In this episode John Kozicki (Michigan Rock School and RockSchoolProprietor.com) and Mandy York (Music Time of Milford) explain how to use surveys to develop new programs, evaluate instructors, and measure overall client satisfaction in your music studio.
They cover what to ask (and what to avoid), how often to survey without causing fatigue, tips on platforms and question wording, and how to use feedback to improve scheduling, event planning, staffing, and studio practices.
You can leverage all of this information to determine what resonates with your current clients, and use that to attract more students. Build your music school smarter, not harder!
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Episode Transcript:
John Kozicki (00:01.605)
Welcome to Rock School Proprietor Podcast. My name is John Kozicki.
Mandy York (00:06.039)
and I’m Mandi York.
John Kozicki (00:08.339)
Mandy, you had a great idea. This is going to be a of a Mandy leads episode, which I always love those because one, you’re doing most of the work. But like you have such a different perspective than I do. And oftentimes, in our conversations, you’ll just say something. And it’s something I’ve never even thought of and think, what a great idea. And that is exactly what we’re talking about today.
Mandy York (00:09.923)
Hey.
Mandy York (00:18.453)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (00:36.649)
and you had suggested we talk about surveys and surveying your families in your studio to gather information and whatnot. how did you come up with this idea to have this discussion?
Mandy York (00:40.408)
Yeah.
Mandy York (00:51.66)
Yeah. Well, I mean, it was kind of you. I’m, you know, my daughters are enrolled at your studio. So I got, I got a survey from John Kozicki. but it was funny because I had just sent a survey within the month to my stu, to my family’s too. So I just, well, you don’t have any infants, so you didn’t get that survey, but yeah.
John Kozicki (00:55.721)
Okay.
John Kozicki (01:13.447)
Which I didn’t know about, yeah.
John Kozicki (01:17.905)
Right. Yeah.
Mandy York (01:20.93)
So it just dawned on me, this is something that we’re both doing. I find it really effective and important, so let’s talk about it.
John Kozicki (01:29.553)
And I rarely do it. this was kind of just sort of a coincidence. What was your survey, what was the focus of your survey to your families and what were you trying to get information about?
Mandy York (01:31.96)
Okay.
Mandy York (01:36.675)
Yeah.
Mandy York (01:42.835)
Well, this particular one was pretty targeted. It was for infants, like I mentioned, for babies. We’re starting a new program. For those of you that don’t know, if you’re new listeners, I have a early childhood music studio. So the vast majority of my classes are all mixed ages, birth through age five. But I’m starting a specific babies class. So this is just for like under nine months, non-mobile babies, new parents, new parents. So.
John Kozicki (02:04.009)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (02:08.531)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mandy York (02:11.744)
I’ve been trying to figure out timing for these classes, what will work best for parents in that category. And so I needed, I needed a question answered. put it out there and yours was kind of similar because you are, I guess you’re kind of starting a new program, but you’re re formatting existing structures, right?
John Kozicki (02:25.768)
Nice.
John Kozicki (02:35.301)
Yeah, yeah. And the reason that I sent the survey was we have been working on kind of this big change to our program. It would be sort of a change slash addition to our rock band program. And I personally have been putting a ton of work into how this would work. When would we do it? What would like
This is how we normally run things. This is how this new program would be different. How do we change the logistics? Like all this other stuff, like hours. And I just had this, this moment of, I don’t know, clarity or self doubt. I thought, what if no one wants this? Right? Like I, there was a problem. There was a specific problem that I was trying to solve. And I,
Mandy York (03:24.066)
Yes.
John Kozicki (03:29.267)
thought like, yeah, we could do this. This would be an enhancement to our rock school. But I did have that moment where like, man, I’ve only been talking with a couple of my staff members about this and they think it’s great. I think it’s great. What if we put it out there and no one else cares? No one is interested. And that’s when I thought, man, I should just, I should survey the existing.
families in our studio and see what kind of info I can get.
Mandy York (04:02.37)
Yes. Yeah. And spoiler alert, you had to positive feedback on all that stuff.
John Kozicki (04:08.624)
Well, for the most part, there, I mean, there was mixed stuff, you know, there were some things in the survey where like, yes, the idea is sound, right? But there’s also some stuff in the survey that I looked at and thought, hmm, so the amount of people that seem interested in this versus the people who are like, I don’t know if we’d be ready for something like that. I don’t know if, you know, if the timing would work out. It does make me now question.
Mandy York (04:10.818)
Yeah.
Mandy York (04:20.003)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (04:37.192)
will we have the numbers to make this successful right now or do we still have to fine tune some things? the, yeah, the info is good, but I also, you probably put more thought into the questions for your survey. I was just like, oh my gosh, I gotta put this out. I’m just gonna make a survey. And even when I started getting responses to the survey, I thought, I could have reworded that better so that I get better.
Mandy York (04:57.25)
Yeah, yeah.
Mandy York (05:05.582)
yeah, been there. Yeah. Yep. Been there for sure. Yeah. I mean, I think that if you as a studio owner haven’t surveyed your families, you really should. There’s it, it saves time. It saved me a lot of time. Cause like you said, you’re planning your, well, and then you had the self doubt about how to structure it, what to do. You know, it makes your planning more effective and, it could, and it gives you insight into what your clients.
John Kozicki (05:06.876)
better results. So, yeah.
John Kozicki (05:18.952)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (05:35.138)
your parents’ So if you have questions, just ask.
John Kozicki (05:36.828)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes.
John Kozicki (05:42.44)
So you had mentioned there are, you see three reasons to survey. Should we get into kind of the reasons to survey?
Mandy York (05:49.314)
Yeah.
For sure. Yeah. And I’ll say upfront, like I do, I survey regularly, but I wouldn’t say I do it too frequently. Just upfront, I should say like, we shouldn’t be overwhelming our families with surveys all the time, right? They’re going to get survey fatigue and they’re going to stop answering your questions. But there are…
John Kozicki (06:12.2)
How frequently, when you say regularly, how frequently do you?
Mandy York (06:17.738)
Well, well, I’ll get into that. I’ll get into that. Yeah, let’s, let’s, we’ll get there. Like the three reasons I would say are when you’re developing a new program, that’s what we’ve just kind of talked about, Um, evaluating instructors, your teachers, um, and then like a general experience or a satisfaction survey. That’s what I’ve done. So these are the three main types. Um, we’ve already mentioned, so when you’re developing new programs,
John Kozicki (06:20.092)
Okay, all right. Okay. All right.
John Kozicki (06:32.76)
Mmm, that’s an interesting one.
Mandy York (06:47.68)
you’re spending a lot of time on this and you want to get it right. You have to get it right. Right. but sometimes there’s details that you’re just not sure about. for me, it was timing of these classes. I know my mixed age groups, right? I have got this down. I feel like a pro at this. I know that I am not going to fill a one o’clock class because that’s when the toddlers are napping. I’m not
John Kozicki (06:54.428)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (07:14.31)
Right.
Mandy York (07:14.914)
I’m not going schedule at that time. For me, this was mostly about scheduling. So infants tend to have different nap schedules. They’re still like on a two morning nap. I know this is a lot of like inside scoop, but welcome to my world. Yeah.
John Kozicki (07:24.72)
Yeah, that’s…
This is, it’s, yeah, but it’s so pertinent and so important to understand your audience. A parent, if they, and that was one of the questions I put in my survey was about timing and scheduling. And specifically I asked, hey, if we ran this program, kind of how we would have to do it is because of.
Mandy York (07:34.862)
Mm?
John Kozicki (07:54.409)
what we’re doing, we would have to choose a day and time and people would have to commit. Would that impact your interest in this? And some people would just flat out said like, hey, if the day and time didn’t work, we wouldn’t do this. And I get it, you know, but that’s how some families operate. And I can totally see that as, you know, a parent myself, I remember
like those early days with the baby, it’s like everything we did was reliant on like, well, what is the nap schedule? You know? And like, I have to be home at this time, cause that is nap time and I’m not gonna deviate from that. Because if I do, the rest of the day is crap. Yeah.
Mandy York (08:31.586)
Yeah.
Mandy York (08:37.901)
Yes.
Yeah, yes. And in your world, it’s like school schedules, right? You’re not going to like start, you’re not going to schedule band rehearsal 15 minutes after the bell. You have to think about those things. So know your audience. But so that’s what my survey was about. Like, should we do like an 11 o’clock after the morning nap? Is one o’clock good after the morning nap? Whatever.
John Kozicki (08:46.374)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
John Kozicki (08:53.543)
Yeah.
Mandy York (09:08.726)
So you want to get details like that. be very specific. Like for me, it was like this time or this time, I do always leave room for comment, like, because I want to hear things that I’m not thinking of. So always leave room for comments. but be very, some people don’t comment in surveys period. You know, there’s the people that check the bot. Yeah. You know, so give very specific options.
John Kozicki (09:17.512)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (09:30.824)
Sure, sure. I usually don’t. Yeah.
Mandy York (09:37.859)
but then room for comment for those that are like maybe a little bit more invested and have good ideas they want to give you. I always like to leave the disclaimer too when I’m putting this out there that it’s not a commitment. This is not a commitment. We’re looking for feedback. We’re trying to get this new program up and running. Like we just are looking for your input, hoping that that will elicit more responses rather than people saying like, if I put this
John Kozicki (09:43.74)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (09:51.943)
Yeah.
Mandy York (10:05.728)
If I fill out this form, they’re going to want me to register for the class. and then the survey platforms that are available, this, this is goes for all of them, but, what do you, did you, I don’t even know what you used. It was your survey was like built in to, was it a Google form? Okay. Yours was just really customized. looked great. Yeah. Yeah.
John Kozicki (10:18.214)
yeah.
John Kozicki (10:27.017)
Google Form, yeah, yeah, it’s just a Google Form.
well, yeah, we just simple Google form. Yeah.
Mandy York (10:35.854)
Cool. That’s what I do too. Initially, I was using MailChimp. And they’ll give you some kind of cool analytics. Not MailChimp, the other monkey, SurveyMonkey. Yes. They’ll give you analytics and charts and things. But I think Google is great. And I like to collect the data into a spreadsheet.
John Kozicki (10:47.452)
survey monkey, yeah, yeah, the other monkey.
John Kozicki (11:02.483)
Sure. I think, you know, for anyone, for different purposes, I can see why you might choose something like SurveyMonkey over Google Form. If your sample size is crazy big, then yes, you might want a platform that’s more designed for surveys. Although I don’t know, I’m like, I’m always surprised with Google’s, the little features that I find in Google.
in Google applications that I didn’t know existed. But, you know, for you and I, I mean, I think I probably sent my survey to maybe 70 or 80 families. And, you know, we got back like maybe 20 responses, you know? So we’re talking very manageable in terms of like looking at that data and trying to understand it. So, I mean, I don’t know what your numbers are, but
Mandy York (11:35.629)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (12:02.843)
We’re not, you know, we’re not talking about crazy numbers.
Mandy York (12:05.684)
No, no, I would never. These like developing new programs are usually smaller numbers. And a general survey is going to go out to maybe two to 300 people. no. And what you mentioned is good to remember. Like don’t expect everyone to fill out the survey. Be prepared for that. And maybe that means, send to as many people as you can so that you do get more of a response.
John Kozicki (12:17.276)
Okay.
John Kozicki (12:22.973)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (12:30.377)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (12:35.31)
Yeah, no, I like the Google because the Google Forms because I can put it into a, I can direct it to go into a Google Sheet. then like if you’re familiar with that platform, like Google Sheets, you can manipulate the data in so many ways and sort and all that. Yeah, so it’s great. So that’s the first one, developing new programs. Yep. Oh, kind of a
John Kozicki (12:53.267)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, developing new programs, great.
Mandy York (13:04.448)
a shoot off of that, I think is event planning. I didn’t list that as one of my three main types, but sometimes when I’m planning an event, I want to like, I want to gauge interest. this developing the programs, we’re, developing the program. It’s happening, but we want some more insight. Event planning. Like I, I started doing the Christmas parade a while ago and I was like,
John Kozicki (13:18.109)
Okay.
John Kozicki (13:32.947)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (13:33.666)
We’re in Michigan. Are people going to come out for this thing? Am I going to try to do this and not have enough people? So that kind of stuff, gauging interest. I use surveys frequently.
John Kozicki (13:37.266)
Right, right.
John Kozicki (13:41.065)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (13:45.514)
See, I wanna clarify something and maybe push back a little bit when it comes, or maybe not push back, maybe just differentiate when it comes to event planning. When you talk about your events, the events that you do are usually one-offs. They’re not something that…
They’re special. They’re special events. When I think about events, I’m thinking about our concerts that we plan regularly. And I would never put out a survey to our family saying like, hey, what day works? You know, because I think that would just open up this can of worms and a huge headache because that’s sort of integral to how we run our program. And we pretty much have to say like, this is it.
Mandy York (14:06.701)
Yes.
Mandy York (14:14.047)
Yes.
Mandy York (14:18.528)
No. No.
Mandy York (14:27.863)
Yes.
John Kozicki (14:34.289)
this is when we’re doing it, please save the date versus, now if I want to, if I was to maybe get additional information about those events, okay, but when it comes to like timing, I would not survey my families.
Mandy York (14:49.118)
No, no. And that’s a good point. And I’m glad you clarified that because no, don’t send a survey about my concert, my annual concert in the park. Like that’s, that’s happened. That’s a community event. decide when and where. but yeah, like things like, should we, should we do this community building? Maybe that’s a better way of, you know, well, can I get enough people to hang out with me and tie dye t-shirts for the next rock?
John Kozicki (14:58.11)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (15:10.429)
Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Mandy York (15:18.872)
program, right? Stuff like that. Stuff like that. shoot. That reminds me of something else, I know I’m all over now. Don’t ask about everything. Even going back to developing new programs. I was specifically asking about timing. You had very specific questions too, but don’t, don’t like open the flood gates. I never, me personally,
John Kozicki (15:19.759)
Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
John Kozicki (15:26.24)
Okay
John Kozicki (15:40.029)
I did, yeah.
Mandy York (15:48.375)
I never survey about like pricing. That’s not a thing. You know, we make those decisions, right? We make, you do your market research and you figure out what, you know, but I’m not asking about tuition costs or maybe even like class sizes. Like just don’t open the floodgates. That’s all I’ll say. Be specific about your questions. You know what you need.
John Kozicki (15:55.058)
Right, yeah. Mm-hmm, yeah.
John Kozicki (16:12.627)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mandy York (16:16.802)
Don’t ask everybody about everything, because they’ll give you an earful.
John Kozicki (16:18.855)
That’s great. Yes. And it seems like there’s this fine line between collecting usable information from your target audience, which is what we’re talking about doing versus maybe using this as a solution to decision fatigue. Like I don’t want to make this decision. Let me have someone else make the decision for me, which is my target audience. Yeah. Yeah.
Mandy York (16:43.828)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah. Yep. Those are all good points. Cool. Okay. Evaluating instructors. Yes, let’s move on.
John Kozicki (16:52.137)
All right, we, number two, evaluating instructors. This is an interesting one. I’ve never done this and I definitely want to hear what you have to say about this. And so let me ask, this, I think I know the answer here, but is this in evaluating instructors an internal survey that you’re doing, you know, maybe amongst,
Mandy York (17:00.45)
Okay.
Yeah, I…
John Kozicki (17:18.919)
you and other staff members or is this external where you’re just saying hey what do what does everyone think about this person?
Mandy York (17:26.676)
Yeah, it’s external. I’m asking the students, well, the parents of students taking classes with an instructor. Yeah, I think…
John Kozicki (17:32.754)
Okay.
All right.
Mandy York (17:39.363)
Well, like as owners, get, there’s a couple parts to this. As studio owners, we get feedback a lot about our studios. we get reviews about how we’re doing, community recognition, stuff like that. but maybe not as frequently like individual instructor performance, maybe informally. Like I get that. get informal feedback, which I always love and appreciate, you know,
John Kozicki (17:51.849)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (18:09.678)
teachers telling me about how much they love this teacher, how great it was that Teacher X did this, but nothing formal. I do reviews of my teachers, performance reviews on occasion. I sit in their classes, but it’s one thing for me to do that. It’s another thing to collect that data from families and be able to share that with the teacher. So when I say this, this is like twofold.
John Kozicki (18:26.227)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (18:40.618)
As a studio owner, I’m getting information about my teacher so that I know how to support them. But really, what I’m most interested in is getting the feedback to share with my teacher that is essentially an ego boost and just is motivating and inspiring for them. I like to, you know.
John Kozicki (19:07.464)
Yeah.
Mandy York (19:09.942)
I know that they get that, you know, informally while they’re teaching, but to be able to get that in writing, it’s really nice when like, especially if a parent is going to take the time to complete this survey and you leave, like I said, always leave room for comments. And they write like a short paragraph or a couple of sentences about this teacher and why they appreciate them. That’s gold. It’s gold to be able to give your teacher.
John Kozicki (19:33.737)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (19:39.456)
I think it’s a really nice perk to be able to do that.
John Kozicki (19:44.436)
I like your positive perspective on this where you’re looking for those positive things so that you can share them and say, hey, these are all the things that you’re doing really well, right? Let’s do more of this. And if there are things that maybe are areas to improve, you can kind of juxtapose those two. Hey, you’re doing this really great. This other thing.
Did you ever think that you could approach it in a similar way? You know? Yeah.
Mandy York (20:16.588)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I’ve never been motivated to like survey families about a teacher because things are not going well. You know, like that’s, that’s not the motivation. If you, if we are doing our jobs right, we’re hiring the right people and we’re just, we’re, we’re tweaking and, you know, supporting and helping them grow.
John Kozicki (20:29.449)
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (20:46.188)
but this isn’t like, wow, I’m hearing a lot of negative feedback. Let me survey all the families and I, know, maybe, maybe if you, yeah. So my.
John Kozicki (20:46.416)
Mm-hmm, right, right.
John Kozicki (20:52.329)
Yeah. Yeah. And chances are pretty good. If you’re hearing the negative feedback, there’s already a problem.
Mandy York (21:03.978)
You need to dig in in different ways, probably. Yeah, the motivation is to get positive feedback to kind of gift to your instructor, I think. Yeah. And I love using these. For me, because I’m all group classes and I’m trying to fill, I’m trying to, well, I have put out a schedule, and especially when a teacher’s new.
John Kozicki (21:05.626)
Yeah, yes, yeah.
John Kozicki (21:13.501)
Gotcha. Okay, great.
Mandy York (21:32.3)
Miss Mandy’s classes will fill first, right, before the new teachers will. But if I’ve collected data, you know, second or third semester, if I’ve collected some really great feedback, you can put these quotes up on your website next to teacher’s picture. You can throw it out on Facebook. So this is a good way to promote them and help fill their classes too.
John Kozicki (21:34.749)
Yeah. Right.
John Kozicki (21:49.309)
That’s awesome.
John Kozicki (21:54.749)
It’s like, yeah, you’re getting testimonials on the down low without necessarily saying like, Hey, will you do, will you say some great stuff for us? Great stuff about us that we can share. Yeah, that’s cool. Nice.
Mandy York (22:10.894)
tool. Number three.
John Kozicki (22:11.026)
All right, so that’s number two, evaluating instructors. Number three, general experience survey. I’m interested in this one also.
Mandy York (22:20.472)
kind of your run-of-the-mill satisfaction survey, right?
John Kozicki (22:24.274)
Okay, now with this one, how frequently do you send something like this or is it not on a schedule?
Mandy York (22:33.55)
about every other year. So that’s, that’s not that frequently, right? Um, I have families that stick with us for quite a while. Um, so I yearly just, I don’t know, it’s my personality. Like you said, John, you’re not one to like complete the comment section. Like I’m, I don’t like getting a lot of email. So it’s just my personal motivation that has kept me from like over surveying families.
John Kozicki (22:36.18)
Okay.
No, no.
John Kozicki (22:55.166)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (22:59.356)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (23:03.544)
But I think it’s valuable to like check the pulse quote unquote of the studio and keep it simple. Just like the other surveys, be very specific, keep it simple. But you know, you could do this as like on a scale of one to 10, how satisfied are you with X or on a scale of one to 10, multiple choice is usually best like
John Kozicki (23:03.69)
Sure.
John Kozicki (23:08.137)
Okay.
Mandy York (23:33.166)
How knowledgeable do you feel your instructor is when it comes to acts? Things like that.
John Kozicki (23:43.752)
And I would imagine the questions that you’re asking are really about also what things are important to you as the studio owner. And just that example that you mentioned, how knowledgeable do you feel this instructor is about a certain topic? That speaks to, and this is me knowing you, Mandy, that speaks to…
Mandy York (23:54.446)
Yes.
Mandy York (24:03.747)
Yes.
John Kozicki (24:11.133)
how important it is to you in your studio that even though you’re catering to this age group that oftentimes isn’t even in school yet, it’s important that to you that the program that you offer is research-based and there is learning going on even though it’s play-based and experiential, yeah.
Mandy York (24:34.668)
Yes. Yep. Yeah. And it mean that the families realize that they’re learning from this program. And here’s a good example too. I often ask like on a scale of one to 10 or maybe it’s strongly agree, whatever your scale is, you know, do you feel like you’re making more music at home as a family since beginning the program or like how often do you use your, your take home materials? Meaning.
John Kozicki (24:40.359)
Yes. Yeah.
John Kozicki (24:51.175)
Yeah, right.
John Kozicki (24:59.049)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (25:04.606)
know, music downloads and songbooks at home. Because that’s the goal of our of the program is that they are, yeah, making music at home using these tools that we’re giving them.
John Kozicki (25:07.475)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (25:16.501)
And that’s, again, that’s perfect because that’s your mission, that’s your goal with your studio. So you’re really just taking the temperature. Are we achieving those goals that we set out to achieve? And just understanding if that’s coming through to the families based on their interactions in class from week to week.
Mandy York (25:31.426)
Yes.
Mandy York (25:39.821)
Yes. So don’t take, you know, don’t, don’t Google like top 10 satisfaction survey questions, you know, you can do some research and you can probably use AI, AI to help you come up with some questions. Like if this is difficult for you to get started with, but like you’re saying the real do the real work and think about your mission and what’s really important. You, what do you want to know? Don’t just do this to get, you know,
John Kozicki (25:47.087)
Yeah. Right.
John Kozicki (25:56.488)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (26:05.395)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (26:08.534)
a bunch of strongly agrees and boost your ego or whatever it is. Like, you know, dig in. one thing I like about these is that you might uncover, well, you’ll, you’ll uncover some opportunities, right? And that’s, that’s the goal. Like, I didn’t realize like people are missing this. Okay. I’m going to work on that. That’s great stuff. But also like I, for example,
John Kozicki (26:11.175)
Right,
John Kozicki (26:29.885)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (26:37.546)
I discovered that my cleaning practices were really appreciated and my cleaning practices are a pain in the butt. Okay. And so that’s one of those things I remember after COVID we like bumped up the cleaning stuff, you know, a lot.
John Kozicki (26:41.797)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
John Kozicki (26:47.473)
Hahaha
John Kozicki (26:55.739)
Yeah, and to add a little insight, I’ve seen, so you’ve got the shakers, you’ve got the rhythm sticks, you’ve got all the little things that you use in class every day with babies and toddlers, and they stick them in their mouths, and you know, like, then they pass them along to someone else. I’ve seen, yep, yeah, yeah, I’ve seen your
Mandy York (27:18.53)
They sneeze in the whole bucket. Yeah.
John Kozicki (27:25.353)
post-cleaning process when I’ve walked by your studio and peeked in the window and just seen all of the percussion toys and instruments laid out on the floor. there’s, mean, there might be a hundred of those.
Mandy York (27:37.825)
yeah, I know because there’s a separate box for each class so we gave them separate. Yeah, and we just missed them, fogged them all down. It’s, pardon me, it’s not easy. It’s kind of a pain and you think like, we really need to be doing this? Is this really, really necessary? But then you get feedback that parents really appreciate it. I mean, I have…
John Kozicki (27:44.402)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (27:56.092)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (28:05.122)
We see a lot of people, I’ve got immunocompromised people in my classes. have, I have people battling cancer in my classes. I have grandparents in my classes and I’m happy to say like, I don’t, I can’t pinpoint any like illness breakouts. You know, I haven’t had like, geez, the Tuesday class all got hand, foot and mouth, you know, stuff like that. So that came through in the survey and it just kind of affirmed what we’re doing. And we’re like, okay.
John Kozicki (28:14.439)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (28:25.767)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (28:32.866)
that they appreciate this and this is a good thing we’re going to keep doing it. So there you’ll find stuff like that too.
John Kozicki (28:35.933)
Yeah, yeah, that’s, yeah, and that’s great feedback because as you said, for that thing in particular, you’re like, this is so much work. Do we really need to do that much? And your families are saying like, yeah, thank you for doing that. And I think that helps a little bit when you do get to that point where you’re just like, this is a lot of work. I don’t know if I wanna do it.
knowing that that’s something that your families appreciate. Like that makes the work worthwhile.
Mandy York (29:11.5)
Yeah, for sure. crosses my mind as I’m doing this stuff and I know, yep, it makes me happy. Yeah.
John Kozicki (29:14.953)
Yeah. Great. I love it. So three types of surveys. I mean, I’m sure there’s other surveys that you could, you could do in your studio, but these are really great suggestions develop it when you’re developing a new program, evaluating instructors and just general, general experience surveys. And again, those you talked about the frequency.
And those three, like you don’t develop new programs that often. General experience, you’re saying every couple of years, I could see someone maybe doing that annually. And then instructor evaluations. Yeah, that one I would have to think about like in my studio, how frequent frequently I would want to do that. But this is great.
Mandy York (29:56.878)
Yeah.
Mandy York (30:07.362)
Yeah. And you could customize that too with the instructors. I always like to do it after a semester or two to get that feedback. You can target these things. If you’ve got an instructor with five new students, after two months, just send it to those five students.
John Kozicki (30:16.488)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (30:28.029)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Mandy York (30:30.264)
Do we have time for a couple of questions? Because I have a couple of questions for you about this. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I wondered, this is not something I’ve done, but would you ever incentivize completion of a survey? Like, a general, this probably goes mostly for like a general satisfaction survey.
John Kozicki (30:33.574)
for me? Okay, yeah. Okay.
John Kozicki (30:45.737)
Hmm.
John Kozicki (30:51.411)
Good question. You know, I don’t, I honestly don’t know. Side note, had worked earlier this year and kind of late last year, I worked on this project with a psychologist who was collecting data about practice habits for guitar players. And part of my job with this researcher was to
sort of look at those survey questions and figure out like, do they make sense? Should they be worded differently? What are the things that are important? And it was kind of an eye-opening experience, because this is like serious research and like serious survey. And we’re talking like 50 some questions and like real data collection. And the process that this researcher used to gather the info really just starts at
kind of that basic like, let’s put this survey out to these forums and these groups and see what kind of info we get. But we definitely got to a point where she said, we’re not getting enough data. And now we need to possibly look at other avenues and incentives. For me, I don’t know, I don’t need like that kind of sample size for the most part when it comes to this type of thing.
Mandy York (32:16.152)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (32:17.819)
So I don’t know if I would necessarily incentivize and I don’t really know.
how effective that would be. I don’t know, have you used incentives?
Mandy York (32:29.646)
I’ve not, I’ve only just kind of thought about it because it’s been two years since we sent a general satisfaction survey. So we’re thinking about doing that within the next few months. And I just kind of crossed my mind like, well, what if we did incentivize it? Like if you return the survey, we put your name in the bucket and we’re going to give away like a kit of instruments, know, egg shakers and rhythm sticks, right? Something like that. So I…
John Kozicki (32:36.713)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (32:52.551)
Yeah. Yeah.
John Kozicki (32:57.597)
The potential downside to that is like, yeah, you’re trying to get more replies. You might run the risk of that incentive providing less serious responses to the surveys, right? Like, I just want to get through this because I want to be in the drawing to win this thing. Yeah, yeah, it’s a tough one.
Mandy York (33:03.65)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy York (33:14.296)
Sure, yep.
Mandy York (33:19.714)
Get my name in the hat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I haven’t thought about it much. I just thought I’d throw it out there, see what you thought. This one, my next question is kind of rhetorical. Something to think about too. Most of my students can’t speak in complete sentences, but you have your kids elementary, middle, high school. I wonder about the value of serving students. Or do you want to?
John Kozicki (33:30.717)
Okay.
John Kozicki (33:42.419)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (33:47.369)
This is okay, so this is another thing that I learned in that project that I worked on with this psychologist, which is if you are, and this is the legal stuff that they have to deal with, right? Now on the down low in our small studios, I don’t know if this would be important, but for research studies, if you are surveying minors, you have to get parental consent. So there’s in addition to,
Mandy York (33:52.685)
Okay.
Mandy York (34:00.074)
Okay, yeah.
John Kozicki (34:17.734)
the struggle of getting people to fill out the survey, there’s this other roadblock or this other hoop that you have to jump through even beforehand, which is getting parental consent and parental buy-in for then the minors to fill out these surveys.
Mandy York (34:37.807)
the survey. yep, and I didn’t even think about that. Okay.
John Kozicki (34:40.006)
Yeah. Yeah. But also, I don’t know if I don’t know how accurate I would trust like 13 year olds answers to surveys. Because just knowing that like, you know, whatever mood they’re in that day, good, could change their answers. Who knows? Yeah. So I don’t know if I would I don’t know if I would survey this.
Mandy York (34:48.686)
Yeah, I know, know, yeah.
Mandy York (34:57.696)
Yes.
Mandy York (35:01.324)
Yep. Yeah. I mean, not an option in my studio, but I wondered if that ever comes up in other studios for the older kids.
John Kozicki (35:06.928)
Right, yeah, so I don’t know if I would survey the kids for any sort of reliable data.
Mandy York (35:15.596)
Yes. Well, cool. All right. That was, that was a good convo.
John Kozicki (35:17.884)
Yeah. This is, yeah, this is cool. This is, yeah, thanks for putting this together, Mandy, because again, I hadn’t, I don’t do a lot of surveys and it sounds like you do more than I do and you’ve got a lot more experience with this. And it’s really, I mean, this is great info to get because we are asking our target audience, our clients, hey, what do you think? And this is valuable info that we can, we can then use to improve and tweak things. I love it.
Mandy York (35:46.574)
Great. Awesome. Thanks, John.
John Kozicki (35:48.936)
All right, so we’ll wrap this episode of Rock School Proprietor podcast and we’ll see you next time.
Mandy York (35:54.863)
Sounds great. Take care.
