Please Survey Your Customers

Surveying has been a contact center business function for a very long time, but only in the past 18 months have enterprises started to consider it important enough to purchase a third-party surveying solution. In the past, surveying was often done on an ad hoc basis, to address a specific issue. All too often, the results were not computed, not used to measure customer satisfaction, or applied to improve the operating environment. The survey was an end in and of itself, instead of a method for analyzing and improving customer satisfaction and the customer experience.

Reasons to Survey

Among the many reasons that customer service and contact center managers survey customers are to:

• Determine if people are satisfied with a company’s products, services and offerings
• Identify ways to improve processes and procedures
• Identify customer preferences
• Find out what most dissatisfies customers
• Find out what best satisfies customers
• Identify ways to improve service delivery and quality
• Identify ways to improve products and services
• Identify new and changing customer needs, wants and preferences
• Identify why and how competitors are doing a better job

All of these reasons roll up into the most important one – showing an interest in the opinions and well-being of customers by listening to what they have to say. Any organization that does not take action on survey results or makes the mistake of not sharing and communicating findings and responses disappoints its customers and communicates that it does not care about them – a very costly error.

Surveying Market

The survey market is highly fragmented. The market consists of four major groups:

1. Basic survey tools – these products are inexpensive and easy to use. They can create, issue and collect survey results. Most of these products include basic reporting.
2. Contact center surveying and analytics offerings – these are survey offerings designed for use in contact centers. They can handle IVR and Web-based surveys, have real-time alerting and reporting and analytical capabilities. Vendors include Autonomy/etalk, Customer Relationship Metrics, CustomerSat, Mindshare, Ransys, RightNow Technologies, UCN and Witness/Verint.
3. Market research organizations with surveying capabilities – these are provided primarily by market research firms that sell services, not products.
4. Other surveying offerings – surveying offerings, such as SPSS, that do not fit into the other categories.

Now, with a growing appreciation of the importance of enterprise feedback and the emergence of surveying expertise, DMG Consulting expects to see new entrants come to market with stand-alone enterprise feedback management (EFM) suites that include a survey module for measuring customer satisfaction. These solutions will be available in all three primary delivery models – premise-based, managed service and hosted.

Final Thoughts

All enterprises should survey their customers, address the identified issues and share the results and benefits with customers and senior management. Any form of surveying is valuable, as it delivers information about the company’s performance that can only be discovered by asking customers. Traditional surveying processes and tools yield highly beneficial results. Real-time surveying takes the survey process one step further by empowering companies to respond almost immediately to issues impacting customers. This increases the benefits of surveying initiatives by giving companies critical, actionable information as quickly as possible.

For an in-depth analysis of the contact center surveying market and best practices, we suggest you see our Contact Center Surveying and Analytics Report. Released in June, this Report is the leading guide to this essential business function. Information is available on our Web site and can be accessed by clicking here, or by contacting Deborah Navarra at 516-628-1098 or deborah.navarra@dmgconsult.com.

Regards,

Donna Fluss

President, DMG Consulting LLC