No one is interested in drinking expired milk, or eating food that is past its expiration date and likewise, no one wants to participate in an outdated expired survey.
Customer feedback surveys are living documents that allow an organization to get relevant data from the responses. If an organization is asking outdated questions on their survey, the data becomes useless. How can you leverage responses to questions that no longer represent the goals of your business?
As a customer experience consultant, my most frequent objection I hear is ‘We already have a survey, we are getting feedback now.’ My follow up question to this is ‘Excellent. What is the last change you made based on the feedback?’
In most instances, the answer is silence, but every once in a while I do get some type of answer after a long pause. And this is perfect for me; it is my chance for the close.
Your customer feedback survey should be reviewed, revised and updated as frequently as your business plan is – as your business stays relevant, so should your survey.
5 ways to determine if your survey has expired:
1. You are asking the same questions you have always asked
2. Your business has not made any changes based on the response data
3. Your company has introduced new products/services and you are not capturing feedback about them
4. The response rate to your survey has decreased
5. The responses are no longer providing actionable feedback
There are ways to prevent your survey from becoming outdated, but it takes focus and effort.
Here are a few ways that an organization can avoid their survey reaching its expiration date:
– Develop a regular cadence for performing a survey review – I recommend every six months
– Include survey design as part of your strategic plan – customer feedback should be used to drive business decisions & initiatives
– Ensure new products/services are included when launched – you can even ask about them in your surveys before they launch
– When introducing new marketing campaigns or branding efforts, use your survey to gauge their effectiveness
If this seems like too much for your business to consider, here is a cheat sheet:
– Make your survey questions proactive
– Make sure your survey topics represent the current state of the business
– Make the response choices creative, give customers a reason to want to take the survey
And remember, expired or outdated surveys are like drinking expired milk -and no one wants to do that.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: Why Your Customer Feedback Survey Should Have an Expiration Date
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