What to avoid when conducting customer experience feedback
Monitoring customer experience means you can deliver what the customer wants, when and how they want it, in-turn delivering great customer satisfaction scores. Yet there are a number of do’s and don’ts to consider when conducting customer satisfaction surveys.
Why your customer satisfaction survey is not delivering business results
Marketing, sales and business owners should have the customer at the heart of their strategy; and listening to your customers is the first step. Afterall, you need to know if you are pleasing your customer and importantly, if you are not what you need to change. Staying ahead and staying relevant is particularly important in changing markets. We can all learn from the stories of Amstrad, Kodak, Blockbuster and Toys R Us to name a few.
Yet before initiating customer satisfaction feedback take a moment to avoid the pitfalls. Your customers are a great source of information but how you gather the information and then apply it needs to be carefully considered. There could be a number of reasons why your customer satisfaction survey is not delivering business results.
You don’t have a clear reason for conducting customer feedback
Asking questions for the sake of asking them will not deliver informative, actionable results. So, before you begin you need to have a clear reason, a goal, an objective, for conducting customer feedback. Will you use the feedback to inform product development, service delivery or brand messaging? A predefined, focused goal will ensure your customer experience programme is not fruitless.
Your questions are run of the mill
Mediocre questions in turn provide mediocre answers. To gain insight you need to ask specific questions, at every stage of the customer journey. Specific questions will often deliver more detailed responses. Customer satisfaction CSAT and NPS scores have their place, they’re great for monitoring progress, yet they will only report on change, not why the change has occurred. Asking specific questions provides the why.
You’re drowning in customer data
Capturing customer data is easier than ever, with EPOS, online shopping and digital marketing. Data though is not the same as knowledge. For example, your sales data may show you there is a problem, yet it can’t tell you why the problem exists. Data in itself is of no use. What is needed is meaningful, actionable insights. Only then will you be able to grasp why things are happening and address them. At Simply Intelligent we firmly believe in meaningful, actionable information. It is what we do. We help you gain in-the moment information from customers, visitors, employees… with our powerful platform providing real-time intelligence.
You are not in a position to make changes
For each question you ask you should be sure to know what you’ll do with the results. And you should not be asking questions unless you have the resources to put into action changes based on the information provided. Having meaningful insights to inform your strategy is great. Yet your strategy will only be of value if you have the drive, resources, budget, authority to implement it in a timely fashion. You won’t win the race with your car parked in the garage.
