How many times have you dreaded filling a form on paper that has multiple questions? Today, with the rise of the digital age, everything is transforming into a digital format. Traditionally, surveys were always conducted on paper across many industries. However, there are many problems with paper surveys. Let's discuss some of the major disadvantages of opting for paper survey.
Disadvantages of Paper-based Surveys:
1. Cost
Conducting surveys on paper can be an expensive affair as it includes printing, making copies, etc. The cost increases with the number of copies needed for the survey.
2. Readability
This becomes yet another challenge in case of paper surveys, as customers might have handwriting that is difficult to read. This might lead to the loss of data as the responses might be unreadable. The process of extracting responses also becomes highly time-consuming.
3. Reach
As paper surveys need to be physically distributed, it becomes difficult to reach to a mass crowd. Moreover, field data collection also becomes tedious as surveyors need to carry all the paperwork from one location to another, adding weight to their luggage.
4. Reliability
Any mishandling of the papers might lead to complete loss of data. Example, a surveyor carrying survey responses that are filled in by customers on paper. But, due to heavy rains, all the papers are damaged, nullifying the whole survey.
5. Manual Work
All the data collected on paper needs to be manually entered into a computer system. This increases the scope of making errors during the manual data transfer that might lead to inaccurate reports.
6. Carbon footprint
Paper surveys increase the carbon footprint. Wastage of paper indirectly increases cutting down of trees that are used for the production of paper. Going paperless contributes to saving trees and the environment.
Due to the above drawbacks, companies are searching for an alternative, and the best way is to adopt the digital version of the forms, commonly known as the mobile forms. The paper-based survey forms are converted into digital forms in the survey mobile app like the GoSurvey, where the user or the surveyor needs a mobile phone for data collection or collecting customer feedback. There are plenty of reasons to switch Digital and Ditch papers for surveys. Here are some of the advantages of paperless surveys.
Advantages of Paperless for Surveys
1. Saves Money
The percentage cost distribution for handling paper surveys is very high. Whereas, with mobile forms, the cost drastically reduces as everything goes digital and companies save a lot of money.
2. Speed
Collecting data on mobiles or tablets is easy, fast and user-friendly. Data collected with survey apps reach the organization merely in a few taps. Paper surveys need logistics to accumulate all the data which adds time to the whole survey.
3. Rich and efficient data
Every business would want the data they have, to be reliable. Using mobile forms minimizes the risk of forms getting misplaced or lost and even the data or feedback captured cannot be altered thus making the data trustworthy.
4. Instant Notifications
Since data entered by customers reach the organization immediately, an instant action can be taken if required. Example, if a customer expresses his/her dissatisfaction with the service of a company, the manager can immediately reach out to them and try to solve their issue. On the other hand, companies can also set up custom notifications and responses that are automatically sent out to customers based on their responses.
5. Ease of analyzing data
The data gathered is well organized and immediately available. This makes it easy for a company to analyse, compare and scan through the data. Real-time analytics helps in getting results instantly in the user-understandable forms like- Pie-chart, Graphs and can even be downloaded.
Now, you see what’s all the hype about going paperless. Moreover, there is a huge impact of the rise of the digital era.
The Rise of Digital Era
In this fast-paced era, there has been a huge progress in the digital technology. Organizations are moving in Digital direction. Due to this reason, they are shifting to mobile forms instead of paper surveys. This approach not only gets the work done but also makes the process more cost-effective and time-saving. Moreover, it is convenient both for the organizations and the surveyors to collect and manage surveys and feedbacks in one place.
Digital Surveys come in online, as well as offline medium. Surveyors who go on the field to collect data need not carry all the paperwork. They can easily gather information in an offline survey app. And, GoSurvey helps in customizing it all.
