Everything You Need to Know About Custom Questions

You might want to add a custom question if you:

• Want to capture feedback on recent/future changes. These might include:  
  • Planning for future strategic changes.
  • A recently launched a program or initiative.
  • Exploring expansion into a new market or service offering.
  • Want to dig deeper into a specific challenge or opportunity identified in previous surveys.
• The response buckets in FBR’s standard “Market Information” questions (tenure, region, units, etc.) are not the best fit for your group.
• There is a specific area (FBC, tenure, region, units, etc.) that you would like to see as a breakout in our Heatmaps feature – using a custom question is a great way to capture the data you want to see here
• Want to know why a participant rated a particular area as high/low, you can create a custom open-text question to follow up (i.e. “If you rated training and support average/poor, please provide more detail:”)

We support the following formats for custom questions:

• FSI Rating: uses FBR’s 5-point rating scale to provide a satisfaction score that can be compared to other areas and trended year over year:
  • excellent, very good, good, average, poor 
  • strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree 
  • 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 
  • yes, probably, maybe, probably not, no 
  • very satisfied, satisfied, neutral, unsatisfied, very unsatisfied
    
    See more details on our FSI

• Multiple Choice: List of responses either as a “single select” where participants can select one option, or as a “multi-select” where participants can select their top 3, check all that apply, etc.
• Open Text: Allows written response.
• Conditional: If you only want some people on the survey to view and answer a certain question, or if you want to have a question appear based on the way another was answered.
  ie. “Please rate the support from the construction team:” could be dependent on franchisees responding to the tenure question that they have been with the brand less than one year.
• Pre-populated: Use information provided on the contact list such as region, FBC, or other demographic area to populate participant responses for that question. This can increase accuracy for filtering and reduce the number of questions a participant needs to answer manually.
• Groups: When you want an individual rating for multiple areas, each area will be its own question and these will be placed together within the survey. For example, when looking for department feedback, each department will exist as an individual question with its own rating. This helps us avoid listing multiple departments under one question with a single rating, making unclear which area is being rated.

• Keep it short and clear, aim for 1-2 sentences per question.
• Avoid double-barreled questions (asking two things at once).
• Focus on actionable topics where you can share results and respond to feedback.
• Avoid asking questions already covered in the benchmarked survey.
• No “N/A” option on FSI rated questions. This will negate the ability to generate a score for the question which reduces its overall value. Instead, we can encourage participants to “please skip if not applicable.”
• Keep rated questions on a 5 point scale to maintain consistency in scoring and appearance. For example, a 10 point rated scale will not generate a score and for participants it will look more similar to a multiple choice question than a rated one.
• Provide a list of responses whenever possible to avoid “over-using” open text questions. We want to avoid participant fatigue and take advantage of the ability to filter/trend data.
• When asking a rated question, aim to use statements over questions. (i.e. “Overall quality of training available” vs “How would you rate the available training?”)

• Changes to existing benchmark questions – we want to maintain the spirit of these questions, but can use “altered display text” to provide clarity or context specific to your group. (ie. “Senior Management cares about my success” could become “Senior Leadership cares about my success”).
• Adjusting the response set for a question without changing the “buckets”. Similar to the “altered display text” for a question, we can alter display text for a response. (ie. “single unit/territory” could become “single unit” or “single store”. However, changing the response to “1-2 units” changes the response “bucket” meaning it no longer aligns with our benchmark and so that would make it a custom question for your group).
• We recommend providing a response set whenever possible. A good way to do this and still leave franchisees a write-in option should they feel that the response set doesn’t apply to them is to include an “other” option. The open text follow up “If other please explain:” does not count as an additional custom question.

1. Review the standard survey [link to benchmark questions]
2. Submit your custom question(s) to your FBR Client Success Manager at least 10 business days prior to launch. Please see the deadline provided to you by the team:
   • New clients:  Send to us in the body of an email, word/google doc, or excel/google sheet.
   • Resurvey clients: review the survey structure provided:
     • Add new questions in green 
     • Use a strikethrough to remove
     • Indicate text changes in red
3. Our team will review and confirm formatting and placement in your survey.
4. If you would like questions in a specific section or place in the survey, indicate where you want the survey, if you want them in their own section at the end. Otherwise our team will enter them where they see the best fit.