What are the benefits and challenges of using online surveys for customer feedback?

Coletar feedback dos clientes se torna mais fácil no digital. As pesquisas online são personalizáveis e consideravelmente fáceis de aplicar e monitorar. Atualmente há diversas opções de ferramentas e frameworks de pesquisa, e isso pode trazer alguns desafios para quem está começando. Escolher a ferramenta/modelo incorreto(a) de pesquisa pode resultar em baixo engajamento.

While leading VoC efforts at Wayfair, the primary goal of our mission with customer surveys was to collect feedback at scale. As a result of customer survey ecosystems, we are able to fill in the gaps of knowledge where other forms of feedback are not scalable.

Surveys allow customers to be honest and unguarded which is going to get the most direct feedback. This is great for identifying growth opportunities head on.

Surveys are the #1 most misused and poorly designed customer experience. Oversaturating customers with questions reduces response rates and annoys customers. Asking the wrong questions, or only vague questions like NPS, will only get you vague answers to analyze. In turn, this is the #1 cause of waste in CX organizations - trying to explain the unexplainable.

One of the main challenges is that closed-ended/multiple choice surveys are obsolete and ineffective - and people hate them. Yet most quant survey designers insist on them, because that's what they know. Open ended quant is a new methodology in which a small number of wide angle questions is asked, leaving respondents the freedom to express their views and point out issues in their own words. By putting their responses through a deep learning approach called Narrative Analytics, you can get far better, richer insight, better quantified than any multi-choice survey. It reveals drivers and is more actionable. So the key is to learn what open ended quant is, and use narrative analytics. (Note - this will likely scare your research people).

Some potential drawbacks specific to online surveys are: Because it’s relatively easy to draft and deploy, there’s a tendency to not consider proper sampling. This may result in a biased response where, for example, completed surveys come mostly from dissatisfied customers even though the larger population of those customers are not overwhelmingly dissatisfied. A couple of potential UX drawbacks are 1) evidence indicates that customers find pop-up surveys intrusive, and are less likely to complete them; 2) the survey format is not compatible with the user’s device making it difficult to navigate and complete. Both of these can also bias the response because a proportion of customers will not tolerate a poor UX.

Ask questions in a way that will get you the answer you need - skip over vague questions like "How likely are you to recommend our company?" - because even if all of your responses are bad, you still don't know what to do next. Use simple questions and conditional logic to get more data while not annoying customers who don't need to answer the questions not relevant to them. Send surveys in convenient channels - the best are native messaging platforms like Apple Business Chat, which are far superior to SMS or email+web based surveys. The key for mobile messaging is to ensure you collect consent prior to sending a survey. TCPA violations carry hefty fines.

To realize benefits from surveys, it’s important to first consider some critical questions: What do stakeholders want to learn from customers? Ideally, these learnings should focus on aspects of the customer experience that are straightforward and can be easily recalled by respondents while completing a questionnaire. What will we do with the feedback? Think of this as “we want to go from the current state to a more ideal position, and we will use specific feedback to inform our plan.” What will we do if the feedback is not what we anticipated? You thought customers would have a favorable impression of the experience but the feedback indicates otherwise…are you prepared to make changes? If not, you may want to reconsider the survey.