That can be a âstayâ, a âtripâ, a âcallâ or a âvisitâ. The customer experience measurement industry is d
The Antidotes to Survey Fatigue
The Antidotes to Survey Fatigue Our latest cartoon was triggered by the concern that customers may already be sick of surveys. It is now common place that many companies ask customers to complete a survey after every interaction. That can be a “stay”, a “trip”, a “call” or a “visit”. The customer experience measurement industry is desperate for the voice of the customer. The reason fatigue will soon set in is that customers will tire further of bad surveys that are mistimed and ignore their relationship. As we wrote in our book Your Customer Rules, long or overly frequent surveys fail to value customers’ time and effort. Let’s explore what good and bad look like and how we can deliver good experiences rather than surveys, that customers will not respond to. Timing is everything Survey fatigue will set in fast if organisations continue to time their requests as badly as some do. We have seen Air BnB send a survey about a property before a guest stayed in the property. Now the survey was about the owner, but how can we rate the property owner without experiencing the property – crazy! We know some airlines don’t send surveys when flights are delayed. Surely that’s when they have most to learn? It is definitely when they need to find out who was impacted and how. They may even want to kick in some much needed recovery processes. We made up a cartoon we called “pre call feedback”, poking fun at bad timing by asking the customer, “how do you think this call will go?”. Our message here is twofold – if anything we should survey when customers are more likely to complain and secondly we can’t ask about an experience until it is complete. Know me remember me versus survey amnesia In Your Customer Rules, we described how customers want to be “known and remembered”. Survey processes need to follow that principal, but unfortunately surveys often show almost no organisational memory of the customer. A customer’s relationship history as well as their prior surveys and feedback are frequently ignored in the survey process. “Not good enough” we say! If you stay in a hotel two weeks in a row and complete a survey after week one, shouldn’t the company recognise that? If you have flown eight times in a month shouldn’t you be asked for feedback on that collective experience and if you just complained shouldn’t they know that? Let’s take bookings through an on line travel site. When a customer has chosen to stay in the hotel for a second or third time, we think their feedback should carry more weight. We’d like to see survey requests after the second stay say something like “would you like to update your survey?” and “given your second stay we’d appreciate updates to your feedback”. Why would the customer want to repeat the process from scratch?
www.limebridge.com.au Copyright 2016 – LimeBridge Australia Pty Ltd
The Antidotes to Survey Fatigue
Survey amnesia becomes an even bigger issue with companies who send complex surveys. Once we’ve been through an ugly survey process, we certainly don’t want to repeat it. What we are saying is that sampling approaches should be connected to the frequency of use of the product and have some memory of the customer’s recent use of surveys. Wouldn’t it be nice if a company said “You gave us some great feedback last month so we’d appreciate some more.” Surveys or Feedback? We think there is a big difference between “feedback” and “surveys”. The definition we use is that feedback can just be an open question like “tell us what you think” or just a feedback button. That’s unobtrusive, it shows a willingness to listen and puts the customers in control. Surveys on the other hand are often about keeping score, internal measurement, agent measurement and supplier measurement. We recognise their value in driving behaviours, continuous improvement or in realigning an organisation to a customer goal. However, we also need to assess the extent to which they put the customer to work and what return customers’ get. It’s a little different in booking sites and so forth when customers can see other opinions and use them for decision making or provider selection (e.g. Uber). However, when survey data is just used internally and is essential only to internal measurement, then the company needs to start providing some benefit for putting customers to work. Many organisations are so addicted to surveys that they have forgotten to reward and thank customers for their effort. That isn’t hard. Offering a prize draw or a small future process credit on routine feedback is easy. We’d say organisations should always be open to feedback (as long as they are ready to listen) but ration when they survey. They also need to recognise when customers might want to complete a survey. After a long call or repeat contact we might be more willing to give detailed feedback if our time and effort are respected. Imagine if a survey started with, “we know you just experienced a long call and we’d really appreciate your feedback”. If anything that is the opposite to the strategy in many companies. We know some load the dice towards good experiences. Clearly, they don’t really want feedback. Summary Unfortunately, bad survey practices are going to drive fatigue. It isn’t hard to do this well but means that organisations, as always, need to put themselves in the customers’ shoes and ask questions like, “Do we want feedback rather than surveys and what is in it for the customer? What is the customer’s history of using our services or products and giving us feedback? There is a lot to think about and the danger of ignoring these questions is that we will create survey fatigue. Please tell us what you think?
www.limebridge.com.au Copyright 2016 – LimeBridge Australia Pty Ltd
