Did you know that less than 2% of customers will bother to complete a questionnaire?
That means all of the hard work you put into brainstorming the questions, creating the survey itself and sending it out en-masse is mostly wasted - 98% of people simply won’t bother to get back to you.
If the above feels unnervingly familiar, we’ve got some good news - it’s time to throw away your survey because there are far better ways to obtain meaningful insight and understand customer emotion.
Putting an end to “somewhat satisfied”
Traditional surveys often include an option for respondents labelled “somewhat satisfied” (or similar). Unfortunately, to get something out of the person undertaking the survey, this vague answer offers zero value to the customer or business.
No one is ever ‘somewhat satisfied’, and a modern approach to CX demands that businesses gain a direct insight into how their customers feel during the various stages of their buying journey.
The same is true for the people who tick the ‘happy’ or ‘unhappy’ boxes; what does ‘happy’ mean, exactly? And, if someone is unhappy enough to tell you so, why are they unhappy? At which point were they unhappy? Did the unhappiness relate to a particular portion of the service, or did it relate to something specific to the product?
Unfortunately, this creates something of a challenge and is a common conundrum in the CX space. Without a survey, how do you gain insight that is representative of the customer base as a whole?
Taking a different approach to achieve better customer insight
If surveys aren’t working, we need to understand why, and that’s why it’s important to break apart the survey itself and investigate the individual questions. We recommend printing off the survey, cutting out every single question and plotting them out against the related touch points on the customer journey.
Immediately, you’ll have created a different approach to gaining customer insight, because rather than one long questionnaire sent out after the sale has completed, you can engage your customers during their journey by using the questions you’ve mapped out.
This method of customer interaction ensures you ask the right questions at the right time and considerably increases the chances of receiving a response that is both relevant and heartfelt. The answers you receive along the way will enable your CX team to pinpoint where things are going right (or wrong) as the customer transitions from lead to a confirmed sale. Waiting long after the event or experience to ask for such insight is why so many surveys fail to produce results.
How will this improve our response rates?
By breaking down customer surveys into bite-sized chunks, sent at relevant times during the buying journey, you’re likely to see an impressive increase in response rates - our research suggests that real-time customer surveys are capable of achieving a feedback response rate of up to 35%.
If your customer surveys are feeling like nothing more than a chore that has to be undertaken a few times a year, something is clearly wrong. Customer feedback has to become an integrated part of 'business-as-usual'. It should enable the business to make meaningful strategic changes based on their findings.
Customer feedback isn’t always that easy to take, but if you ask for it at the right time, you’re far more likely to not only receive an answer but receive one that tells you exactly how the customer is feeling.
If you believe your customer survey is giving you the insight you need think again! Discover how you can build a more complete picture of your customer feedback and understand the true emotional response to your brand. Watch our on-demand webinar: Tracking Customer Sentiment, and Acting on it.
