Beware The Survey Tsunami & The Nagging Mother Survey Reminder
/You may recognize this story…
You have just taken a flight somewhere and within 24 hours you receive an email from the airline asking you how the flight experience was. “Shockingly” you might actually decide to delete or ignore the survey email. Maybe because you are tired of filling out surveys, maybe because you have better things to do with your time – I can think of a couple. Then, a few days later, just like the (nagging) mother who calls her son and says, “You never call,” a fresh new email arrives and it basically slaps you around with a “We are still waiting for your response to our survey” message!
If this trend continues I am sure it’s just a matter of time before we receive a survey asking us how our survey experience was and then, inevitably, a follow up email will arrive badgering us for not having responded to the survey regarding the survey process. These are indeed dangerous times.
We all know that the number one, utterly essential reason why all companies should be focusing an increasingly large amount of their time and resources on Customer Experience is so that they can keep as close as possible to the very reason for existing…you guessed it…to serve their customers. After all, companies without customers or lots of unhappy customers don’t tend to have auspicious futures…
So it should go without saying that asking customers what they think of your brand, product or services is a good idea. Right? In fact, unless we ask customers what they think, listen carefully to their answers and maybe even monitor the social media ecosystem to know what customers are saying about us behind our backs, are we not condemned to being out of touch with them, to being too late to address their issues and generally speaking diminish the value of our relationships with those precious customers and hence diminish the value of our companies?
Unfortunately, we are now witnessing a potentially damaging response to this very challenge. I chose to call it the Survey Tsunami. It seems that every thing we do, every flight we take, every time our heads touch a hotel pillow, every web site we visit, even every doctor we visit…they all have one thing in common…they result in our being subjected to yet another survey…
This massive wave of endless surveys is now drowning us all. It’s not a knee deep problem, in the period of just a few years we are now over our heads in surveys.
So What To Do?
Like all marketing and customer service questions the answer starts with the age old rule of applying common sense. There is no single cookie cutter answer to the “right” frequency of asking customers for feedback. The answer to that challenge varies by industry, by customer segment, by “survey trigger” (why or what are you surveying in the first place) as well as factors including individual customer response rates, customer preferences as well as the underlying objectives. Nevertheless, here are just three starter rules to consider:
1. Always be Actionable: Don’t ask questions unless you are prepared to quickly and proactively respond to any negative feedback.
2. Be The Customer: Or perhaps more aptly – “Survey unto others as you would be surveyed unto.” If the frequency seems excessive to you it probably is as well to your customers.
3. Focus On Value: You can’t’ put NPS, Customer Satisfaction or their respective scores into the bank. They are not hard currency. So every time you develop and ask a question, ask yourself first: “Will asking this question increase the value of my company’s relationship with the customer? Do we have the strategy, insights and systems in place to leverage the process?”
Oh and the next time you are thinking about pouncing on an unsuspecting “Survey Non Respondent” with yet another solicitation, think twice and just maybe try to avoid the temptation.
More to come…
Marc