I, like you, am tired of getting surveyed after every purchase, trip and transaction that I make. So when Geiger decided to add a survey to our customer experience, I was cautious about the overall value, especially given how much work it would take to implement the survey in a meaningful way. The value has been much greater than I anticipated.
I do like surveys and I respond to quite a few of them. I fly Delta all the time and they send me a survey more frequent than I like, but I respond to most of them because of my loyalty to Delta. I probably respond to less than 5 percent of the other surveys I get, and when I do it’s either because I’ve had a great experience or a bad experience.
And of course, that is what everyone says when you start to survey clients: “You’ll only hear the bad news”. Fortunately, we have heard mostly good news (and this is usually the case), but there have been a few instances of bad experiences. Without the survey, we might not have heard about the bad experience until it was too late.
One client received the email survey and said he had not received the shipment of items yet. We were able to quickly respond with the delivery information (which was also sent previously as an automated notification but he missed it). The package had actually been delivered the week before but no one in his office delivered it to him!
Another client received the survey and it triggered a reminder that the client wasn’t all that happy with the product they received. They took the time to let us know and we were able to almost immediately make the client happy.
There are several other minor examples of small issues that we’ve been able to address immediately. Overall, however, the positive responses are outnumbering negative feedback by an extremely large margin. It’s harder to make changes based on the positive feedback, but the comments help us see the areas people really value and how we can continue to make a difference for clients by continuing to invest in what matters to our happiest customers.
If you have the chance, survey your customers. Whether it is a simple surveymonkey.com survey that you send out manually or something more sophisticated like the system we developed, do it. You’ll be glad you did when you see the positive feedback, but also as you have a chance to make improvements.
I do, however, suggest that you limit the number of surveys you send to any client each month.
Geiger CIO Dale Denham, MAS+ provides practical insights on how you can benefit from technology in no nonsense terms. Follow him on Twitter:@GeigerCIO.
