Now, be honest here, when was the last time you answered a full-length survey? Maybe you opened it up, with the good intentions of leaving your feedback. But, by page 16, you were too bored and disinterested to continue.
We don’t blame you; we’ve all been there. And so have your customers.
But why? Here are the three main reasons that your customers are giving up on your surveys.
#1 You don’t follow up on serious complaints
One of the worst customer experience crimes you can commit is asking for feedback and then doing nothing about it. When customers make serious complaints about specific problems in surveys, they want you to follow up on it. They want to know that their feedback matters and that you’re going to do something to rectify the problem. The worst thing you can do is to ignore the situation. All this does is create hostility and it means that your customers are even less likely to complete your next survey.
#2 Your survey takes them too long
In our busy daily lives, who has the time to sit down and complete a 15 minute survey? People expect surveys to be long, so they often don’t event start them.
The other problem is that survey requests aren’t clear about the amount of time it will take to complete. Typically, survey requests ask for a ‘few minutes of your time’. But how long does this really mean? It’s unclear – a few minutes can be anything from 5 to 20 minutes.
So, be upfront about the time. If you are, then at least the expectation is set. Even better, make your feedback mechanism quick and easy to complete, so people will have more time to complete it.
#3 They don’t believe their input has any purpose
Do you tell your customers why you want their views? Do you tell them the specific, actionable steps you’re going to take to implement their feedback and use it to improve their experience? If you don’t, you should start.
Customers don’t want to complete surveys if they think the survey is just a tick-box exercise. They’ll be more motivated to give you specific feedback, if they know that what they have to say is valued by your company and will be used to shape customer experience in the future.
Our technology can help, have a look for yourself:
