Getting Multi-Dimensional Customer Feedback
“Would you mind staying on the line after the call to complete a brief survey to better understand if we met your needs today?" Every auto attendant out there says something to this effect. It seems that the consumer these days is being inundated with complicated surveys that take forever to fill out, don’t seem to offer an opportunity for true feedback, or make the customer more frustrated that the service they just received. All of this volume in crazy surveys begs the question - what really happens to those surveys once they’re submitted?
I recently had a bad customer experience at a dealership that maintains my wife's car. We had purchased one of those maintenance packages that enumerates all the ways in which they will take care of the car BUT when the maintenance starts, they only deliver on maintenance as it’s absolutely needed. What’s worse, they consistently refused to deliver on the preventative maintenance schedule that they themselves advertised at the time of purchasing the package. One of those things that gets lost in the “fine print”. Upon the clerk explaining this to me, I expressed my frustration and feelings of misplaced trust. One of their customer care reps called me to discuss the issue a few weeks later.
On the follow up call, the customer care rep had a lengthy, seemingly unrelated list of questions to ask me. In the middle of the litany of questions I finally asked her what she was going to do with the answers I was giving. I got the vague response, "we use this in coaching for the dealership". Unfortunately, that answer tends to leave you with the feeling that, truly, the feedback is going nowhere. The next time I visited the dealership, nothing seemed to have changed. As a business owner and consultant, this deeply begged the question - why go through all the trouble to survey and gather information from your customers if you don’t intend on making changes to your processes and procedures?! What’s the point?
Most consumers out there have gotten to a point where they are tired of filling out surveys. It “takes too much time” or “isn’t worth it”. Because of these feelings of complacency, most consumers will now only fill out a survey if they feel like they have received either the absolute best or worst experience on the spectrum. This, in and of itself, tends to heavily weight ratings and review reports. Paired with the issue that most surveys are 1 dimensional - standard questions without standard experiences - what really is the point of collecting data at all?
My friend, Jian, is the CEO of a company called Survature. Jian, as a survey expert, feels that the psychology behind people’s answers is way more impactful for coaching your team than just reviewing the answers themselves. Survature is hands down the survey guru of the world and they realized the same issue - most customers tend to fill out surveys half-heartedly for a myriad of reasons. In response, Survature created a tool that not only collects the standard customer data, but it also captures how the customer intended to say it. Since each customer is different in how they receive and use similar products, this nuance is invaluable. Survature’s service provides speed, precision, and depth when you need to diagnose what people truly think and why. All of this is made possible because of psychology, data, and design. I will add a link to Survature and their team in the comments below.
The question I want you to ask after reading today's article is this: how are you using your customer surveys? Are the surveys in your business helping you to develop, grow, and tweak your team and service? Or are you sending out surveys to simply send out surveys? What is the data actually telling you and how are you taking action on it?
If this is something you struggle within your business then please feel free to reach out to me. I would love to connect you with the Survature team and help you implement the power of impactful customer responses into your business model today.
Enjoy,
