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customer feedback

Behind the Customer Feedback Disconnect

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customer service

I have often wondered why so many large corporations and businesses opt to spend a lot of money on annual customer feedback surveys. Are they reliable? After all, is a customer going to recall every service touchpoint over a full year and be able to provide clear, actionable answers to survey questions?

While annual customer satisfaction surveys can provide some insights, they may have limitations that can make them less effective in capturing the dynamic nature of customer satisfaction.

Top 4 Reasons Why Annual Customer Surveys May Not Work as Well

  1. Lack of Timeliness: Annual surveys only capture feedback once a year, which means that any changes in customer preferences, experiences, or satisfaction throughout the year may go unnoticed. Customer satisfaction is a fluid and evolving aspect, and relying solely on an annual survey may miss out on capturing critical feedback that could have been addressed in a more timely manner.
  2. Recall Bias: The longer the time gap between the customer’s experience and the survey, the greater the chance of recall bias. Customers may struggle to accurately recall specific details, nuances, or emotions related to their experiences from several months ago. This can lead to less accurate or biased responses, limiting the reliability of the survey results.
  3. Inability to Address Real-Time Issues: Customer satisfaction surveys conducted annually may fail to address real-time issues or emerging trends. If a problem arises shortly after the survey is conducted, businesses may not become aware of it until the next survey cycle, missing an opportunity to address customer concerns promptly and mitigate potential negative impacts.
  4. Insufficient Actionability: Annual surveys often result in a large volume of feedback that needs to be analyzed and acted upon. Processing and interpreting the data from a comprehensive annual survey can be time-consuming, leading to delays in taking action. This diminishes the effectiveness of the survey as a tool for driving immediate improvements in customer satisfaction.

Customer Are Always Evolving

Annual surveys may not generate high levels of customer engagement or response rates. Customers may perceive them as time-consuming or repetitive, leading to survey fatigue and lower participation. This can result in a smaller sample size, potentially reducing the representativeness and reliability of the survey results.

Customer expectations and preferences are constantly evolving in response to market trends, innovations, and changing industry standards. An annual survey may not capture these evolving expectations, leaving businesses unaware of emerging customer needs and unable to adapt their strategies accordingly.

Customer satisfaction is an ongoing process, and businesses that rely solely on annual surveys may miss opportunities to collect regular feedback, make iterative improvements, and proactively respond to customer needs.

Regular Feedback

To overcome these limitations, businesses can consider supplementing annual surveys with more frequent feedback mechanisms such as post-transactional surveys, real-time feedback tools, customer support interactions, or social media monitoring. These methods enable businesses to capture timely feedback, address issues promptly, and continuously enhance customer satisfaction.

HubSpot offers an excellent explanation of how to build the best customer feedback survey. Below you will see some types of surveys. This gives us an idea of the different ways in which we can conduct surveys.

In conclusion, you can never hear form your customers too much. Maybe it is time to shake things up a bit and consider some new, innovative ways to connect!

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Customer Satisfaction Surveys: Are They Still Relevant?

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Customer Satisfaction

You may wonder that in the age of online reviews, does a business really need to conduct customer satisfaction surveys. Between Google Reviews, Yelp, and Social Media Reviews, many companies have ditched the surveys.

Conducting customer satisfaction surveys is an effective way to understand your customers’ perceptions and experiences with your product or service. It goes way beyond an online review and when done correctly, can provide you with deeper customer insights.

Steps in Creating an Effective Customer Satisfaction Survey

  1. Define your objectives: The first step is to determine the purpose of the survey. What do you want to achieve? Are you looking to identify areas where you can improve your product or service, or are you simply looking to gauge overall satisfaction? Having a clear objective will help you create effective survey questions and analyze the results.
  2. Determine the survey method: You can conduct surveys through various methods, including email, phone, online surveys, or in-person surveys. Choose the method that best suits your audience and budget.
  3. Create effective survey questions: Your survey questions should be clear, concise, and relevant to your objectives. Avoid leading questions that may influence the response. Use a mix of open-ended and close-ended questions to gather both quantitative and qualitative data.
  4. Test the survey: Before sending out the survey, test it with a small group of customers to ensure that the questions are clear, and the survey is easy to complete.
  5. Send out the survey: Once you have finalized the survey, it’s time to send it out to your target audience. Make sure to communicate the purpose of the survey and the expected timeframe for completion.
  6. Analyze the results: Once you have collected the responses, analyze the data to identify trends and patterns. Look for areas where you can make improvements and areas where you are performing well.
  7. Share the results: Share the results with your team and stakeholders to keep everyone informed about the customer satisfaction levels. Use the insights gained from the survey to make informed decisions about product or service improvements.
  8. Take action: Finally, take action on the feedback received. Implement changes based on the feedback to improve customer satisfaction levels and retain customer loyalty.

Over the last 25 years, we have conducted a variety of customer satisfaction surveys for our clients. Contact us if you would like to learn more.

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3 Steps to Improve Customer Service

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customer service

Customer Service during the pandemic was something that was not on most people’s radar. For many small businesses, hospitality especially, they did all they could just to stay afloat. As we begin to vaccinate more and more people, businesses are beginning to open up again. With this new reopening comes some challenges. Some previous employees are not returning to work. Good help is becoming harder to find for some industries. As a business owner, you may find yourself in any or all of these challenging situations.

As crazy as it may sound, I believe this is the very best time to create a way to gather customer insights and to evaluate the customer experience. One silver lining for a reset it that it allows a business reinvent themselves. No longer should you just do the status quo. Stepping up your internal measurements by starting with how your customers see you and what they feel can be improved upon.

1. Evaluate Customer Service Levels Before You Get Busy

Unless your business allows you to be present 100% of the time, you need mystery shopping. Mystery shopping measures what you train. Training employees takes a lot of time and resources. Isn’t it worth the time to evaluate its effectiveness? This allows your employees an opportunity to learn. It can do wonders to improve your business by increasing customer service.

Sending in evaluators to measure things like initial greeting, rapport building, listening skills, cross sell or up sell, follow up, etc. can be very eye opening. Most owners believe they know what is happening in their place of business. Once you mystery shop your locations, you may find an entirely different situation. One that can cost you a lot of money.

Beginning a program now is smart because it allows you to see areas that may need improvement before you are back up to 100% capacity. Fixing those areas can be well worth the investment!

2. Gain Customer Service Insights

This may be the best time to gather customer feedback on services, programs, products, etc.. that your business sells. Most people have had to change their way of life for the past year. They are working remotely, teaching their kids at home, shopping differently, etc.. In other words, your customers have changed. How have they changed and how will it impact your business? What can you do now to insure they think of you when they do start going out more regularly again?

Listening to your customers will improve your business by tapping into what is most important to them. Once you have a good understanding of what they are looking for, you can update or add items that may influence their purchases.

3. Competitive Intelligence

Researching your competition is always a good idea and now is no different. Do you have the same competitors as you did a year ago? What are they doing differently? How do their service offerings compare to yours?

What about their pricing? Have they increased or decreased? Gaining these insights now can be of great value in positioning your business down the road.

How do their service levels compare to yours? A great idea is to send your employees in to your competition and use the same evaluation form you currently use for mystery shopping. This not only shows your employees the importance of this type of measurement, they will come away with the differences between your business and the competition; good and bad.

Just taking some proactive measure now will increase sales and profitability down the road.

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