Conducting an exit interview is worthwhile when your company takes seriously the information it garners from an employee who is leaving the job voluntarily. It not only offers your organization a chance to gain constructive lessons, but it is a tool for transferring knowledge that is walking out the door with the employee.An exit interview can also:

1. Help smooth over relations with a disgruntled worker on the way out and possibly avoid formal complaints or lawsuits.
2. Offer insight into the culture and function of the workplace. 
3.  Help maintain a positive connection between the departing employee and the company.

Use exit interviews as a learning tool The practice of conducting meaningful exit interviews can send the positive signal that the organization wants to learn how it can improve and not lose other good employees. Utilize Software to conduct your exit interviews Utlizie cost-effective online exit interview survey software to take advantage of exit interviews with departing employees. Don’t take exit interviews personally Some experts recommend waiting five to seven weeks after an employee leaves to conduct the exit interview. That way the lessons can come back to the company in a form that it might digest and learn from rather than personalize and reject. Review interview basics As with any employee interaction, the conduct of the exit interview must be done properly, even more carefully because the interviewee has less of a stake in the process as he is walking out the door.

Your employees are the backbone of your business. If they are unhappy, under trained, or unable to do their job correctly, your company's success suffers. Therefore an employee satisfaction survey can help you to stay on track with your employees and your business. Here are some of the ways an employee satisfaction survey can benefit your business. Ensure your employees know their jobs. A survey can help you keep tabs on your employees' attitude about their work. For example, a survey helps you make sure that your employees feel like they have been well trained in their jobs. There is nothing more frustrating for an employee than feeling like they don't know what they are supposed to be doing. Therefore, an under trained employee is an unhappy employee. And of course, this ultimately results in unhappy customers. Improve customer satisfaction rates. Making sure your employees feel like they are well trained helps in another way: It ensures that your customers are able to enjoy the standards that you have established for your company with as few frustrations as possible while doing business with you. While it may not be immediately obvious, an employee satisfaction survey ensures that your customers are happier, as well as ensuring your employees are happy and confident in their jobs. Ensure employees are happy. Happy employees make good employees, but happy employees also make devoted employees. This is important because fewer resignations mean fewer positions to fill with new hires. Not having to go through the process of hiring and training new employees saves your business both time and money, as you will see below. Save money spent on hiring and training new employees. There are no two ways about it: A business that has high turnover will spend a lot more money on hiring and training new employees than a business that has low turnover. First there is the cost of running the ads and paying somebody to go through applications and conduct interviews; even if that person is already on your payroll, it's time you're paying them when they could do something else more productive. Even after you have spent money on running ads, interviewing, and hiring a new employee, you have to spend more money on training. If you have a high turnover rate, you probably have a trainer, or even a training department, on staff. But even if you don't, you are paying somebody for time that could be spent on work that is more directly conducive to your company's success. Eliminate time wasted on hiring and training new employees. All of the processes described above take a lot of time, and you know the saying: Time is money. When you have your experienced senior employees spending time on training new hires, you are potentially costing yourself money by diverting resources away from activities that would be more beneficial to your business, both financially and in terms of long term success. I cannot stress more, training and hiring is expensive! Find out how to keep your employees. If you are noticing high or increasing turnover rates, an employee satisfaction survey may give you suggestions to keep more of your employees. Perhaps long-time employees feel that their pay does not accurately reflect their experience and devotion to your company; perhaps there is something you could do to make employees feel more at home with your company. Whatever the problem is, a survey can help shed light on the subject. Many business owners don't realize the powerful connection between your employees' happiness and your business's success. You can't have a successful business without happy, competent employees, so it makes sense to use an employee satisfaction survey to keep tabs on your employees' attitudes about their work and their workplace.

We all know customer satisfaction is essential to the survival of our businesses. How do we find out whether our customers are satisfied? The best way to find out whether your customers are satisfied is to ask them. When you conduct a customer satisfaction survey, what you ask the customers is important. How, when , and how often you ask these questions are also important. However, the most important thing about conducting a customer satisfaction survey is what you do with their answers. How You Ask Whether Customers Are Satisfied There are many ways to ask your customers whether or not they are satisfied with your company, your products, and the service they received. You can ask them:

• Face-to-face As they are about to walk out of your store or office, ask them.
• Call them on the phone If you have their phone number, and their permission, you can call them after their visit and ask how satisfied they are.
• Mail them a questionnaire This technique has been used for a long time. The results are predictable.
• Email them a customer satisfaction survey Be careful to not violate Spam laws
• Email them an invitation to take a customer satisfaction survey

When To Conduct A Customer Satisfaction Survey The best time to conduct a customer satisfaction survey is when the experience is fresh in their minds. If you wait to conduct a survey, the customer's response may be less accurate. He may have forgotten some of the details. She may answer about a later event. Her may color his answers because of confusion with other visits. She may confuse you with some other company. What To Ask In A Customer Satisfaction Survey There is a school of thought that you only need to ask a single question in a customer satisfaction survey. That question is, "will you buy from me again?" While it is tempting to reduce your customer satisfaction survey to this supposed "essence", you miss a lot of valuable information and you can be easily misled. It is too easy for a customer to answer yes to the "will you buy from me again?", whether they mean it or not. You want to ask other questions in a customer satisfaction survey to get closer to the expected behavior and to collect information about what to change and what to keep doing. By all means ask the basic customer satisfaction questions:

• How satisfied are you with the purchase you made (of a product or service)
• How satisfied are you with the service you received?
• How satisfied are you with our company overall?

And ask the customer loyalty questions"

• How likely are you to buy from us again?
• How likely are you to recommend our product/service to others
• How likely are you to recommend our company to others.

Also ask what the customer liked and didn't like about the product, your service, and your company. How Often Should You Conduct A Customer Satisfaction Survey The best answer is "often enough to get the most information, but not so often as to upset the customer". In real terms, the frequency with which you conduct a customer satisfaction survey depends on the frequency with which you interact with your customers. My state renews drivers licenses for five-year periods. It would be silly for them to ask me each year what I thought of my last renewal experience. Conversely, if I survey the commuters on my rapid transit system once a year, I will miss important changes in their attitudes that may be driven by seasonal events. What To Do With Answers From A Customer Satisfaction Survey Regardless of how I ask my customers for their feedback, what I ask them in the customer satisfaction survey, and when I survey them, the most important part of the customer satisfaction survey is what I do with their answers. Yes, I need to compile the answers from different customers. I need to look for trends. I should look for differences by region and/or product. However, I most need to act on the information I get from my customers though the survey. I need to fix the things the customers have complained about. I need to investigate their suggestions. I need to improve my company and product in those areas the mean the most to the most of my customers. I need to not change those things that they like. Most importantly I need to give them feedback that their answers were appreciated and are being acted upon. That feedback can be individual responses to the customers if appropriate, or it can simply be fixing the things that they tell you need to be fixed.

What good is an online survey if no one takes it? Or similarly, how useful are survey results if questions go unanswered? As you might expect, it can be an almost completely wasted effort. Some researchers are willing to accept a large percentage of non-responses. This is usually the case with surveys being distributed to large populations. However, regardless of any survey size, there’s no need to settle for less-than-optimum response. By following just five simple guidelines when creating online surveys, response rates can be maximized to their fullest potential. Step 1:  State Your Purpose In today’s world of spam-sensitive email users, it is important to let recipients know why they’ve made it to your list of survey participants. If it is to evaluate a recent purchase, give as many details about the purchase as you can. Things like purchase date and items purchased can help jog participants’ memory as to the nature of their relationship with your organization. Like any other email, surveys from a trusted source have more chances of getting opened. Step 2: Give Clear, Concise Directions It was Mark Twain who said, “If you make something idiot-proof, the world will build a better idiot.” While his words are a bit harsh, there is a bit of truth in them. What seems obvious to some is completely confusing to others. If it is important that respondents complete the survey within a certain period of time; say so. If questions have multiple choice answers and participants can select more than one answer; be sure to let them know. There’s nothing to be lost from survey recipients that already understand the intended directions, and everything to be gained from those that needed a little extra help. Step 3: Watch Your Language Even if you want your organization to be viewed as an incredibly intelligent or experienced authority, try to avoid industry terms or difficult vocabulary words. All they serve to do is confuse your audience – and confused audiences don’t take or finish surveys. If you keep in mind that most of America reads at about an 8th grade reading level, a fairly easy self-test to run on any survey is to see if the words in your survey are typically used by the average junior high or middle school student. Of course, if you’re speaking to an educated or highly professional audience like physicians, lawyers, scientists, architects and the like, feel free to use any industry-specific terms that will encourage greater understanding among your participants. Step 4: Go With a Flow There’s a logical order to the way the human mind thinks. Surveys that follow this order help respondents spend more time focusing on answering questions and less time trying to understand them. Begin with simple answers, those that require the least amount of consideration from the audience. Personal data such as age, education level, profession, and household income are easy warm-ups for virtually any online survey recipient. Once participants are comfortable, the more complex questions become easier to answer. Step 5: Size Matters Be respectful of your online survey participants and their time. No one wants to invest the time to complete an 80-question survey. Even if they’re your most loyal customers, it is unreasonable to expect that any respondent is as interested in your survey as your organization is. Be as brief as possible while still collecting all the information that you need. Remember also that this is not your only chance to gather survey information, so stick to a single topic for each survey and save other topics for future surveys. It’s surprising how large of an impact these small changes can have on the success of your online survey efforts. As your organization gets more experienced and skilled at applying these five strategies, they’ll become like second nature for your organization and you can concentrate on other survey strategies.

Grapevine can increase your survey response rate by up to 50%. Grapevine gives you full control over survey variables by offering a vast range of customizable options when creating your survey. This includes the ability to: -Control the number of respondents participating in your survey project -Set up Participant Groups according to district, divisions, departments, etc. -Control Administrator access and rights -Select the language your survey will be conducted in -Choose from many different Survey question formats -Brand your survey by uploading your company logo and choosing a graphic skin to match your look -Piping and Skip Logic Features that lets you customize the path of your survey depending on respondent's answers -Customize a "Thank You" to your respondents, give them access to a copy of their survey by having their survey printed or emailed to them; direct them to a web destination Discover all the powerful features Grapevine surveys has to offer: http://www.grapevinesurveys.com/Web_Survey_Features.aspx If you are interested in a free trial of Grapevine simply visit: https://www.grapevinesurveys.com/Request_Free_Trial.aspx