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Re-engineering the Annual Relationship Survey

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The only customer-satisfaction measurement most organizations take is to run a relationship survey annually. Such surveys often reflect the best practices of a slower, pre-Internet era. With a small bit of re-engineering, relationship surveys offer major opportunities for better serving customers.

Here are the changes needed:

• Run them more frequently. Recently I was talking to a prospect who confessed that it had taken them more than a year to launch a major initiative inspired by their 2009 relationship survey. Unfortunately, the results of the 2010 survey had just come in, and the problem this initiative addressed was no longer important to their customers! In today’s rapidly-changing business climate, relationship surveys need to be run at least quarterly. Divide the customer base into four segments with similar composition and then survey one segment each quarter. This will provide more timely data for you to react to.
• Move some sections of the survey to transactional studies. Because relationship surveys are often the only survey being run, they may include sections about the customer’s last call into customer service, last field repair or last problem with an invoice – events that might have taken place more than six months ago. The customer may not recollect the event in much detail. Instead, create a follow-up survey that is sent shortly after each event; this will provide more accurate data.
• Make them shorter. Some of the longest surveys we field tend to be relationship surveys; often the sponsoring organization overestimates how willing people are to provide feedback, figuring that it is only once a year that they’re asking. While we’ve successfully fielded hour-long questionnaires for major accounts, such surveys are onerous on customers – follow some proven tips to shorten questionnaires instead.
• Add action alerts. Most relationship surveys are designed for measurement, not action. To inspire tactical action, make sure to add email alerts to trigger the appropriate department that an individual customer is dissatisfied. We’ve literally had B2B relationship surveys pay for themselves in one business day, as the sponsor became aware of unhappy customers and intervened immediately to save those accounts.
• Inspire operational and strategic action. A common complaint about annual relationship surveys is that organizations don’t act on them. Often this is because the data is reported only to senior management where findings are either incorporated into major initiatives on the one hand or ignored on the other. It’s important to create reports that filter the data by the responsibilities of midlevel managers, showing them what customers think for the geographic regions, products or departments they are responsible for. When they can see what their own customers are saying, they can take action.

Is it almost time to re-run that annual satisfaction survey?  Please give it a fresh look rather than running it the same way you did last year.

See also:

• Voice of the Customer Programs from Scratch
• Relationship Surveys vs. Transactional Surveys