If you want to steer clear of the feedback iceberg, you have to listen to all of your customers. But truly listening is a skill that can be difficult to master.
Despite the benefits of open text feedback, companies still tend to send out long surveys with too many questions or checkboxes. This leads us right to pitfall number one. Long surveys come with a lot of disadvantages, low response rates only being one of them. But what's worse is that the survey questions are often designed from an inside-out perspective. They ask for what the company wants to know. What you should be asking for is what the customer wants to tell you. If not, your surveys will lead to insights you already had in the first place.
"Asking for feedback from an inside-out point of view leads to organisations
carrying out what they had imagined in the first place."
If you want to sidestep this, you have to gain insights from an outside-in perspective. You have to really put the customer in the centre of your organisation. A good way to do so is using satisfaction metrics, like NPS℠, CSAT or CES. If you're unsure which one to use, you can always read our e-book on which metric is right for your business.
NPS, CSAT and CES are all scores. Don't get us wrong, scores are great. They're objective, measurable and you can track evolutions. Yet, scores as such are not enough, which brings us to pitfall number two. Scores are a great tool, but the downside is that your customers will rationalize their experience with your brand into a number. Another limitation is that you don't know what the score means and you lose the most valuable part of your customer's feedback. You don't know the 'why' behind the score. You don't know how they felt about their experience and consequently what drives their (dis)satisfaction.
If you really want to listen to your customers, let them speak freely. Let your customers tell what's important to them, don't just ask them to confirm what is important to you. If you do so, using a score-based survey is fine as long as you ask for open feedback as well. Scores + feedback = when the magic happens! And if you want to know what's next... 😉
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