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October 18, 2007

7:50 am | 0 recommendations | 12 comments

Innovation: Customer SURVEYS are Dead

| posted by Fast Company staff

Tell the truth, do you look forward to filling out and responding to surveys? They are one of the most invasive forms of one-way communication. From the exit interview to the “how did we do?” after your car has been serviced, surveys seem to be the only time a company explicitly requests your opinion – when you’re on your way out.

What if instead of having surveys we had conversations? Would the attrition rate improve?

I was raised in a family with four women and I can tell you that it can be done. You can have multiple conversations, even at the same time. And your customers soon will begin to be of that generation used to Twitter as they answer email and text messages.

What is lacking in the traditional survey is one very important component – the feedback loop. Do your customers know that you’re listening? “Thank you for your feedback” is the bare-bone minimum and possibly an excuse for not taking the time to have a conversation. Have you ever performed on stage with a band? It is nearly impossible to play without receiving the proper sound feedback.

Plus, with a conversation, you can learn so much more. If customers are not talking with you about how you can improve your service and product, you can rest assured that they will be talking to everyone they know about it. Often that is bad news as unhappy customers tend to speak to more people about their misadventure.

Do you take the time to fill out the survey when you have a bad experience? Chances are you don’t, you just walk away quietly and never come back. If you do, then the company better contact you relatively fast. We do live in an instant world, yet we will understand things when explained. Remember -- there’s nothing worse than asking someone to tell you how you did, then provide no feedback loop, especially when they’re telling you need to fix something. The floor is littered with companies that did not even try, and now is the blogosphere.

Your customers’ time is becoming their most precious asset; use it judiciously by conveying you value it. Here are other reasons why a conversation is a much better format to capture feedback:

1. People might have a hard time understanding your questions.

2. People with negative comments may not take the time to articulate it well enough so you can take action.

3. Paper and phone do not capture non verbals and behavior is mostly not verbalized, it’s just done.

4. It’s more natural, people will not tell you what they think you want to hear if they do not realize you are asking. They will just talk.

There is a time and place for surveys. However, we find more and more that raw information that has not been guided by us may yield greater opportunity for insights – and insights lead to action. What’s your take?

Valeria Maltoni • Conversation Agent • Philadelphia, PA • www.conversationagent.com

Tags: Innovation
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Recent Comments | 12 Total

October 18, 2007 at 11:37am

seth ponek
Not much time for surveys, but the new trend is the 1 to 4 question survey... the focus is "The Ultimate Question" ( Fred Reichheld )."How likely would you be to recommend our product or service to a friend or colleague?" I don't mind one question. (with a spot for comments). That question feeds the "Net Promoter Score". We'll see where this goes. I like the simplicity. But you're right, The responsiveness of a company is what matters. The "Company 2.0" will interact with it customers with dialog... Unless their scared.
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October 18, 2007 at 11:47am

seth ponek
guess I should have searched company 2.0 before using it in a sentence! I wasn't referring to anything specific..
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October 18, 2007 at 2:42pm

Sally Robinson
You have articulated the difference between quantitative and qualitative data gathering. While exit interviews can provide valuable data, at that point it's too late. A good company will mine existing customer data for signs that it is about to lose a customer and proactively reach out to that customer. I found adding the question "Would you like to be contacted about your experience?" to customer surveys helped open a qualitative dialog with customers who had more to share than the survey format allowed. It's true that the method only reaches those customers who took the survey in the first place, but it's a good place to start for any company not talking to its customers.
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October 18, 2007 at 6:27pm

Valeria Maltoni
I guess at the end of the day, that's what matters, isn't it? I find that the more candid the request for input and help, the more likely people will make an effort. Maybe more than scared companies are just not able to act naturally -- after years of dinosaur speak, they may not know how.
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October 19, 2007 at 8:53am

Dan Nelson
If I ask you a question, direct or obtuse, that relates to the business you and I conduct, I am taking responsibility for what happens afterward. On some level, I help you create expectations. If I subsequently do nothing, I help you disrespect my questions and my interest. The conversation ends, or becomes unproductive from that point on. On the other hand, if I ask questions related to something over which I have control, and I subsequently respond in a way that makes sense to you, an entirely different situation happens. I get to build improvements in the part of our interaction that I have control over. You probably will feel like I was really listening. The conversation continues, and we're all likely to enjoy and appreciate the outcome. I am fortunate to work in a company where that is the culture. Do we get it right all the time? No. Most of the time? Probably not. More often than we did before? YES! You are exactly right about conversations having a feedback loop that surveys cannot imitate. After the "Thank you for your feedback" message, the survey is over. But in a conversation, I get the opportunity to keep working toward a core understanding of what works for you, and how I can provide that. Taking responsibility is scary. At first. The more I learn how to do it, the more empowered I feel. I can tell you that having conversations with customers, and feeling like partners in helping them get their work done, is WAY more fun than undercurrents of an adversarial relationship.
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October 19, 2007 at 12:13pm

Roger
Is it just me, or does it seem that every bloody company wants to do a survey with you now? After a customer service call, after every purchase, website visit, etc. I just refuse now.
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October 19, 2007 at 8:20pm

Mort
Personally, I would rather sales people not turn into pestering psychologists that engage you in a conversation just to get you to vocalize or ilicit the fact that their customer service, or whatnot sucks, rather than take the hint from the blaze in your eyes. There is something to be said for intuition of a sales floor manager or some other person of authority who is trained at silently obtaining this information. The issue within the feedback loop is not the fact that the customers are not providing it; rather the companys employees are either too lazy or untrained to pass the information up the ladder to those empowered to make a difference.
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October 19, 2007 at 8:39pm

Valeria Maltoni
Mort: You make a very valid point about sales and the role of every employee in making sure customers are heard. I've been mulling over a post on sales for a while. You just gave me the added incentive to flesh my thinking out. Thank you!
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October 24, 2007 at 1:06pm

Muriel Parker
Ha! Mort, Buddy. . . When did 'those empowered to make a difference' EVER listen to what the lowly employees (who actually interact with customers) have to say?
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October 24, 2007 at 1:27pm

Valeria Maltoni
Sally -- a good starting place, especially since we rarely know how to provide useful feedback within the constrains a series of set questions that may not ask what is most pressing to us. Dan -- that is an excellent observation, we communicate with the questions themselves. "having conversations with customers, and feeling like partners in helping them get their work done, is WAY more fun than undercurrents of an adversarial relationship." Yes, it is. Roger -- it may be the pressure to measure everything. Yet I find that the less we pressure others to provide information, the more we are in a service mindset, the more people tend to want to talk to you. Purchasing experiences are filled with opportunities for a dialogue. Why wait for the survey? Muriel -- that is definitely a point of pain that many organizations need to address if they're serious about customer service. It begins inside.
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January 16, 2008 at 5:39pm

Kris Rzepkowski
Talk about Long Tail. Fast Company Mag put your intro to this post in the December 2007/Jan 08 issue. I liked your thoughts on conversation instead of survey because, well... My management team wants me to build a survey, ugh. Thanks for the post. My gripe is that the post took me 10 mintues to find on the website. Tell Fast Co to put a url in the article callout so we don't have to spend forever finding this good stuff.
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January 16, 2008 at 8:00pm

Valeria Maltoni
Kris, Well, you found me. All you had to do was find my name and then scroll down the titles of posts. I admit it, that was a lot ;-) Thank you for taking the time to do it and for leaving a comment. Let me know how your survey works out. And maybe, there can be a follow up with actual conversations cherry-picked through the survey.
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