If you’re just getting into the world of credit union surveys, it can be difficult deciding which questions you should be asking. Fortunately, we have a few member survey question ideas that could help you take the pulse of your membership.
We should start off with a significant caveat, though. We can’t exactly give you the questions to ask. We might suggest a couple over the course of this blog, but after we talk about strategy, you’ll know why we can’t tell you what to ask.
Which Topics to Ask About First
There’s one essential question that you should be asking your members, and it’s the standard relationship question. The relationship question is, “on a scale from 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?”
The survey results are crunched and returned as a Net Promoter Score from -100 to 100, with 100 being a perfect score. You can read more about what your NPS score means and what it can tell you on our blog. However, this blog is more about transactional surveys rather than relationship surveys.
Which Transactional Survey Topics to Ask About First
Okay, we promise we’re not trying to avoid the question, but here’s the thing: there’s no right answer. There’s no question that every credit union “should” ask first—it will always depend on the specific needs of each credit union.
To better illustrate why there’s no good catch-all best question for credit union member surveys, we’ll use an example. Let’s say there are two credit unions surveying their members.
- Credit Union A is about to make changes to their online banking
- Credit Union B is concerned about their in-branch experience
There’s no question that directly fits both of their needs, so they’d get better information by asking questions relevant to them. Credit Union A should ask about online banking with scaled questions like:
- How would you rate your experience with our online banking portal?
- How easy is it to manage your money online?
- What would make our online banking experience more convenient for you?
None of those questions would work for Credit Union B. Credit Union B might want to ask:
- How was your wait time in our branch today?
- Was your teller able to assist you with your needs?
- Do you have any suggestions to improve our branch service?
In either case, there’s no “right” question that all credit unions should ask in their transactional member surveys. Even the questions above might not fit those credit unions’ exact concerns.
The best questions to ask are always the ones that you need to know the answers to.
Additional Survey Strategies for Credit Unions
When you’re putting together your member survey, there are a few things to keep in mind. We don’t get exhaustive with the tips and tricks here, but following these basic strategies will help you get the responses you need.
1. Keep it short and interesting
Even those among us with the shortest attention spans can handle a quick survey. One question? Not a problem. Three questions? Sure, why not. Seven questions? Well, now you’re treading on thin ice.
We’ve seen the best results by keeping credit union member surveys at or below the five question threshold.
2. Few open-ended questions
Open-ended questions are great for getting details, explanations, and alternate solutions or perspectives. However, they also ask a lot of your members. Nobody wants to sit down to fill out a survey and then get hit in the face with essay question after essay question.
We recommend keeping the number of open-ended questions to a minimum. One per quiz is plenty. Two should be a maximum under all but the wildest circumstances.
3. Remember the three tenets of good survey questions
We have a whole blog dedicated to our idea of following three basic survey tenets. All three are designed around understanding different facets of member experience.
The tenets should help you create survey questions that speak to things that your members care about. Member experience and satisfaction is your bottom line, after all.
More Credit Union Survey Resources
We update our blog weekly with (hopefully) useful information about credit union survey strategy. If you’d like to learn more about member surveys and anything else related to improving the credit union experience, follow the links below!
Credit Union Member Survey Ideas
Survey Questions to Avoid for Better Credit Union Member Insight
