If we’ve learned anything from feel-good sports stories and classic heist films, it’s that a diverse and highly specialized team is the key to a job well done. The same goes for survey teams. The good ones aren’t uniform. They’re made up of various roles and personalities, with each team member bringing particular skills to the table. While everyone is working toward a shared goal, they likely have different priorities, different levels of investment, and different ways of approaching a project.
For your own survey crew, we’ve put together some tips to help different types of team members optimize how they work and what they contribute to survey projects. Keep in mind, this is what your team could look like. You may have a different mix of people, or see yourself in several of these “roles.”
The Leader
Your team leader is the person who drives action, maintains a pulse on survey projects, and makes sure your team is aligned on key business objectives. They may fill the role of Team Admin on your SurveyMonkey account, meaning they have a bird's eye view of the team makeup—and the power to bring in more team members when needed.
Tips for leaders:
- Guide your team toward the right tools. Make sure everyone knows how to access and use resources like survey templates, SurveyMonkey’s Question Bank, and Build It For Me to create professional-grade surveys. This not only cuts down on work, it also builds brand consistency across your projects.
- Facilitate communication between team members. Encourage team members to tap into features like commenting and survey sharing to gather broader feedback and keep everyone on the same page.
- Leverage your team seats. SurveyMonkey team plans are designed to be flexible, which means it’s easy to rotate team members throughout the lifecycle of a project. Bring in different team members exactly when they’re needed, so they can accomplish specific tasks like creating questions, wordsmithing, testing, or analyzing data. If the next survey project needs a new crew, you can always reorganize your team seats and change teammates’ access level. This empowers teamwork and helps you stay responsive to the needs of your team.
- Keep decision-makers and analysts in the loop. Periodically take stock of who is significantly invested in your project(s) and whether they need access to what your team is working on. If you need a hand figuring out who needs access, use this survey template to get a better understanding of the best way to organize your team seats.
The Analyst
Your analyst is curious, detail-oriented, and eager for new info. They’re the data dynamo, the discoverer of insights, and a critical part of your survey team. Their skill set, however, may not be needed until a particular time, like when you have data to analyze.
Your team’s analyst might have a Contributor seat on your plan—and if they don’t, then that option is likely perfect for them. It allows full access to the analysis features of your plan, so they can create dashboards, filter results, and export data.
Tips for analysts:
- Take advantage of Contributor seats. If you haven’t already, request a Contributor seat to get access to the analysis features you need to generate insights. You should also consider whether it would be helpful for other data pros to have a Contributor seat. That way, you can consult with them about survey results and get their help with analysis work.
- Create custom dashboards. You put a lot of time and care into analyzing survey data, so it makes sense to show off results with a customized results dashboard. Finetune how your data is presented: add charts and text, arrange them in just the right way, and more.
- Export, export, export. Want to do more with your data? Interested in an offline version of all your results? Download a copy of your survey results (there are several formats available). This can be helpful if you want raw data to create additional charts or do further analysis on your own. You can also export your custom charts to use them in presentations or attach to emails.
The Specialist
Specialists are survey collaborators who sit in the center of the team. Even if they don’t initiate a survey project, they’re a vital part of keeping the wheels moving.
Specialists may have a particular knowledge base that enriches projects. (Think: researcher or product manager.) They’re team players and might help with everything from perfecting survey questions and offering new perspectives to providing crucial feedback during the survey creation process.
Tips for specialists:
- Communicate and collaborate. When you comment on the survey design directly in SurveyMonkey, your input is visible to everyone. This makes it easy to sync up as a team and avoids inbox-clogging email discussions. When results are in, you can also comment on initial findings!
- Pitch in during each step of the survey process. Beyond commenting on survey design and results, you can add your expertise throughout the lifecycle of a survey. Edit questions, test your survey before it launches, and analyze the data.
The Stakeholder
Stakeholders are invested in your project’s outcome and excited about new insights. They help define next steps once insights have been uncovered and champion data-driven decisions.
A stakeholder wants to be informed and included, and probably has a hand in steering your project. But they may only need to be involved in certain phases of a survey project, rather than each and every step.
Tips for stakeholders:
- Provide timely support and feedback. Stay onboard with how a survey will look when it launches by testing it ahead of time. If anything isn’t working as expected, you can comment on the design to make sure team members know to make updates.
- Get the right access. If your main contribution starts after a survey project ends, and you don’t need to build surveys, request a Contributor seat so you can access and analyze results. If you find you need to self-serve data or be more involved in survey creation, go for a Full User seat.
- Loop in other interested parties. Do you know of other folks at your org who would be interested in a survey’s results, but they don’t require an actual seat on the team? Share the data page to give them an inside look at the data or give them additional context with a customized results dashboard. (You can do this yourself if you have a Full User seat—if not, just ask a team member with access to make it happen!)
The team members we’ve mentioned here are just a few examples of who might be on your survey dream team. With the flexibility of our team plans, there’s no reason for anyone to stay in one lane. The beauty of these ideas is that they can inspire any team member to uncover new possibilities in their team plan.
