I get asked this question all the time, “Should we just survey our customers to find out what they are thinking?” Or some other question relating to the use of surveys to capture customer information. Well, it depends is my usual answer. It depends on WHAT kind of information you are looking to acquire. If you are just sending out a survey to VALIDATE something relatively simple, it can be quite effective.
However, if you are looking to capture “competitive” or “nuances” or “deep” information about your customer, ABSOLUTELY NOT! Customers have been and still are being constantly bombarded by surveys by everyone – from their recent oil change to purchasing flowers. But they just keep sending them. I am convinced the more I talk with companies that this isn’t something they actually expect to give the good information, they just don’t know (or don’t want to expend the effort) to do something else. To most, it is the “path of least resistance” and it gives them at least some metrics to work from.
I try to ask a very thought provoking question when I am in the discussion over survey’s. You might try this one in some of your conversations as well. It goes like this, “Would you rather have “metrics” of mediocre information that doesn’t give you much insight or no metrics on information that is deep and different than what your competitors are getting?” You be be the judge. I think you already know my answer.
Too often companies are so anxious to report they have a 4.2 in customer satisfaction that they forget why they are “really” talking to their customers. Isn’t the reason you survey them to understand more about them so you can continually improve the relationship, hoping to build more trust and loyalty? I thought so, but I am constantly surprised that this is not the intent at all. It is to get a SCORE so they can report how wonderful they are doing and how much they think the customer likes them.
I talk to customers all the time. I am here to tell you this is NOT what they are really saying. Most of the time they give you pretty good marks because they don’t really care. What? Yes, you heard me right, they give you good marks because they don’t care. If they gave you what they really thought, you would call them and harrass them until you gave them higher marks and then you would leave them alone again. In reality, they are giving you good marks because they want you to leave them alone because for whatever reason they don’t think you can deliver what they really want. Change your perspective a bit? I hope so because i really want you to see that the final marks you get might not really be the way your customer really feels.
Contrast this to the company that doesn’t send them these lame survey’s and actually TALKS to their customers and uses tools the CUSTOMER really wants to use to communicate back to you. If you actually asked the customer what they truly wanted, what promises they want you to keep, how they want to be treated, how they want to interact with your company, what customer experience they want to have, you wuld hear completely different information than anything you get from your survey. If you also make it easy to provide “realtime” feedback that is icing on the cake. Do you have a blog? Can they interact with you via your blog? Make it easy for them to work with you and you will see a change in both the relationship and the quality of information.
So, moral of the story is don’t survey them to death and expect anything of value – except unhappy customers. Talk to them (preferably using outsiders since they generally get more information than you will get) and make it easy to build a dialog when it is important to THEM. The differences will be dramatic. Trust me on this one – it will change the way you interact with your customers forever – and they will love you for it!!
Blaine
