So you’ve gone and done it–you sent out a market research questionnaire, a customer satisfaction questionnaire, or some other sort of survey.  Now you have these Survey Monkey data staring at you and you have NO earthly idea what to do with them.

Don’t despair, there IS a way to make sense of all this.

And if you do your job well, the results will be amazing.  One of my clients said recently that interpreting survey data on her customers was like focusing a camera lens, so that she now had a crystal-clear image.

How do YOU get that crystal-clear image?

The simple fact is that the better job you did of WRITING the survey and planning the analysis, the easier the job of INTERPRETING the survey data will be. More about that later.

But for the moment, let’s assume you wrote a stellar survey and let’s think about how best to make the most of the results.

Let’s break it down into five simple steps:

First, look at the overall data and response.

Here are some of the questions you should ask in this step:

• How many people completed the survey?
• How does that compare to the target group–the number of people on your e-mail list, for example?
• What was the response rate?  (To figure this out, just take the number of people who completed the survey and divide that by the number who opened the survey invitation).
• What was the average amount of time that people spent taking the survey (in other words, did people take it seriously or did they seem to fly through the questions)?
• Who responded–what does the breakdown look like, in terms of age, gender, type of business, etc?  How well does it represent your target group (for example, your customer base or e-mail list)?

Second, look at the answers to your key questions or “outcomes” in the survey.

If this is a product creation survey, for example, what % of the respondents said they’re very interested or somewhat interested in the product–and what % said they’re not interested AT ALL?  Of those who are interested in the product, what kinds of things do they want to see in the product?  How would they like the product delivered?  What are they willing to pay for it?

Third, see how those things “break” by demographic characteristics.

Are men more interested in the product than women?  Are “newbies” more or less interested than people who’ve been in business longer?  This starts to give you a good sense of who’s most likely to buy the product and at whom you need to target it.

Fourth, what do the open-ended questions tell you?

Ideally, your survey should rely mostly on closed-ended questions, because these are the easiest for your customers to answer and also the easiest to analyze.  But it’s good to include a few open-ended questions–to pick up on the nuances and meaning that closed-ended questions miss, to get the “language” your customers are using, and to pick up some things you might not have captured with your closed-ended categories.  Read through those comments, first looking for themes in the comments, then looking for how widespread those themes are, and finally summarizing what you’ve learned from these questions.

Fifth, draw up your “action items.”

Based on the results, compile your “to do” list.

• If it seems clear that there’s strong interest in the product you’re creating, that’s great.  Draw together everything you can to draw your “road map” for creating the product–and then follow that map.
• Chances are you also learned some things about your customers you didn’t know.  Make a list of those things and particularly note things you want to explore further in future surveys.
• Note the things that don’t seem to make sense, any things in the results that have you “scratching your head.”  These are things you might want to explore on your blog or even in conversations with some of the survey respondents (you can also select respondents with the “interesting” or “unexpected” answers and offer them a free report or a discount coupon in exchange for talking with you).

After you’ve gone through these steps, you should have good information that you can put to work in your business.  You’ll be amazed at the wealth of data that even a short survey can provide and the many ways in which you can use them.

In addition to interpreting the survey data, you should also note things you learned from doing the survey:  things you learned about writing the survey, lessons from the process of administering it, things you’d do differently next time.

And don’t forget to look carefully at your customers’ comments and feedback about the survey.  It’s always a good idea to include an open-ended question, at the end, that lets customers tell you what they liked and what they didn’t.

You can expect that a few customers will always say that the survey is too long or they disliked something about it.  But if you find large numbers of people saying those things, or complaining about a particular question, you should certainly consider that when you design your NEXT survey.

Follow these steps to interpreting survey data and you’ll begin to get inside your customers’ heads in a way you never imagined possible.  And once you do that, your profits will explode.