One of the largest online video game companies uses Alchemer to study images for upcoming games. You can find Alchemer working for gaming companies in the form of website intercepts and embeds, in-product embeds, collecting customer satisfaction and NPS ratings, conducting traditional market research, and helping with game development. 

Hardcore Gamers and Heatmaps 

Hardcore gamers are easy to find but difficult to survey. Working with our panels team, the creative team at one of the largest online game companies surveyed almost 5,000 serious gamers in four of the biggest esports countries worldwide.  

The survey they ran to see how people perceived different visual elements included a heatmap question. We recreated a simplified version of the heatmap question to show you how you could use heatmap questions in your surveys. 

Application Beyond Games 

Heatmaps are a great way to have people tell you what they like, don’t like, find appealing, find appetizing, find heartwarming, and more. Here are a few uses. 

• Website designers can see where people think they should click. 
• Advertisers can see why some ads perform better than others.  
• Retailers can test different styles, accessories, colors, and more in different markets.  
• Graphic designers can see how people react to different parts of a logo or visual. 
• Fashion designers can see what people think of different accessories, stitching, and more. 
• Game illustrators can see which weapons are considered powerful, deadly, and weak. 

Adding Heatmaps to Your Next Survey 

You will need a Full Access license to ask heatmap questions. First, select the images you want to study, then decide what you want to measure. For our survey, we found three stock images (although custom art from your team is obviously much better). Then we measured what people thought was stylish and what they considered powerful. 

As you can see, it’s easy for respondents to select the part they find best represents stylish and powerful. The results show where people saw what you were asking about (stylish or powerful). As you can see, certain areas were clearly more powerful than others.  

Meanwhile, the parts considered stylish were much more open to interpretation than the elements deemed powerful. You can also test the questions you ask to see what will give you the most useful results. The results would have shown very different heatmaps if we asked about powerful and menacing.  

The beauty of the heatmap question type is that you can focus the feedback on what you want. We asked for stylish or powerful. We could have asked for cute and heartwarming, but we might have needed another set of images. Perhaps kittens and puppies. 

To learn more about heatmap questions, investigate our documentation here. 

If you’re more of a visual learner, the Building Advanced Questions Program in Alchemer University (which is free to any subscriber) has sections on defining, identifying use cases, building, and ready data from heatmap questions. You can find Alchemer University inside your Alchemer account.  

The post Uncovering Visual Cues with Heatmaps appeared first on Alchemer.

By Anne-Marie Roerink, Founder of 210 Analytics 

One industry that has been in tremendous flux over the past two years is the grocery or food retailing industry. When the world went into lockdown, people were forced to stay home. We stopped going out to restaurants and movies and spent that money at grocery stores instead.  

210 Analytics provides market research to the food retailing industry, and we use Alchemer to perform our analysis. We launched many more surveys in 2020 and 2021 to understand what trends were here to stay and what would revert when restrictions loosened up.  

The Secret Sauce is Your Sample 

Getting at the truth beyond the hype is one of the big advantages of working with Alchemer. Working together, we have been able to get a very accurate survey sample. That sample might not be a complete reflection of the census. If you don’t have a sample that accurately reflects the shopper base, you can’t really make predictions about what happens in the store. For example, we tend to stop surveys at 75 years of age because their purchases tend to become very habitual. Often those baskets grow very small and get folded into a younger family.  

It’s much easier to ask about past behaviors than to accurately predict the future. If we go back to pre-pandemic, we all ate out as much as we did because our evenings were busy. Our weekends were busy. Eating out was how we entertained with others. 

Movie Nights at Home 

Premium and ready-to-eat popcorn –food you would typically purchase at a movie theater – are up 15% because those movie nights have moved home, thanks to streaming services offering (and continuing to offer) movies directly on their service and in theaters.  

Meat and Meat Alternatives 

Meat sales have actually increased during the pandemic because people no longer ate at restaurants, and by the time food was delivered, it was often warm and not as appetizing. So people learned how to prepare more complex meals, such as lamb, seafood, and prime cuts of steak. Even after the pandemic is over, this trend might stay with us because the research indicates that people consider eating at home to be healthier and a lot less expensive.  

While we saw enormous percentage growth in plant-forward (vegetarian or vegan) foods like Impossible Burgers, the increase came from a small but dedicated base of consumers. Most people may experiment with meat alternatives but usually return to the real thing. Consequently, for the most part, plant-forward food sales have plateaued in sales and are decreasing slightly despite heavy promotions and price reductions. 

Frozen 

Looking at engagement across the population with the frozen foods you would buy in those long freezer aisles in the store, we see that boomers do not have a great love for frozen food. They associate it with lots of sodium and lots of processing from the TV dinners of the sixties.  

When you question younger audiences, especially millennials, they love frozen food. They even see it as being healthy because frozen foods have done a tremendous job in reinventing itself, taking out a lot of the processing and sodium to give credit where credit is due. The food is fresh when frozen; most of the fruit and veggies are frozen the same day they come off the field. One of the surveys we did with Alchemer found that 30% of Americans have invested in more freezer capacity at home. People bought additional freezer space because they are buying more frozen consistently. 

The perception that younger shoppers have for frozen food is entirely different than that of older shoppers. If you want to understand who buys frozen food, there’s no sense in having a true census-based cross-population sample. That’s because you are asking people who don’t engage with frozen food all that much, unlike the people who are buying it. 

Premium on the Rise 

Premium foods are growing across departments right now, which might be somewhat contrary to what makes logical sense. In the candy aisle, very dark premium chocolates are doing very well right now. People are choosing to have just one little square at a time. Premium cuts of meat and seafood are also doing well. These luxury items are doing well because people are not eating out as much and consequently saving money that they can spend on premium items. Additionally, we are living through a difficult time, and sometimes we want to do something nice for ourselves. The third reason is that people are entertaining at home, shifting their spending from restaurants to grocery stores.  

The Future of Food 

These are just a few of the trends we are seeing in how people shop and approach purchasing food in 2020 and 2021. What will 2022 bring? That probably depends as much on the supply chain and COVID-19 as anything. As schools and offices reopened, we saw a shift from larger tubs of yogurt to individual packs. More convenient sizes will be popular as long as people eat on the go. But if people return home, we expect the larger, bulk items to increase in sales.  

It’s fascinating, frankly, to look at what is happening outside of even their behaviors, but just the demographics. We still see that boomer shoppers are the majority spender. And that makes it so hard for the retailers today because boomers still love their paper circular. If you go to the younger generation in the marketplace, Gen Z, they prefer to look on their apps or social media. The difficulty for the retail industry is that the majority dollar still sits with boomers, while the growth sits with millennials – the next big generation. 

Making predictions at this point is very difficult, with so many influencing factors still in flux. That is why we, and most market researchers, will continue to survey audiences throughout the coming year. 

The post Running Against Census in Food Retailing appeared first on Alchemer.

The U.S. food retail industry is a $6.22 trillion market, with grocery stores totaling almost $682 billion in annual sales. Yet the margins are very small, with the average grocery store making about a penny on the dollar. Consequently, insights into buying trends and buyer intention is highly prized. That’s the kind of research 210 Analytics delivers as specialists in quantitative and qualitative research for the grocery and food retail industry. Prior to founding 210 Analytics, Anne-Marie Roerink served as the Director of Research for the Food Marketing Institute and before that as Director of Marketing and Research at the American Society of Travel Agents.

“We use Alchemer to learn about behaviors, motivators, and more,” says Anne-Marie. “Retailers, distributors, and manufacturers are all trying to better understand customers and what motivates them. With margins so tight, knowing who wants organic produce, grass-fed beef, a boost from algae protein or a fiber-rich product can make a huge difference in profitability.”

Finding the Right Panels Mix 

210 Analytics often works with the Panels Team at Alchemer. “We field ten to fifteen surveys a year with a target audience of 1,500-2,000 consumers,” says Anne-Marie. “Typically we test the survey internally and with a few consumers, then we work with Wendy on the Panels Team to set quotas – geographic, age, economic, and other factors using Census balancing. Quotas may differ based on who we are looking for. For instance, a survey on cheese sauce may have a different mix than a survey about premium chocolate.” 

The Panels Team then constantly adjusts the sample they distribute to fill the quotas. “We’ve found that lower income buckets tend to fill up before the higher income buckets,” Anne-Marie adds. “So Wendy rolls out the survey a bit at a time to balance the quotas and avoid having to find the needle in the haystack for the last couple of hundred respondents.” 

Analyzing the Results with SPSS 

“When our clients need to understand consumer behaviors and drivers, we export the results directly into SPSS for segmentation and deeper analysis,” Anne-Marie reports. “This saves us a lot of time compared with exporting to a .CSV file. With the direct SPSS export, Alchemer automatically defines and imports variable names, variable types, titles, and value labels in the .SAV format for SPSS. It’s clean and easy.” 

SPSS is the industry standard for serious, in-depth statistical analysis. “Thinking ahead of the type of analysis required, I define the SPSS variable names while building the survey,” adds Anne-Marie. “That way everything exports cleanly and data coding and cleaning is minimal.” 

When the research doesn’t demand in-depth analysis, 210 Analytics uses the Alchemer reports. “The Alchemer reports are great for higher level analysis, such as conference satisfaction surveys or quick feedback,” says Anne-Marie. “The cross-tabs and filters tools are quite intuitive and useful as well.” 

Looking for an Edge 

“It’s all about finding an edge and looking around the corner,” says Anne-Marie. Food trends change fast and often and staying on trend means greater relevance. This is especially true in claims like organic, low carb or gluten-free. “Grocers like to know who has an interest in organic in their areas and is willing to pay a little more. The organic shopper is currently a small slice of the population, but those foods are more profitable. However, nobody wants to throw out premium foods because their shoppers wouldn’t pay the premium price.” 

“Our research helps our customers decide if they want to be in front of a trend, watching it, or letting it pass based on their customer demographics. We turn the research findings into in-depth multi-year tracking studies that are used all over the world. Typically, we launch studies at conferences to take the audience through the top-level results after which they can use the study to understand the benchmarks for their specific organizations. Over time, we started to see trends cut across departments, which helps to develop early base lines. For instance, behaviors that first popped up in frozen foods or produce will make their entrance in areas like meat, seafood or even candy months or years later.”  

Most food-industry surveys are fielded away from food-based holidays, such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and Halloween. “The holidays skew people’s answers,” says Anne-Marie. “For instance, think about how many more people eat turkey in November and December versus in the summer. However, during the pandemic, many long-standing food trends, from where to shop to what to buy changed, with an explosion in grocery e-commerce and activities like baking and scratch-cooking.” 

About 210 Analytics 

210 Analytics has extensive experience in quantitative and qualitative research, from questionnaire design, field control and execution, analysis, reporting, and presentation of actionable findings, with a specialization in grocery retailing. Projects cover both primary and secondary research, and vary from multi-month to single-day engagements on a wide range of topics. 210 Analytics helps clients make operational, financial and tactical decisions with greater confidence through research and data-centric marketing strategies. 

To learn more about the Alchemer SPSS Integration, click here.  

To learn more about the Alchemer Panels Team, click here. 

The post Gaining an Insight Edge with Alchemer Panels and SPSS appeared first on Alchemer.

“I was working as an organizational development consultant, helping people in large companies learn how to talk to each other because people didn’t know how to connect,” said Peter. “I attended a baby shower, and I noticed that we were all at the same event having radically different experiences. They all brought a different perspective and different conversation styles.” 

Peter started working on Mindful Conversation about two-and-a-half years ago. As he developed his premise and hypothesis, he began teaching it and testing it. Participants would take the survey to see where they fit in the quadrants that Peter developed.  

Using Survey Audiences 

Peter’s upcoming book includes the survey that he developed using Alchemer and proved with Alchemer Survey Audiences. Survey Audiences is an add-on capability that allows survey builders to test a survey or conduct some quick research with a relatively low sample size and low cost. For larger or international audiences, the Alchemer Panels Services team can help you find the respondents you need. 

“The survey provides a great starting point for discussing a person’s conversation, as well as learning where the majority of people fit,” added Peter. He found that talking about the feedback results individually and collectively gave people a sense of where they fit and what they could expect.  

“After I built the survey with Alchemer, I wanted to test it with people who didn’t know me,” said Peter. “So I selected a census-balanced random group with the Alchemer Survey Audience feature. I got 50 people very fast, with lots of great comments. I was delighted. And it gave me the confidence that my survey would produce the data I was hoping to get.” 

Having Mindful Conversations 

“The Mindful Conversation approach is unlike active listening, where people learn to repeat what they’ve heard for confirmation,” said Peter. “It’s much more about not thinking about everything else that’s going on when you’re talking to somebody. If you’re thinking about dinner or work or what you’re doing after this, you’re not adding to the conversation, you’re subtracting from it.” 

“In any conversation, you’re either speaking or listening. So it was natural that there would be people who primarily talk and those who primarily listen,” he said. “And then most people fit somewhere in between. Once you figure out where you fit, then you can begin to be more mindful about how you participate in conversations.” 

Finding Alchemer 

When he began creating the survey, Peter looked at the different survey solutions available. “Alchemer was the only one with the capabilities I needed,” said Peter. “Plus, their customer support is excellent. Elise helped me in so many ways. She helped me use the Survey Audiences feature to get a random sample of people who gave me such rich feedback.” 

To learn more about Peter Gibb and his forthcoming book, Mindful Conversation: How to talk to anybody about just about anything, visit www.petergibb.org 

The post Using Survey Audiences, Author Peter Gibb Tested His Latest Theory appeared first on Alchemer.

COVID-19. Social distancing. Flattening the curve. It’s hard to believe that just a few months ago, none of these phrases were part of our collective vocabulary.  But today, they loom large and have changed the face of the workplace. As remote work becomes the new normal, new challenges begin to emerge. 

Feelings of isolation are hard to shake. Distractions abound. So do anxieties over an uncertain future. This puts additional strains on organizations as they struggle to keep their employees connected and engaged. Now more than ever, keeping the lines of communication open are essential, and eliciting feedback makes this possible. 

When done right, employee feedback can affect real change throughout your organization. But all too often, companies miss the mark, not making time for feedback. Worse yet, they fail to act on the data they collect, increasing employee frustration and jeopardizing engagement in the process.

Employee Engagement: An Ongoing Struggle 

Even before the world so drastically changed, organizations struggled to keep employees engaged. While many have embraced employee engagement strategies, nurturing an engaged workforce continues to remain an elusive goal. In one study, ADP found that 84% of the global workforce is disengaged. This disengagement adversely impacts productivity, customer satisfaction, and revenues.  

When you add in the challenges that come with the Coronavirus pandemic, the problem only intensifies. Before our current situation, disengaged employees cost organizations up to $550 billion in lost productivity each year. Today? It’s too soon to tell, but at a time when organizations are desperately seeking ways to increase efficiencies and decrease costs, the result of employee disengagement can be staggering. 

Yet companies who get engagement right can turn the tide. Increased employee engagement decreases isolation and increases connectedness in a distributed workplace. What Forbes found earlier still holds true today. “Companies with a highly engaged culture perform better, with higher stock prices, higher productivity, lower turnover, and greater customer satisfaction.” 

Deepening Connections Through Feedback 

Increased engagement means developing deeper connections.  And deeper connections come from creating an open dialog with employees. Through ongoing feedback, employees are empowered to share their input. They also feel a sense of ownership, as this feedback is integrated into operations. At a time when current events increase feelings of powerlessness, this sense of control goes a long way to easing fears and anxieties.   

Unfortunately, not all feedback systems are created equal.  Over the years, we have seen companies make some common mistakes that undermine their efforts.  

Intensifying the Need for Continual Feedback 

In a world that is changing by the minute, it is more important than ever to solicit continual feedback.  A mistake many companies make is to rely on annual employee engagement surveys as their sole feedback mechanism. Trying to pack in a year’s worth of feedback in one survey has definite disadvantages. Traditionally lengthier participation can suffer. And while these yearly exercises may offer a snapshot of employee sentiment, measuring ongoing organizational health requires continuous data.   

Other companies have adopted shorter, more frequent Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) surveys to take the pulse of their cultures. These simple, single question surveys are based on a single question: 

On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend Four Winds Interactive as a great place to work? 

The eNPS scores derived from these surveys offer excellent benchmarks. However, eNPS scores alone fail to tell the whole story. Companies must also dig deeper to understand the whys behind the scores.  

Collecting Data Is Just the Beginning:  

It is easy to fall into the trap of collecting data, only to tuck it away in a report. Data has an expiration date. To be truly useful, the feedback collected must be able to close the loop, feeding systems throughout the organizations quickly, and enabling stakeholders to drive change.  

The human impact of ignoring data is also destructive. Instead of feeling heard, employees view surveys as an exercise in futility. This hurts the very engagement companies hope to foster. 

Never Underestimate the Role of Managers 

All too often, engagement is seen as just another initiative owned by HR. But according to Gallup, “70% of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manager.” To move the dial, companies must put managers on the front line of engagement strategies. To effectively engage their teams, fast access to insights is essential. 

Our Process at Four Winds Interactive 

As a leading software provider for enterprise digital signage networks, Four Winds Interactive (FWI) is transforming the way organizations communicate with their customers and their people. We are known for helping organizations in every major industry inform, inspire, and connect their audiences with the right message at the right time. 

Two years ago, we embarked on a mission to create and nurture a more intentional, people-first culture – with employee engagement as a core pillar to our overall business strategy. 

In order to truly tap into the pulse of the company, we needed to collect better data. We replaced our annual employee satisfaction survey with a quarterly Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) survey. We limited it to three questions with a few open-ended responses. Using a highly customizable and easy-to-use survey solution called Alchemer, we are able to survey our entire workforce, then segment the data to take immediate action on the feedback. 

The eNPS survey also includes several follow-up questions to dive deeper into the reasons behind the scores, providing valuable detail and context. Once the data is collected, FWI drills down to the department level, using both scores and commentary to uncover valuable insights and trends. This allows the FWI organizational development team to work closely with individual managers to create action plans to increase both engagement and productivity within their business units. 

Due to the constantly shifting environment, we have been using Alchemer on a near-weekly basis to stay in touch with the general wellbeing of employees and how they are adjusting to our new normal of working remotely. This includes a working from home survey to assess the overall sentiment of the workforce and what additional needs or wants they have to ensure the best possible working experience. 

From benefits to development to diversity and inclusion initiatives, data from FWI’s quarterly eNPS surveys informs the entire FWI employee experience. And the results followed. We saw a 10x increase in our eNPS, putting us well above the national average for employee engagement.

The Path Forward 

As organizations across all globe struggle to find their footing, nurturing employee engagement is more important than ever before. Feedback is an essential ingredient to success, allowing you to tap into the pulse of your remote operations. The insights gleaned from this data keep you connected, helping employees stay engaged and productive during this time of unprecedented uncertainty.  As a result, you can tackle this crisis as a cohesive team, better navigating whatever comes your way.  

You can download a copy of the Four Winds Interactive case study here.

The post Keeping Employees Connected in an Uncertain World with Feedback appeared first on Alchemer.

“Getting surveys up and running fast, and then sharing the data as we collect it, helps give stakeholders preliminary feedback they can see using the built-in dashboards,” said Tyler Downer, Quantitative User Researcher at Mozilla. “Gathering and quickly reporting on data allows product management and engineering to see user response to new products and features in real-time, allowing for rapid adjustments without the need for dedicated analysts all the time.”

Mozilla chose Alchemer as their primary data-collection platform because, as Tyler Downer says, “We don’t need engineering skills to collect data.” Mozilla, the non-profit creators of the Firefox web browser, has about 60 employees using Alchemer for everything from support to product satisfaction, product feedback, internal surveys, generating ideas and product improvements, and protecting privacy.

Injecting the Voice of the Customer

Alchemer is used throughout departments at Mozilla, including IT, marketing, and customer support. Using a website-intercept feedback form in Firefox desktop and mobile users are asked if they are happy or sad with a follow-up question asking why.

This allows Mozilla to gauge how people react to features and changes. Mozilla also targets smaller random groups to provide insights on product changes and their internet experience in general, which helps decision-makers in Product Management and Engineering decide on the roadmap.

They also use panels to query users of all major browsers (including Mozilla) to identify browser feature preferences. Mozilla determines which browser features users are utilizing most frequently and which features they wish they had. This helps them drive product roadmap and development.

“We’ve integrated the feedback we collect into our decision making,” added Tyler. The responses from each survey help Mozilla better understand what works and what doesn’t, and why. Information is shared automatically in real-time with Product Management, Engineering, Customer Support, Marketing, and key management stakeholders.

Better Customer Satisfaction

For the past six years, Mozilla deploys a CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) tracker when a customer is looking in the Mozilla knowledge base, community page, or support documents. While they search, customers receive a pop-up banner.

By entering their email address and some feedback, the customer can receive a follow-up message from a support representative. This helps the support team proactively stay on top of customer satisfaction while closing the loop with people who took the time to respond. They’ve seen their CSAT scores go up in large part because of this.

Improving Employee Satisfaction

Additionally, Mozilla surveys employees regularly to find out what type of communication they would like in the internal newsletter. Like closing the loop with customers, this helps employees stay engaged as they see their feedback result in changes to the newsletter.

It also helps keep communications fresh and relevant, giving employees another reason to be happy doing their best work at Mozilla.

The post Mozilla Produces Immediately Actionable Feedback by Injecting the Voice of the Customer Throughout the Organization appeared first on Alchemer.

When the market researchers at Sahler Research wanted to assess the changes in spending and behavior related to coronavirus, they saw China as a roadmap for consumer spending in the USA.

“China is at least several months ahead of the U.S. on its journey to more normalized consumer behavior,” said CEO Kelley Buechel. They contacted the Alchemer panels team to find one audience halfway around the world and another audience in the U.S. during a time when travel is difficult.

The White Glove Treatment

The Alchemer panels team is available to help customers find the right audiences to deliver results, especially when you need more in-depth screening conditions and custom-segmented quotas or international respondents. The Alchemer panels team has access to tens of millions of respondents in more than 80 countries, which can be accessed within minutes. They will work with you to ensure that you receive only your customized audience. They can deliver panels of just about any size around the world.

The panels team can help you reach very niche consumers, including business professionals from a multitude of industries. If you need to reach a B2B audience, the team can find it for you.

In addition, the panels team are also expert survey builders, so they can share best practices to maximize the quality of each response, so you get the results you need.

The Self-Service Option

For researchers wanting general targeting, without an in-depth screening, Alchemer offers a self-service Survey Audience solution. Survey Audience allows survey builders to find a new demographic or audience quickly and easily. Once a survey builder finishes their survey, they have the option to target panelists by selecting from more than 30 profiling attributes. These panelists always come from double-opt-in survey panels from well-known providers, rather than “river samples” from past surveys (respondents who have previously agreed to answer other surveys). This service is currently only available for North American audiences.

Pricing is based on the length of the survey and the number of respondents, and there are no additional charges for selecting any number of profiling attributes until the specified audience is defined. Profiling categories range from basic demographics to criteria including automotive preferences, media consumption, hobbies, interests, ethnicity, and education. This feature reduces the cost for survey creators to reach smaller groups.

Seeing Changes in Isolation Behavior

For larger, international research, such as the work Sahler Research is undertaking, working with the Alchemer panels team delivered the results they needed. The Alchemer team found audiences in China and the U.S. for Sahler so they could track consumer behavior on two continents.

“Our March data suggests that roughly 45% of respondents were very likely to visit a restaurant over the next month, which could suggest some pent-up demand,” noted Kelley Buechel. “Another positive, overall normalization showed signs of improvement with roughly 25% of Chinese consumers said their routine was already normalized as of late March, versus 20% in February.”

For more information about Sahler Research, visit https://www.sahlerresearch.com/

For more information about Alchemer panels, click here or call 1-800-609-6480.

The post Alchemer Panels Help Coronavirus Research Find New Audiences appeared first on Alchemer.

Our customers continually inspire us. They leverage the Alchemer platform in ways we never imagined, using feedback to drive real impact throughout their organizations. 

Take Mary Ann Mendez. An accomplished researcher at the Professional Development and Research Institute on Blindness (PDRIB), she’s a real force of nature. We met up with her at a recent Ultimate Training Event in Boulder, where everyone was impressed with her professional savvy, and where her enthusiasm spread through the room like wildfire. Even more impressive was how her journey as a visually impaired researcher to find a more accessible platform led her to Alchemer – and how PDRIB now uses Alchemer to power their ground-breaking research on blindness.

About PDRIB

Making the world accessible to people with visual impairments is at the core of everything the Professional Development and Research Institute on Blindness does. They are at the forefront of professional training and research that empowers blind and visually impaired individuals to lead more independent lives. PDRIB is guided by the belief that given the proper training and opportunity, blind people can live full and normal lives – competing in virtually all areas of employment and community life. This guides their research, which centers on finding ways of addressing barriers to full integration.

The Need for Better Accessibility

One such barrier for conducting PDRIB research was the lack of accessibility in their feedback platform. In the past, accessibility issues made survey design and collection difficult for Mary Ann and her respondents, who are visually impaired.

Integration with Mary Ann’s screen reader – the technology that reads the contents of any given webpage or email out loud – was limited at best. She was often left to guess the contents of her screen, and this put limits on the types of surveys she could design.

Feedback collection was limited too. Visually impaired respondents had difficulty accessing and completing surveys on their computers, phones, or Braille displays. It was hard to decipher which questions went with which answers, leading to data quality issues as well as respondent frustration. Many times, Mary Ann was forced to collect responses by phone.

When she called the survey software provider to address these accessibility issues, she was told, “Why don’t you get a sighted person to build the survey for you?”

“Finding Alchemer was such a delight.”

All of this changed when PDRIB migrated to Alchemer. “Finding Alchemer was such a delight,” Mary Ann said. It provides robust functionality to design advanced surveys, as well as the built-in accessibility not seen anywhere else. As a result, both visually impaired researchers and respondents can interact with the platform quickly and easily. “I know what’s happening at all times. Alchemer has taken the guesswork out of deciphering the information on my screen.”

Fast Implementation and Ease of Use

Learning a new platform can be difficult, especially when you are dealing with accessibility issues. Because previous the platforms she had used came with steep learning curves, Mary Ann expected the same from Alchemer. She was surprised at how easy it was to work within the platform. “I had my survey up and running within a few days,” Mary Ann reports. “Everything worked so well. There isn’t anything I haven’t been able to accomplish!”

Higher Quality Data and Increased Reach

With Alchemer, Mary Ann has been able to design advanced surveys, and that has enabled PDRIB to collect higher quality data. And because respondents can now access surveys on their smartphones or Braille displays, as well as their laptops, PDRIB can reach out to more respondents on multiple devices.

Alchemer streamlines data analysis, as well. “Because Alchemer offers flexible and well-designed reports, we’re able to interpret data more effectively,” Mary Ann notes. “Information is presented in a way that makes more sense and is much more fluid. This has saved us many hours of analysis because we don’t have to manipulate and clean as much data on the backend.”

Accessibility Drives Impact

“Having Alchemer allows us to conduct better research,” Mary Ann said. By taking the guesswork out of what’s on their screens, designers can now focus on what they do best, respondents can give more thoughtful answers, and analysts can spend more time on analysis and less time on data manipulation.

“With Alchemer, I’m no longer limited, and neither are my respondents because Alchemer offers a platform that is so much more accessible than anything we’ve had before” Mary Ann reports. “We not only collect more insightful data but can take action on it more effectively too.”

You can download the PDRIB case study here.

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The Competitive Advantage of Engaged Employees

More and more companies are recognizing the human and business benefits of prioritizing employee engagement. And at the forefront of this trend is Four Winds Interactive (FWI). They are infusing engagement into their company DNA and, together with Alchemer, have created a continual feedback loop to fuel a 10-fold increase in their Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS).

Employee engagement is more important than ever before. To attract and retain top talent, companies must keep employees engaged or lose a vital competitive edge. According to a report from The Engagement Institute, disengaged employees cost U.S. organizations up to $550 billion in lost productivity each year.

On the flip side, engaged workers are not only happier but have a direct impact on customer experience and the bottom line. A Gallup survey reported that highly engaged teams deliver a “10% increase in customer ratings and a 20% increase in sales.”

Supporting an Innovative, People-first Culture

As a leading software provider for enterprise-grade digital signage networks, FWI is transforming the way organizations communicate with their customers and their people. Today FWI supports more than 6,000 clients, powering millions of screens around the world. They are known for working with organizations in every major industry, helping them reach their target audiences with the right message at the right time.

Leaders at FWI attribute much of the company’s success to its people. As Chief People Officer, Courtney Graham wrote in a recent article, “The brilliance of a company happens when an innovative product collides with talented and happy people.”

That’s why, two years ago, Graham and the entire FWI team embarked on a mission to create and nurture a more intentional, people-first culture – with employee engagement as a core pillar to their innovative people strategy.

The first step was to tap into the pulse of the company – and this meant collecting better data. That’s when FWI turned to Alchemer to design and implement a quarterly eNPS survey. Their Director or Organizational Development, Tor Stenbakken, explained, “With Alchemer, we can survey our entire employee base, then segment the data so we can take immediate action on that feedback.”

Sent out to all employees, the survey asks respondents if they would recommend FWI as a great place to work. It also includes follow-up questions to provide further detail. Once the data is collected, Alchemer’s flexibility and reporting capabilities enable FWI to drill down to the department level, using both scores and commentary to uncover valuable insights and trends.

This information delivered transformative results. Using the data collected, Stenbakken and his team work closely with individual teams to create action plans to increase both engagement and productivity. Data from these surveys informs the entire FWI employee experience, including everything from benefits to development to diversity and inclusion initiatives. According to Stenbakken, “We saw a 10x increase in our eNPS, putting us well above the national average for employee engagement.”

Feedback Fuels Company-wide Decision-making

Feedback is a central component of decision-making at FWI. In addition to employee feedback, the company integrates data from Alchemer into decision-making across the entire company. From supporting the design and implementation of orientations, corporate events, and marketing programs, the company continually finds new ways to employ Alchemer. As Stenbakken reports, “Thanks to Alchemer’s unique combination of simplicity, flexibility, and features, we continue to find new uses cases for the platform at FWI.”

Download a copy of the Four Winds Interactive case study here.

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