InformationWeek

November 17, 1997

Gauge User Opinion Now

If your organization has an intranet, but you don't know how employees are using it, it's time to conduct a benchmark study of intranet user sati sfaction.

By Rusty Weston

f your organization has an intranet, but you don't know how employees are using it, it's time to conduct a benchmark study of intranet user satisfaction. For better or worse, probing attitudes now will give you something to measure against later. It might even help you to set your department's agenda, as well as keep you one step ahead of the bean counters when it comes time to justify next year's budget request.

Below, we'll give you sample questions to use to poll your staff on intranet use. But how should you broadcast this study? By office memo, E-mail-or on your company's intranet itself?

To answer those questions, let'slook at how Novell conducted an intranet user-satisfaction survey last year. The communications team at the networking company sent the survey questions via E-mail, which, ironically, helped Novell realize that its intranet-known as InnerWeb-is a superior way to reach employees already overloaded with E-mail. InnerWeb usage has increased dramatically-to 1 million hits a week from 10,000-in a 4,800-employee company.

Some areas to benchmark include performance, satisfaction, features, applications, usability (design), and interactivity (two-way communications and feedback loops).

Here are 10 questions that are worth asking your company's intranet users:

How often do you visit the company intranet in a typical week (or day)?

Does the intranet home page load quickly when you're on the network?

Does the intranet home page load quickly when you're dialing in to the network from outside the office?

Which of the following intranet functions do you most frequently use? (List your intranet's applications, such as a company bulletin board, intranet newsletter, employee benefits material, and legacy applicat ions.)

Please rate your satisfaction with the (name intranet application, function, or service) on the intranet on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is very satisfied and 1 is not at all satisfied.

Please rate your overall satisfaction with the usefulness of the company intranet on a scale of 1 to 10.

Which intranet application or service do you like best -- and why?

How would you like to see the company improve its intranet?

Would you like to see the intranet provide daily updates of the company's stock price and other market data?

Does the intranet offer you an opportunity to contribute ideas or feedback? How can this communication be improved?

Let us know how your intranet satisfaction survey turns out. Send results to the E-mail address below.

Rusty Weston, managing editor of research at InformationWeek , can be reached at rweston@cmp.com .

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