Idea #5: Survey and roll up (drilling down may be too late)
Customer focused surveys frequently collect data that is customer-specific. This ensures a regular flow of insights that lead to action. Common insights from these frequent surveys can be “rolled up” to provide an aggregate view of a market or a high level view of systemic issues in an organization.
This is in contrast to conducting an occasional (eg: annual) survey that starts at a high level then “drills down” to discover specific problems.
This latter approach is inherently lagging. It may be too little to close the gap, and too late to fix the problem. By the time you drill down to learn more about what’s wrong, your customers may already be gone.
Idea #6: Conduct a survey about your survey
Customer focused surveys and other feedback techniques are powerful ways to connect with customers, create value and remain competitive in a changing world.
But without occasional review and fresh ideas, surveys (and third-party survey providers) can quickly fall out of date.
Conduct a survey about your current survey. Ask your customers and your own team members:
• Does our survey focus more on collecting data, or creating new value?
• Is our survey a positive customer experience or a painful procedure?
• Does our survey lead to action, or stop at analysis?
• Do we reconnect with customers after a survey to see if action has been taken? Or do we still see that as “someone else’s responsibility?”
• Is our survey frequent enough? Is it customer-specific?
• Do we roll-up common findings, or drill down to find what’s wrong?
• Is it time for us to relook, review and perhaps revise our customer focused survey procedures?
A well designed and deployed customer focused survey will find problems, discover opportunities, drive action and create new value. Will you settle for anything less?