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Why Your Customer Surveys May Not Be Working: And What To Do About It

Customer surveys are one of the most commonly used arrows in a marketer's quiver. What better way to get an idea of how your customers think than by asking them directly? While the basic idea is sound, the execution of customer surveys is often lacking.

 

What's wrong with how we currently conduct these surveys? 

 

As Roberta Matuson pointed out in an article for Fast Company, The Problem with Customer-Service Surveys, companies don't always do the best job with how they craft their customer surveys. 

 

For one, many of these surveys are extremely impersonal. Either you get an email or snail mail request to fill out a survey or a phone call from an automated surveyor. 

 

Additionally, companies often ask a host of relatively pointless questions that have little value at the end of the day. Matuson gives the example of questions about the appearance of her appliance repairman in the absence of even one question about her overall satisfaction.

 

Another problem is that there is a pretty low response rate for customer surveys. Constant Contact estimates that 10 - 20 percent is a common response rate. But, as the marketing company notes, this rate can vary widely depending on length, incentives and other factors. 

 

But, as Matuson points out in her piece, there's a better way and it requires just one key question that will yield significant value. 

 

Learn more here.

The Critically Important Audience You May Be Overlooking

It's probably no surprise that poor customer service can have an enormous amount of negative impact on your business. But what about poor service to employees? Does the internal satisfaction of your employees weigh on that metric? 


 A recent article by Christine Porath in Harvard Business Review

would suggest that it does.

Cranky employees lead to dissatisfied customers. Porath points to an earlier study by Harvard Business Review saying "our research shows that people are less likely to buy from a company with an employee they perceive as rude, whether the rudeness is directed at them or at other employees."

 

Somewhat surprisingly, most companies don't do a good job of creating an environment conducive to employee satisfaction. In her article, Porath discussed the results of a survey showing that 54 percent of employees don't feel respected by their bosses, and that translates into a poor customer experience. If your employees don't feel respected at work, how are they going to treat your customers? 

 

What will a negative attitude on the part of your front-line employees say about your brand?

 

While employee satisfaction may not initially stand out as a potential top priority in terms of your overall marketing strategy, it should be a key area of focus. HBR's survey results suggest that this often overlooked metric can be a key factor in ensuring the satisfaction of your customers and, ultimately, your business success.

 

Read more here.

Do Visuals Really Matter? Not Always!

Like virtually every industry, marketing has been transformed dramatically by advances in technology, particularly the increasing ease with which high quality digital media can be produced and distributed relatively cheaply online. Professional audio and video can be incorporated into a website or distributed through email marketing with ease, and this has led to an increase in the use of such media when marketing for a variety of products and services.

 

Marketers have taken advantage of new technology and digital content techniques by increasing their use of such material to promote their products and services. According to a dual survey of content marketers and the B2B audiences they serve, 93 percent of marketers plan to maintain or increase their use of content, and that same proportion of marketers said they connect their content directly to a product or service. That seems logical, as the ultimate goal of any marketer should be to generate sales of a product or service.

 

But how do these efforts square with the expectations of B2B marketing audiences?

 

Not very well, according to the survey! In fact, the flip side of that dual survey created by The Economist Group Content Solutions and communications firm Peppercorn found that 75 percent of global business executives said the primary purpose for seeking business content is researching a business idea. In other words, they don't want to be sold to. They want information that can help their careers and their organizations.

 

Similarly, just because incorporating advanced audio and visual marketing material has become easier and increasingly widespread doesn't mean it is effective. According to The Economist Group Content Solutions and Peppercorn, "85 percent of global executives report that they prefer text to video or audio;" Only 5 percent said that videos were helpful.

 

So what is the takeaway here? It would seem that the message to marketers is to lay off a bit and take a more subtle approach. Your B2B audiences don't want to have flashy, sales-y content forced down their throats. They're seeking useful information that we marketers need to provide to them while, albeit subtly, incorporating our own key messages into that content.

 

 

Recommended Reading:

 

The Everything Guide to Customer Engagement
Volume: 6 - Issue: 12
 December 2014
Strat Comm logo
In This Issue
Customer Surveys
A Critical Audience
Do Visuals Matter?
We're In the News! 

Leveraging Third Party Curated Content 

Social Media Analytics: Going Beyond the Numbers





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