One big mistake many companies make is trying to construct a survey that is all things for all people. They call it a customer satisfaction survey, and in many cases, that’s where it all begins. But then strange and mysterious things begin to happen.
It all starts innocently enough. A survey is commissioned. Strategy and mission statements are considered and factored in. A basic framework of questions is assembled. The focus is on company performance as it relates to customer touch points. All is going well. And then –
- someone in marketing decides that since a survey is being conducted anyway, it might make sense to pose a few questions having to do with brand equity and awareness. Get a little bigger bang for the buck.
- then someone in customer service, not about to be outdone by the weenies in marketing, suggests the survey also be used to contact some former customers – lost accounts – in an effort to discover why they took their business elsewhere.
- then sales checks in and says “wait a minute, we’ve got a bunch of prospects in the pipeline that we haven’t been able to close. This would be a great time to find out why, or to at least try to determine what it would take to get their business”.
- at which point someone in the quality department says, “well, if we’re going that far, I’d really be interested in a measurement of how we fare head to head against our key competitors….say, a direct comparison against four or five companies on five to ten performance points. And maybe we could throw in a few questions about that new assembly machine we’re designing, see if we forgot anything. And while we’re at it…..”
And so on and so on.
A few weeks ago we wrote about the need to entice customer participation in the survey with a pledge that you are seeking ways to improve service to them, and that you intend to share your plans for addressing issues that the survey brings to light. Between the promise (or at least hope) of improved service, wrapped around feedback that closes the communication loop, two tangible benefits are offered that are usually adequate to stimulate interest in the process.
BUT, the minute you begin to dilute the initial pledge by asking questions that have little or nothing to do with seeking ways to improve service, you start losing your audience. Several things contribute to the loss.
First, you’ve probably added enough questions that your customers no longer see a survey; it’s begun to look more like an endurance test. That’s a problem, because when you attempt to intrude on someone’s schedule for more than ten, maybe fifteen minutes, the resistance factor grows exponentially.
Second, your motives, and with it, your credibility, take a slam. Think about it.
Instead of question topics that might make your customer’s lives easier, customers instead find a survey asking if you are better or worse than a company on the west coast, whether the recognition quotient of your brand is worth a 20% price premium, and if you could offer suggestions for a product that doesn’t even exist yet, what would it be? To the customer, the first two questions are by no means performance related, and the third smacks of a guerilla sales effort. Misdirection. Ulterior motive. Hidden agenda.
The result? Your response rate plummets. You not only fail to get the amount of feedback you’d hoped for, but you probably ticked off a few customers along the way. Except for the lost accounts, whom you alienated a long time ago and who have no reason to invest time in any survey, there’s a feeling of bait and switch among many of the rest.
If you want your business partners to take a customer satisfaction survey seriously, keep the focus on actionable, performance related attributes. There is nothing wrong with brand equity research, or lost sales surveys, or product development inquiries, but you need to always remember that those kinds of surveys require different approaches, different types of questions, and often an entirely different audience. Trying to homogenize them into a single effort is rather like an archer trying to hit four different targets with a single shot. It might work in the movies, but good luck ever seeing it happen in real life.
