Online consultations or e-consultations are an effective and cost-effect way to collect feedback from potential clients and stakeholders.
I recently set up an online consultation for the National Farmed Animal Care Council using Survey Monkey. The two business requirements for assessing and selecting a consultation tool were simple: (1) the tool had to be intuitive and easy to use for stakeholders to comment on each of the new draft policies and (2) the tool had to be intuitive and easy to use for administrative staff to access feedback on each policy and create the e-consultation feedback reports.
I researched a number of existing e-consultation tools then selected SurveyMonkey, an online survey tool I had setup and used for previous clients to gather marketing research information from clients and board members. For both e-surveys and online consultations Survey Monkey is very easy to set up. My client and I worked together to input the consultation questions using a variety of open-ended response types for each section of the policy to guide and gather feedback.
For users it was dead simple to use. Users could download the entire draft policy or read each sub-section of the policy and then answered feedback questions. For administrators it was easy to generate consultation reports based on policy subsections as well as the whole draft.
The online consultation was a big success all around and is currently being used for to collect public, government and industry stakeholder feedback on 17 policy and code of practice documents.
I recently set up an online consultation for the National Farmed Animal Care Council using Survey Monkey. The two business requirements for assessing and selecting a consultation tool were simple: (1) the tool had to be intuitive and easy to use for stakeholders to comment on each of the new draft policies and (2) the tool had to be intuitive and easy to use for administrative staff to access feedback on each policy and create the e-consultation feedback reports.
I researched a number of existing e-consultation tools then selected SurveyMonkey, an online survey tool I had setup and used for previous clients to gather marketing research information from clients and board members. For both e-surveys and online consultations Survey Monkey is very easy to set up. My client and I worked together to input the consultation questions using a variety of open-ended response types for each section of the policy to guide and gather feedback.
For users it was dead simple to use. Users could download the entire draft policy or read each sub-section of the policy and then answered feedback questions. For administrators it was easy to generate consultation reports based on policy subsections as well as the whole draft.
The online consultation was a big success all around and is currently being used for to collect public, government and industry stakeholder feedback on 17 policy and code of practice documents.
