Survey

Reasons Behind the Shift from Traditional Surveys to AI Surveys

Manoj Rana
August 8, 2024
5
min read
Reasons Behind the Shift from Traditional Surveys to AI Surveys
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Taking a survey to build better products isn’t something businesses can ignore or even postpone. But with traditional surveys gathering all the required information tends to get boring. Data shared by a couple of hundred or thousand customers is still manageable. But when the number of customers is in the millions, traditional surveys aren’t very useful. 

This is where AI surveys come into play. Tools like ConverseAI by Qwary take out all the hard work, monotony, and tediousness from building, sharing, and analyzing a survey. Leveraging AI, you can automate several tasks and speed up the entire process. This not only helps with quick data extraction but also gives you a competitive edge. 

This article will dig deep into the differences between AI surveys and traditional surveys to convince you to make the switch for your benefit. 

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Why the Dilemma Between AI and Traditional Survey Methods?

As someone who deals with modern tools and solutions every day, I think AI has proved its worth to the extent of its capabilities. A McKinsey survey finds a 25% year-on-year increase in the use of AI. The utilization of AI, while numerous, is now also present in standard business processes. 

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Organizations across the globe consider AI as an important tool to;

  1. Increase revenue 
  2. Improve operational efficiency 
  3. Improve customer experiences

It’s the third aspect that is of interest for the purpose of this article. Considered the next generation of traditional surveys, AI surveys are far better in terms of engagement, personalization, and relevance. Let me talk about each in some detail;

  • Engagement

Do you remember the last time you took a survey and enjoyed it? Giving answers to generic questions has never been on anyone’s to-do list. So to get people to like giving answers, you need to make it engaging.

With AI included in the survey creation process, it will generate real conversations. As a result, the respondents will be more inclined to participate and give honest feedback. 

  • Personalization

Traditional survey methods are like one-size-fits-all. Regardless of the respondent and their experience with your product, everyone has the same questions to answer. There’s a significant lack of personalization, which leads to disinterest and non-responsiveness. 

  • Relevance

Static and generic surveys lack personalization, which means they are not relevant to the respondents. But with AI included in the process, you can create customizable surveys. This means the questions a respondent gets are relevant to their usage of the product and experience. 

Key Similarities Between AI Surveys vs Traditional Surveys

AI takes the survey experience to the next level, both for the end-users and professionals executing the survey. Compared to traditional surveys, AI surveys are much better, but there are similarities as well. 

  1. Gathering Information or Data

Among multiple ways to gather information from your customers, AI, and traditional surveys use a similar approach. In both cases, you directly ask questions from your customers. The procedure used to set questions may be different, but the principle is the same. In both, you ask questions, and the end-users answer. 

  1. Multiple Implementation Methods

AI and traditional surveys can be implemented in multiple ways to get the information you need. This means you can use a survey, irrespective of how it's built, to get feedback, launch new features, ask for honest opinions, and much more. 

  1. Cost efficiency

Surveys are a cost-efficient method to get the information you need. With the right process, they can get you the required information from a large number of people in a short amount of time. Discussions can be held on the impact an AI survey vs traditional surveys can create, but both types of surveys are economical. 

Even with these similarities, AI interactive surveys are much better than traditional ones. The scope of extracting the required information from your respondents is much higher with AI. I’ll explain it in the further sections. 

What Makes AI Surveys Better than Traditional Surveys?

91% of customers like to interact with brands that offer relevant and personalized recommendations. But, with the significant amount of data at a business’s disposal, the lack of the tools and expertise to translate the data makes it a “burden of choice.” 

All these problems are solved when businesses use AI to create, share, and analyze survey results. Here’s how;

  1. Customization and Hyper-Personalization

AI surveys are customizable to a large extent. This means the questions are based on the respondent’s choice. This means the next questions can change according to the answer to the previous question.

Conversational AI Survey Sample by Qwary

Even when you are building surveys, AI will account for the demographics, survey goal, and tonality (only offered in Qwary’s Converse AI). As a result, you will build an adaptive survey boasting a smooth question flow, extracting relevant and engaging answers. 

  1. Platforms Used

Online AI surveys add an extra layer of convenience to the process. Not only does this method increase the survey response rates, but it also makes it easier to analyze the results. 

However, you must choose the right platform for the process. Ideally, I would recommend one where you can use the power of AI to automate the survey creation and results analysis process, just like Converse AI does. 

  1. Real-Time Insights

AI can analyze responses in real time, which means you can quickly know your customer’s concerns and experiences. Plus, you can offer personalized assistance and conflict resolution to the issues facing your customers. 

Using AI means quick access to customer experiences, which means businesses can look into the issues quickly, and small problems won’t escalate. 

With tools like Qwary’s Converse AI you can create a real-time feedback loop, leading to rapid product improvement and updates deployment. 

  1. Creating Conversations

Moving ahead from static survey formats, AI surveys have a conversational style where the respondents aren’t answering questions but engage in a dialogue. 

The engagement the conversations create leads the customers to share honest feedback. As AI personalizes the survey experience, it will also increase the response rate, which means you will get much better insights from your customers. 

Leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP), AI surveys help extract honest and authentic insights businesses can use to build better products. 

  1. Dynamic Questionnaires 

Traditional surveys have a static set of questions, which I have already talked about in the previous section. AI surveys have dynamic questions, which means the next question can change subject to the respondent’s answer.

So, if an NPS question asks the user to rate their experience with using the product and the answer is lower than expected, the next question will ask for a specific reason for the lower rating. 

This way, each question your customers get is relevant and personalized to their needs. 

  1. Solves Bias and Human Error

Customizable surveys built with AI utilize large datasets to understand subtle implications and language biases. By analyzing answers, AI can generate neutral and less leading questions and also rephrase the questions when respondents find it difficult to understand them. 

An issue we face while designing the survey, the static questions and the order in which they are asked are susceptible to human error and bias. Even the response options you set can steer the survey in a certain direction. 

Traditional survey methods have leading questions that can prompt your customers to answer in a specific way. Hence, they won’t be able to reflect their feelings and opinions.

As AI can learn and adapt and with every survey and response, they learn more about potential issues customers are facing, you will get progressively refined surveys as you use it more. 

  1. Higher Response Rate

The lack of engagement, relevance, and personalization leads to low response rates. AI surveys are the perfect answer to early drop-offs, non-completion, and low response rates. It can design the survey in a way that the respondents don’t lose interest. 

The style engages the users in a dialogue, transforming the survey into a meaningful conversation. Its capability of knitting a narrative that the respondents can understand prompts a higher response rate. 

  1. Survey Response Analysis

AI surveys include in-depth response analysis, including sentiment analysis extracting insights from the intricate world of human emotions. AI can detect frustration, desire, sarcasm, and other complex emotions from the answers. Since it can detect these motions, you can use them to guide product development and customer service accordingly. 

AI Impact

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Real-time data validation and consistency checks ensure the data AI surveys extract is accurate and reliable. With meticulous analysis, AI algorithms examine responses and identify patterns and inconsistencies. 

How AI Interactive Surveys Can Help Your Organization?

AI surveys represent a transformative approach to collecting data and addressing the limitations posed by traditional surveys. With higher completion rates and higher engagement levels, surveys empowered by AI offer a seamless and personalized survey experience. 

While there may be many reasons for a business to use AI surveys, here are the ones I can vouch for as we have experienced these benefits in Qwary. 

  1. Boosting Customer Satisfaction

AI-powered survey insights have proven instrumental for us in doing everything according to our customer preferences. The expedited method of data collection with AI surveys makes the process more efficient and customer-centric. 

Using AI, we are actually demonstrating our resolve to help our customers get the best user experience. Since AI can tailor the survey for each customer while sticking to the goals, you will notice increased engagement. 

  1. Build Innovative Products

You need customer insights to build innovative and relevant solutions or solutions. Surveys are an incredible method to get those insights, and AI-based interactive surveys are even better. 

You will not only get authentic insights from your customers with AI surveys, but you will get this information, quickly. And in a competitive market, time is of the essence. The faster you can understand your customers, the better prepared you will be to build innovative solutions. 

  1. Better Market Research

In our discussion on AI surveys vs traditional surveys, the former will always come up on top. Speaking from experience, AI surveys have helped us push market research to uncover in-depth data that a traditional survey cannot extract. 

AI Usage by Researchers

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AI surveys are quick and provide more accurate results which we analyze and build market-fit products. 

  1. Optimize Marketing Campaigns

When you know your customers like we do and everyone else using Converse AI, the marketing campaign’s ROI will shoot up like a rocket. AI-based survey solutions help segment the customer base according to their demographics, interests, and past interactions. 

Knowing all this, you can tailor the marketing campaigns and methods while personalizing the content to get the best attention and attraction. 

Qwary ConverseAI - Transform your Survey Experience

Everything we have just discussed about AI surveys and their capabilities, you will find in Converse AI. An amazing product we have built at Qwary, Converse AI is the tool you need to build, share, and analyze surveys easily. 

We have built Converse AI to not just extract data but to ignite conversations. Our tool can ask ice-breaker questions that dynamically change to talk to your customers and make them feel like talking to a friend and receive honest feedback. 

Forget rigid questions and boring survey designs. Converse AI will create surveys for all purposes according to your requirements, survey goals, customer preferences, and tonality. 

Engage, interact, and talk to your customers with Converse AI. Check it out here to know more. 

Conclusion

AI surveys are much better than traditional surveys. They are better in terms of designing, setting questions, engaging customers, and analyzing results. With almost every task automated and completed within seconds, all you have to do is leverage the insights to build customer-centric products. 

With AI survey creation, you must take care of its simplicity while ensuring you extract in-depth information. Use our tool to personalize interactions and gain deeper customer insights. Book a free demo of Converse AI to know more. 

FAQs

  1. What is an AI survey?

An artificial intelligence survey is a questionnaire built with the help of AI-enabled tools that have machine learning and natural language processing capabilities. AI surveys are built to fit comfortably with your customer's preferences and record higher engagement. 

  1. What is a traditional survey?

Traditional surveys are questionnaires built by human professionals. Unlike AI surveys, a traditional survey has a rigid structure and fixed set of questions. Earlier used by a large number of businesses, traditional surveys are slowly losing their credibility and are replaced with AI surveys. 

  1. How can we use AI in surveying?

With AI, you can automate every aspect of the survey. From creating interactive surveys to analyzing customer feedback for sentiments, emotions, and quantitative data, AI has multiple applications and benefits in surveying. 

  1. Will AI overtake traditional surveying?

Considering the benefits and capabilities of AI surveys, it will soon be used by every organization, irrespective of the insights they want to extract. AI survey tools like Converse AI will continue to add more use cases of AI surveys as the market demands, which will further escalate their adoption.

  1. How can AI identify survey questions?

AI can generate potential questions based on the information you provide, including survey type, purpose, objective, tonality, etc. However, it can also refine the questions as they are shown to the customers based on the answers.