Questionnaire design – customer experience

Even though participation in online surveys is considered simple and easy, they are frequently affected by low-response rates (Monroe & Adams, 2012:2). The authors posit that several factors, including questionnaire design, length and lack of interest affect response rates, and ultimately validity and reliability. Kumar (2010:138) suggests a number of ways to increase participation, which includes simple and easy design, unambiguous layout and developed with interactiveness in mind. In addition, Monroe and Adams (2012:2-4) suggest personalising invites, and stating the purpose and reason for selection and participation. For this phase of the quantitative research, the questionnaire was designed with the following in mind:

Questionnaire data-collection method – customer

 Considering all customer contact details were available, specifically e-mail address, it was a natural choice to design the questionnaire to be distributed via e-mail and could be hosted on an online survey platform.

 A covering letter – personally addressed to each participant was included in the e-mail body, explaining the purpose and reason for inclusion in the research, together with other important information – was sent to each participant.

 The e-mail served as both an invite and request to participate (cf. Annexure A and B).

 Survey Monkey was selected as platform of choice; it possessed all the required functionality to effectively administer and manage the survey process.

 Respondents had the added convenience to complete the questionnaire on either personal computer or via mobile phone.

 The questionnaire was designed to be completed anonymously by the respondents. However, one of the advantages of using Survey Monkey was the ability to monitor which respondents had completed the questionnaire and who not.

Questionnaire design considerations – customer

 The layout was designed to look professional and interesting, encouraging participants to partake.

 The questionnaire was designed to be simple and intuitive to complete.

 Particular attention was given to question formulation, with specific focus on using plain language, avoiding ambiguity and vagueness.

 Question design was individually determined, based on the data requirements (Saunders et al., 2012:374).

 The questionnaire was created in conjunction with the literature review (cf.

Chapter 3), as well as the framework (cf. par. 6.2, p. 122; Fig. 6.1, p. 122), the in-depth interviews (qualitative research; cf. par. 7.9.3.3., p. 146) and the research aims.

 Chapters 3, together with the theoretical framework served as a basis for the development of the questionnaire, in accordance with the research objectives and purpose of this study (cf. par. 1.5.3, p. 35).

As mentioned in par. 1.7.6.4 (p. 42-43), an existing and accepted instrument (questionnaire) was available in the literature. For this reason the Customer Engagement Quotient (CeQ) was recommended and adopted as the instrument of choice to measure customer experience. The CeQ was developed in 2008 and tested in a variety of national and international organisational contexts by Mandala Consulting. Together with the BeQ that measures employee engagement, a clear, valid picture of how the internal dynamics influence customers’ experiences. The CeQ can be scientifically customised for each research project. For the purpose of this phase of the quantitative research, the CeQ questionnaire was adapted, and included 23 of the 40 items measureable, taking into consideration the organisational context and customer needs.

The final adapted questionnaire consisted of five sections, containing 32 questions as summarised below. The privacy of all participants was extremely important and for this reason was hosted on a secure online platform. The benefit thereof enabled the researcher to determine which respondent answered which questions, and to what extent. For this reason, there was no need to include a general section aiming to collect biographical information.

Section A: Service interaction (Questions 1-3)

The questions in this section intended to obtain information from respondents regarding customers’ service interactions, as well as to rate overall service experience.

Section B: Service quality (Questions 4-15)

The questions in this section were broken down into two categories, namely service expectation and service experience, each of which contained 6 questions. The questions in these two sections intended to obtain information of the quality of service respondents received from the organisations’ employees.

Section C: Service problems & recovery (Questions 16-17)

The aim of the questions in Section C was to obtain information regarding the ease of interacting with the organisation and the ability to recover from service failure.

Section D: Product information (Question 18-26)

The aim of the questions in Section D was to obtain information regarding customers’

experiences relating to product design, simplicity to understand and the ease of use.

Section E: Service problems & recovery (Questions 27-32)

The aim of the questions in Section E was to obtain information regarding total customer experience received from the organisation, including the likelihood to recommend the organisation to a friend or colleague.

Kumar (2010:143) posit that researchers not only consider wording, structure and question types, but clearly think of the most suitable rating scales to be used to evaluate and quantify the collected information. Rating scales are often used to measure how individuals feel or think about objects, and as such define it as a type of quantitative data measure used to capture the power, level, or strength of a variable along a continuum (Neuman, 2014:230). Saunders et al. (2012:374) suggest that each question design should be determined by the type of data to be collected.

The authors posit that most questionnaires contain both open and closed questions, with the types of questions used in this questionnaire, depicted in Table 7.5 below.

Table 7.5: Types of questions used in the survey Question

type Sub type Section

Questions Scale

Closed

Category A, D 1.1, 1.2, 4.1, 4.2, 4.7

One response from list of items

Rating

A, C, E 1.3, 3.1-3.2,

5.1 – 5.3 10-point Likert-style scale B, D 2.1 – 2.11, 4.6 5-point Likert-style scale Matrix B 2.12 5-point Likert-style scale Ranking D 4.3 – 4.5 Rate according to best

described Open Open E 5.4 – 5.5 Not applicable Source: Adapted from Saunders et al. (2012:375)

Palmer (2010:203) argues that the use of a standard questionnaire approach and multiple-item scales might be lacking and suggest a multi-dimensional, qualitative approach to measure customer experience. The author concedes measuring

customer experience is complex. Considering time and resource constraints, a quantitative approach was adopted.

For this purposes in this dissertation, multiple-item questions were utilised as per Table 7.5. Saunders et al. (2012:375) suggest using category-style questions in order to coerce a respondent in selecting only one of the categories in the question, whereas rating questions are used to gather opinion data from respondents. A variation of rating scales are semantic-differential rating scale, employed when one wants to uncover causal attitudes. Matrix questions allow researchers to record two or more responses simultaneously. Ranking questions require respondents to rate items, attempting to understand the significance thereof. Lastly, open questions enable respondents to freely explain what is top of their minds. However, according to Cooper and Schindler (2013:278), while 7 and 9 scale points might be better, 5-point are often used. The reason for adopting a 5-5-point and 10-5-point Likert scale was two-fold: 1) the questionnaire used in this phase of dissertation was adopted from the CeQ; Viljoen (2016) and uses two different Likert scales; and 2) considering questionnaires were sent to a large number of participants, a simple 5-point scale was selected to simplify matters. Cooper and Schindler (2013:278) asserts that a good questionnaire should not only be easy and efficient to use, but be accurate as well, suggesting three key measures for evaluating a questionnaire, namely validity, reliability, and practicality, of which reliability will be discussed next.