Two for One: The Cost-of-Living Crisis and Increase Response Rates
Colin Shaw
LinkedIn 'Top Voice' & influencer Customer Experience & Marketing | Financial Times Award Leading Consultancy 4 Straight Years | Host of 'The Intuitive Customer' in Top 2% | Best-selling Author x 7 | Conference Speaker
Welcome to Why Customers Buy, my weekly LinkedIn Newsletter series that explores how customers make decisions. It reveals ways to unlock what customers really want with new concepts and practical tips that drive value. Subscribe today right here .
As many of you know, I also have a podcast. We invite our listeners to share their business problems, which we call pickles, with us and address them in the episode. This past week, our podcast featured two pickles, and I thought I would share them here since many of you are facing similar issues in your organization.
Pickle #1: How can you increase survey response rates to create a more robust voice of customer data?
Jane writes:
In August 2021, you did a podcast about increasing email response rates, and I was keen to learn from this. However, I realized that my issue is not quite the same. We're implementing a Voice of the Customer (VOC) program on a customer platform in a large business-to-business (B2B) organization. The data needs to be robust to get buy-in from colleagues to use the insights and identify critical improvements. So how would we go about increasing the response rates on surveys sent through email to busy customers??
So, how can Jane get busy customers to complete emails and get the buy-in from people that this effort is worthwhile?
We did a podcast a little while ago with one of the researchers from?Attest ?around the Five Rules of Customer Research .? One of the key points from that episode was organizations sometimes forget to consider the respondents' experience, which is essential. If there is a lot of friction in managing the survey process, it can frustrate respondents and discourage their response. Therefore, making it as easy as possible to get the data you need is necessary. Otherwise, you can spend all that money for nothing.?
When it comes to increasing response rates to customer surveys, we have some other specific advice, including:
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Hopefully, that information for Jane was helpful for you, too. Now, for something from Elizabeth.?
Pickle #2: How is inflation affecting people's ability to buy?
To answer Elizabeth's question, I visited Attest customer research, where they have Attest's US inflation sentiment tracker , which has up-to-the-minute data on what people think about it. When I was there a few weeks ago, it said that nearly 25 percent of people say inflation has a very high impact on their lives, and another 26 percent say it has a high impact. Around 36 percent said the effect is moderate. So, in other words, over 50% of people say the impact is high or very high. The UK numbers are slightly lower, coming in around 43 percent for a high or very high impact. So, the question becomes, is the difference that inflation isn't as severe in the UK, or is it that Americans react to it differently than people in the UK?
We had a podcast about?inflation ?a little while ago, and one of the points we made is that this is a massive concern for people. Attest also reports that consumers are changing their spending habits due to inflation. In the US, 49 percent of people are cutting back on non-essentials, which means things like clothes and meals out. Another 35 percent are cutting back on essentials like food and fuel.?
As I read this data, nearly 80 percent of people are cutting back on things like clothes, gas, and food. I saw an opportunity for companies to build customer relationships. Communication and understanding can go a long way to creating a connection with customers, as they did during the pandemic.?
However, a price increase is probable, even inevitable, for most businesses. Therefore, how you raise prices is an essential consideration. Past work we have done with a cancer clinic and a financial organization collecting debts has proven that challenging situations can still have excellent customer experiences. For example, people in cancer treatment judge how they were treated during their experience. Sure, the patients hated having cancer, but they appreciated how hospital staff treated them while they had it.
So, it is essential to treat customers with dignity and respect for organizations today facing price increase pressures and the bewilderment of customers facing them. Even better if you can help them solve their problems.?
If you have a business problem that you would like some help with, contact me on LinkedIn or?submit your pickle here . We would be glad to hear from you and help you with your challenges.
We produced this article in partnership with?Attest.
There you have it. No promotions, no gimmicks, just good information.
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WSJ Best Selling author & founder of QCard, a SaaS platform designed to empower professionals to showcase their expertise, grow their reach, and lead their markets.
2 年“Follow through with communication after the survey” - great advice! Customers will really appreciate it if the brand confirms that they truly listen to what the customers have to say. When customers suggest something, brands must really consider it and act accordingly. Keeping the customers informed fosters a good relationship that encourages trust.