared with the team. When we analyze the data, we look for trends in responses so that we can focus our discussions.

For example, we recently focused our improvement efforts on five specific Raiser’s Edge user guides. By reviewing the survey data from the past year, we knew where the problem areas were in these guides. I don’t think we could have honed in on these guides and made meaningful changes without having such a high volume of client feedback over an extended period of time.

We've restructured and reorganized guides for other products as well, improved indexes, and added additional cross references to make our content easier to use. We found that in many cases, we had the information users needed, but they couldn't find it!

Right now, we are averaging 50 to 75 responses per quarter, and I hope this trend continues. If you haven’t taken our survey and would like to, click here. And don’t forget, each quarter we randomly select one of our survey respondents for a $25 Amazon gift card.