#109 – Survey problems, Heidi hits the wall

Welcome to the 109th Customer Strategy newsletter. This is a special one. You may have noticed that I have not sent a newsletter since August last year, mainly to avoid confusion with the writing I do for OCX Cognition. And this particular edition is an almost exact duplicate of the newsletter I have just started on LinkedIn. Please subscribe to it on LinkedIn here.

The five topics this week are:

1. The biggest problem with customer surveys
2. Heidi hits the wall (Yes, the Heidi from the children’s book.)
3. OCX Cognition posts
4. Notable items from other sites – CustomerGauge Experience Awards, omniTouch contact center article.
5. Looking forward

The biggest problem with customer surveys

I designed and implemented my first customer survey in 1981. NPS and suchlike had not been invented yet. Ever since then, I have been a huge promoter of using surveys to listen to customers, and of course to then design and implement the improvements they want.

Apparently I am a really slow learner. It has taken me 40 years to understand the main defect of even perfectly implemented survey processes. The problem is simple. Response rates mean we listen to a small fraction of customers and work only on what they want. Let’s suppose you have a 10% survey response rate and your Detractors most frequently complain about late deliveries. If you are like most companies that do this well, you call the upset customer and try to retain their custom by offering them a reduction voucher or a free gift of some sort. At the very least, you apologize sincerely.

I used to think that sounded great. Now I don’t. The issue is that you are only taking care of the customers who have complained about late deliveries and were among the 10% who responded to the survey. What about the other 90% of your customers who did not respond and many of whom also had late deliveries? Why have you done nothing for them? Do you really want them to leave you? There is no excuse for this. You know who they all are from your operational data. Apologize and compensate everyone who has had the problem, please!

This can be hard to do manually and customer retention issues are often caused by a combination of issues rather than just one. Modern AI software such as that provided by OCX Cognition and others can identify those situations and help you to address them.

It’s an important topic and I have written about the subject in more detail here.

Heidi hits the wall

Heidi is a beloved character in a children’s book written by Swiss author Johanna Spyri. What is less well known is what happened later. Heidi’s granddaughter apparently came down from the Alps and became a customer experience professional.

I have recently written up what happened to poor Heidi when she presented her request for people and funding to implement things customers requested in her employer’s survey process. Heidi works at a major Swiss bank with its HQ in Zurich. Like many CX professionals, including me, Heidi considers herself a scientist and believes the science should speak for itself. Heidi is not going to like what happens next.

Not good. Not good at all. Heidi and I learned a hard lesson the hard way. (Any resemblance to my own professional experience is entirely coincidental. I promise. Really.) Anyway, please read all about Heidi’s latest adventure here, and let me know what you think.

OCX Cognition posts

I am editor-in-chief for content at OCX Cognition, a CX SaaS software company led by Richard Owen, former CEO of Satmetrix. Here is some of our content that I find interesting. Note that I prepared the B2C benchmarks report myself.