Customer experience (CX) is now more critical than ever before. As the 2022 KPMG Global Customer Experience Excellence report shows, successful companies need to tailor CX to meet specific customer needs and be aware of upcoming trends and expectations.
- Organizations need to have built-in flexibility that allows them to quickly pivot to new opportunities and changing customer demands.
- There is an increasing expectation for customer convenience, and also greater pressure for businesses to act in an ethical manner.
- Customer-facing functions are unifying and require collaboration to enable improved engagement with customers across omnichannel offerings at every stage of the lifecycle.
However, organizations can only redefine their CX delivery if they understand their customers inside-out. How do you solve customer problems when you don’t know what they want or how to remove barriers so they can get what they need?
Going straight to the source with surveys
When you know exactly what your customers think, you can solve their problems and improve your customer offering in line with their expectations.
Statistically, significant data from regular surveys gives you the confidence you need to make the changes that will keep your customers coming back for more.
Customers will engage more strongly with your company and your surveys if you speak directly to their needs – and the more participation you get from customers, the more precisely you can improve and tailor the CX. This creates a complete feedback loop.
Why every survey needs to count
Your customer survey program will only work if enough people respond, giving you an accurate picture across a diverse range of individuals. Some organizations struggle to achieve a participation rate of more than 1%, while others are stuck between 1-10%. The value of customer feedback for such organizations is greatly compromised. As a general rule, in most industries with a high service element, a participation rate of 15% is acceptable, in excess of 30% is seen as excellent, and a rate greater than 50% is exceptional.
To put it simply, the higher the response rate, the more confident you can be in knowing that the insights and metrics you gather are truly representative of your customer base. And when you know that, that’s when the magic happens. You can make data-driven changes that improve your CX and delight your customers directly based on their preferences.
5 best practices that boost survey participation rates
Survey participation rates vary according to industry, customer’s brand perception, demographics and – most importantly – the way the surveys are designed and offered to customers.
To gain genuine customer buy-in, your CX surveys should be:
- Short and sharp: A long survey can be tiresome, and customers may be far less likely to respond the next time you ask for their feedback.
- Prompt: The sooner a customer is asked to participate in a survey after an interaction the better. They are more engaged and their memory and opinion will be fresher.
- User friendly: The less effort that is required, the more likely it is customers will engage.
- Available on their channel of choice: Your survey should be available and delivered via the customer’s channel of choice – whether that be email, voice, text, instant message or mobile app. Picking the right channel for the customer is often the key to driving high survey participation rates.
- Relevant: Your survey should always be relevant and personalized to individual customers and their experience. Asking customers about a product or service that they haven’t yet tried will lead to results that are not beneficial, and will also likely frustrate your customer.
The Cyara CentraCX Voice of the Customer (VoC) platform has been built specifically for contact centers and offers multi-channel, personalized surveys that allow you to collect, analyze and action targeted customer feedback to improve your CX.
We’d love to tell you more about VoC power and how it can work for you. Start the conversation today!