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Not Another Annoying Customer Survey!

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D. Daniel Ziv, Vice President, Customer Interaction Analytics, Verint Systems

These days it seems on any given day, you can receive up to a dozen requests to participate in a customer service survey. As a marketing professional attuned to the importance of seeking and taking action on feedback, it's refreshing to see this focus on the rise. However, the lack of personalization coupled with poor timing and administration of these surveys can leave much to be desired. Collecting customer feedback effectively is no simple task and, when done improperly, can even have a negative impact on customer satisfaction. The following represent some of the more common practices organizations use to collect customer feedback – many of which can be quite annoying from the customer's perspective – along with some tips and best practices to help ensure the process is engaging to customers, as well as insightful and actionable to your business.

1. Using "one size fits all" survey questions. Running your surveys with a focus on very generic topics through a single channel can translate into dismal customer participation. Often, you'll see this play out when the survey questions asked have nothing to do with the phone call you just completed with the company. Not only is this frustrating, it's a waste of time on both ends. Instead, businesses need a solution that uses short, context-sensitive, dynamic survey questions that enable it to capture the most relevant information from customers across different channels of contact.
2. Collecting feedback too late after the original interaction. Consumers have dozens of interactions with companies about multiple products and services, making it difficult for them to remember all the specifics associated with each. Sending a customer an email or calling them three days after-the-fact can result in both lower response rates and less relevant input. By engaging customers immediately after their interactions with your agents over the IVR, web and/or email, your organization can benefit from timely insights and response rates far greater than those obtained days or weeks later.
3. Underestimating the value of open-ended questions. While it's certainly interesting to know if the customer would recommend your company, it's equally important to give them a chance to share their feedback in their own words. Open-ended questions open the door to these more detailed, personal experience insights and bring the "voice of the customer" dynamic into the survey mix in a powerful way. To get the most out of the open-ended customer comments you receive, your organization can leverage automated software that mines and analyzes customer interaction content comprised of both structured and unstructured data from text and voice interactions, and by mining such channels as email, online chat or even social media outlets. Doing so can provide your organization with rich insights from a broader sample size and with less bias.
4. Offering prizes and incentives for providing feedback. While this may increase response rates, it runs the risk of skewing the type of people that respond. Those with less money and more time on their hands are more likely to participate in these "lottery" surveys, perhaps distorting the results to focus on customers that are of less interest to your organization.
5. Capturing feedback and not taking action on the findings. This is probably the most annoying of all the common-place practices. There is a somewhat unspoken expectation that a company will read/listen to the customer that provides feedback, and as a result, make changes. However, too often we see organizations collecting customer feedback, but failing to act on it. To complement traditional customer feedback solutions, technology tools that mine the actual voice of the customer help surface these root causes and trends. Taken further, you can then share the adjustments and changes you're making with your customers. If they see that you have taken their feedback seriously, they're more likely to provide feedback in the future and to remain more engaged and loyal.

The good news is that for every organizations that hasn’t used customer feedback to its fullest potential, abused it or used it improperly, there are many, many others that have made great strides in improving their customer experiences by incorporating these types of tools and processes into their day-to-day business operations. Being mindful of some of these best practices will help your organization ensure the feedback process is engaging to customers, insightful and actionable to your business.