Communicating with customers before and after surveys

Making and keeping your promises

?Survey processes are wonderful opportunities to make promises to customers and then keep them. Doing so will enhance your credibility and ensure ongoing participation in future survey programs.

Best demonstrated practice

In short, the best practices we have seen have three elements: tell your customers what you are going to do with survey feedback, analyze the results, then tell customers what improvements you have already made, and what improvements are being planned based on ?their input. And please make all of this as personal as possible.

Let’s jump straight into an example

---- Email from EZ-Clean to you as a customer ----

Dear Mr. Jones,

?My name is Robert Altman. I am the product manager for the EZ-Clean Warehouse Robot that you have been leasing from us for the last nine months. My team and I are now working on the next versions of both the software and hardware and need your help prioritizing our work. Please watch your email tomorrow morning. I will send you another email with a four-question survey about your experience so far and what you would like us to improve. I promise to write back to let you know what we have learned from you and customers like you, together with a list of the improvements we plan to make.?

Thank you in advance for your contribution. It is important to me personally, and to the EZ-Clean team as a whole.

?---- Email ends ----

And then...?

I am confident you get the point. The customer then gets the survey request, still in Altman’s name. Once the company has digested the responses and decided what to do, Robert writes back to all clients (not just those who have responded) with the priority action list. The point of writing to non-respondents is to stimulate reactions like, “Ah, they are indeed taking input into account. Pity they missed out on mine. I’ll be sure to answer the next time.”

I have to add that if you don't actually have the resources to take action based on survey results, you really should not waste customers' time with surveys.

?Just three steps

The overall process has three communication steps: tell customers why you need input, ask for the input, tell them what you are doing with the input you have received. Our final observation for your consideration is that a surprising small number of ?companies ever do this, particularly in consumer businesses. We provide input, then hear nothing. It should not come as a surprise that response rates are generally low.?Implementing this three-step communication process will distinguish your program from others. You then reap the rewards of a survey process your customers see as an ongoing dialog between your organization and them.

Use surveys to calibrate and refine

Always remember the top defect of surveys: they tend to drive organizations to act in the interests of only those who have replied, forgetting the rest. That's unacceptable. Modern AI software such as OCX Cognition's Spectrum AI allows you to use operational data to predict NPS for all customers. Surveys are then used occasionally to calibrate the software. They are also used get additional non-operational information such as customer comments that can help in justifying improvement projects.

That's it for this insight. I hope it is helpful. Feel free to add your observations below. I also publish a newsletter here on LinkedIn every second Monday. Keep an eye out for that, and please subscribe.

Notes

Maurice FitzGerald is a retired VP of Customer Experience for HP's $4 billion software business and was previously VP of Strategy and Customer Experience as well as Chief of Staff for HP in EMEA. He and his brother Peter, an Oxford D.Phil in Cognitive Psychology, have written three books on customer experience strategy and NPS, and a fourth book that focuses on Peter's cartoon illustrations for the first three. All are available from Amazon.

OCX Cognition predicts customer futures. Our breakthrough SaaS solution, Spectrum AI, lets enterprises transform what’s possible in customer experience. Reduce your customer risk, break down silos, and drive speedy action – when you can see what’s coming, you can change the outcome. Building on more that 15 years of CX-focused expertise, we’ve harnessed today’s advances in AI, elastic computing, and data science to deliver on the promise of customer-driven financial results. Learn more at?www.ocxcognition.com.

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