So a few months ago, you launched a knowledge sharing platform in your organisation. You had a great start but you’d like to learn a little more about how to effectively manage your collaborators and members.

A simple survey can be the perfect way to gain insightful feedback, getting responses right from the people who matter. By evaluating your employees’ satisfaction and behaviour on the platform, you’ll be able to make some changes to correct anything if necessary. At the same time, it’s a great chance to gather feedback from users and improve the use of your platform more generally.

Although only a simple method, it’s good to take some time to consider what you’d like to discover and the questions you’d like answered. We’ve put together a few tips to get you started.

First, you need to think about your objective

It’s important to set yourself a goal for your survey. To make it as effective as possible and to limit its length, we recommend that you only create a maximum of 2 objectives.

Here’s a some ideas for the objectives you could choose for your survey:

  • Identify the causes of satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
  • Ensure that the platform meets your users’ expectations.
  • Anticipate the expectations and evolutions of your users’ needs.
  • Improve decision-making based on user feedback.
  • Increase active user rate by increasing satisfaction.

Ok, now you’ve chosen your two objectives, let’s go!

Here’s some handy tips for getting started.

  • **Ask short questions**To make your survey as easy as possible, make your questions super simple and short. Long questions often take a bit more time to understand, and make filling out the form more tedious. Always ask yourself whether it’s possible to shorten a question, or make it more direct.
  • Only ask questions that will be analysedIt is often tempting to ask a lots and lots of questions to make sure that all the topics are covered ‘just in case’. But, if you don’t have any idea of how you might use the results of these questions, don’t ask them. Your respondents will thank you as you’ll save them time, and in the end you’ll also save yourself time in the long run.
  • Optimise the participation rateA satisfaction survey only gives interesting results if a lot of users fill it out. To increase participation rate, ask yourself the following questions:
  • Who’s the survey for? Are your recipients the right target audience?
  • Have you chosen a good time to send the survey? (Last thing on a Friday might not be a great plan!)
  • Are your users convinced of the benefits, and added value the survey?
  • Is the survey short enough and accurate? Limit your survey to a maximum of 3-4 minutes, and make sure it meets your objectives.
  • Is the survey accessible on all types of media (mobile, tablet, computer…)?
  • Does your invitation email motivate your recipients?
  • Have you thought about setting up an incentive? Or a reward for the participants, such as a draw with fun prizes?

Which questions should you ask?

Following feedback from several of Elium’s customers, we’ve compiled a series of questions to ask your users. Not all of these questions need to be included in your survey, but as explained above, it’s important that the ones you choose meet your objectives. Make sure that each of the selected questions meets one of your objectives and allows you to take action later.

We’ve identified 3 groups of questions:

  • Description of the target audience
  • Rating of overall satisfaction
  • Further investigation of points of satisfaction

How should you define your audience?

This category of questions helps segment your respondents according to their role, experience or platform use. This means that you’ll eventually be able to identify trends based on platform use or the level of user training.

For example, users who have not been trained share very little content on the platform. This does not necessarily mean that training should be given to all users, but a user guide for your platform could improve general working knowledge and (hopefully!) increase sharing.

You may like to orient the rest of your questionnaire depending on this information, and adapt the questions for each respondent. For example, a user in HR does not necessarily have the same usage as a user in Sales. In some cases and according to your objectives, it can be useful to adapt your questions to these different user groups.

  • **Which department are you in?**
  • How often do you use (your knowledge sharing platform)?
  • At least once a day
  • Several times a week
  • Once a week
  • Once a month
  • Less than once a month
  • How do you connect to the platform?
  • Via my bookmarks
  • By typing in the URL
  • Via a desktop shortcut
  • From the intranet
  • Browser home page
  • Via emails
  • **Have you received any training on the tool? (yes/no)**
  • For which purposes do you use the platform most regularly?
  • To share an article from my personal watch
  • To consult the company’s news
  • To search for a company document (key resource) (process, model, HR doc…)
  • To collaborate on a project
  • To find the contact details of a colleague
  • To exchange private messages
  • To share reference documents
  • To communicate with my team
  • For informal communication with my colleagues (sport, food, afterwork…)
  • Generally, how often do you share content?
  • Regularly
  • Occasionally
  • Never

How to assess overall satisfaction

After segmenting your respondents, you will be able to evaluate their overall satisfaction in two questions. These two questions do not allow you to take concrete actions but to identify areas of improvement.

  • **On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your overall satisfaction with (your knowledge sharing platform)?**
  • Are you satisfied with (score 1 to 5):
  • Training and support
  • Relevance of the referenced contents and documents
  • Information structuring
  • Sharing new content
  • The search for information
  • Easy access to the tool
  • Navigation

Going deeper

This last section is one of the most important because it will allow you to identify actions to improve the use of the platform. This section is divided into 5 categories:

Understanding the significance of the platform

  • Do you see the meaning and significance of this tool in your daily life? (yes/no)
  • Do you understand your role in this initiative? (yes/no)
  • Do you know what is expected of you? (yes/no)

Content and its added value

  • What do you hope to find on the platform?
  • Which high value-added documents would you like to find on the platform?

Structuring and adapted uses

  • Do you find the information you are looking for quickly? (yes/no)
  • Is the structure of the platform clear and does it support navigation? (yes/no)
  • Does using the platform save you time? (yes/no)
  • What would you like to use the platform for but are not currently able to? Why?

Support & training

  • Is the platform easy to use? (yes/no)
  • Do you think that a user guide is necessary? Why?

Closing questions

  • What are some strengths of the platform? Why?
  • What does the platform most need to improve in your opinion? Why?

So, there you have it!

We hope these tips have got you well on your way to measuring satisfaction on your knowledge sharing platform. Any questions? Give us a buzz on Twitter at @eliumhq.

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