Why you shouldn't "monkey" around with your customer's survey feedback.
I've encountered many companies who use inexpensive web-survey tools in their customer feedback initiatives. These people are always interested in the added capabilities offered by EFM versus their web-survey solutions. But, on balance they are skeptical about spending money to achieve the added benefits an EFM based approach and tool offers. So, I thought it would add some value to the discussion to revisit EFM's value proposition versus web-survey tools.
Admittedly, some web-based EFM products cost a lot of money. Some cost many thousands of dollars per year. However, others (like QuestBack) are priced so that smaller businesses can afford them. Point is: there's a wide range of EFM price points. But, almost always, if used for customer feedback it's highly likely that their all-in cost of ownership is lower than the cheap web survey tool. Needless to say, there are dependencies when calculating EFM's benefits versus survey tools. Customer lifetime value, customer churn rates, customer acquisition cost, win-back cost, etc., have to be considered. Of course, they should be part of the calculation because if you are doing customer feedback it's probably because you want preserve or improve customer relationships, reduce churn, lower customer acquisition cost, etc.
A couple of EFM benefit calculation scenarios (there are many others):
What is the value of a lost customer? If your customers have high "lifetime" value, the cost of losing just one customer is high (by definition) and thus painful. Losing one because your cheap web survey tool couldn't automatically notify an account manager of an issue after receiving feedback raises the cost of that cheap web survey tool by the value of the account you lost. Losing multiple accounts because of a "follow-up gap" compounds the cost. My belief is that companies with customer lifetime values above five thousand dollars should be using some kind of EFM approach and tool. If your company meets this test and does customer feedback using one of the cheap web-survey tools out there, I'd suggest you are almost certainly and unnecessarily losing customers that you might not have to lose.
What is the cost of pursuing the wrong opportunity? Suffice to say, companies with long, complex sales cycles have to test their opportunities periodically for alignment to customer needs, budgets, technology environments, etc.. Often this is done through account reviews or occasionally it is outsourced to an agency as a form of market research. But, if your company supports opportunity analysis using a web-survey process you are likely missing opportunities to react quickly to changes in customer needs during the sales cycle and spending money (and FTE time) where you shouldn't.
EFM's Value Add
EFM guarantees that a person (or persons) in your company will be automatically tasked with reacting to feedback from a customer person who provided that feedback. Web survey tools don't enable this. The value add of EFM comes from the action taking this enables.
Other EFM Benefits:
In addition to action-ability, EFM tools offer other capabilities to find and use insights that surface from customer feedback. EFM tools have built-in analytical, reporting and dashboard tools that allow group level customer insights to be quickly identified and distributed to the managers or teams in your company that need them. This is often done in real-time (Something QuestBack makes possible). In contrast web survey tools tend to simply push data out to other systems (MS EXCEL anyone?). Where a person has to then build the analyses and reports. An inefficient, expensive and unnecessary use of FTE time. And, often an overlooked cost of web-survey tools.
At the end of the day...
You shouldn't monkey around with your customer's feedback. It could be dangerous to your company's health. Web-survey tools have much higher costs than their license fees. And, they don't actually resolve your needs for timely and action-able customer feedback.
If you would like to learn more about me or QuestBack my LinkedIn profile is:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stewartnash
Click Here to Try QuestBack
I've encountered many companies who use inexpensive web-survey tools in their customer feedback initiatives. These people are always interested in the added capabilities offered by EFM versus their web-survey solutions. But, on balance they are skeptical about spending money to achieve the added benefits an EFM based approach and tool offers. So, I thought it would add some value to the discussion to revisit EFM's value proposition versus web-survey tools.
Admittedly, some web-based EFM products cost a lot of money. Some cost many thousands of dollars per year. However, others (like QuestBack) are priced so that smaller businesses can afford them. Point is: there's a wide range of EFM price points. But, almost always, if used for customer feedback it's highly likely that their all-in cost of ownership is lower than the cheap web survey tool. Needless to say, there are dependencies when calculating EFM's benefits versus survey tools. Customer lifetime value, customer churn rates, customer acquisition cost, win-back cost, etc., have to be considered. Of course, they should be part of the calculation because if you are doing customer feedback it's probably because you want preserve or improve customer relationships, reduce churn, lower customer acquisition cost, etc.
A couple of EFM benefit calculation scenarios (there are many others):
What is the value of a lost customer? If your customers have high "lifetime" value, the cost of losing just one customer is high (by definition) and thus painful. Losing one because your cheap web survey tool couldn't automatically notify an account manager of an issue after receiving feedback raises the cost of that cheap web survey tool by the value of the account you lost. Losing multiple accounts because of a "follow-up gap" compounds the cost. My belief is that companies with customer lifetime values above five thousand dollars should be using some kind of EFM approach and tool. If your company meets this test and does customer feedback using one of the cheap web-survey tools out there, I'd suggest you are almost certainly and unnecessarily losing customers that you might not have to lose.
What is the cost of pursuing the wrong opportunity? Suffice to say, companies with long, complex sales cycles have to test their opportunities periodically for alignment to customer needs, budgets, technology environments, etc.. Often this is done through account reviews or occasionally it is outsourced to an agency as a form of market research. But, if your company supports opportunity analysis using a web-survey process you are likely missing opportunities to react quickly to changes in customer needs during the sales cycle and spending money (and FTE time) where you shouldn't.
EFM's Value Add
EFM guarantees that a person (or persons) in your company will be automatically tasked with reacting to feedback from a customer person who provided that feedback. Web survey tools don't enable this. The value add of EFM comes from the action taking this enables.
Other EFM Benefits:
In addition to action-ability, EFM tools offer other capabilities to find and use insights that surface from customer feedback. EFM tools have built-in analytical, reporting and dashboard tools that allow group level customer insights to be quickly identified and distributed to the managers or teams in your company that need them. This is often done in real-time (Something QuestBack makes possible). In contrast web survey tools tend to simply push data out to other systems (MS EXCEL anyone?). Where a person has to then build the analyses and reports. An inefficient, expensive and unnecessary use of FTE time. And, often an overlooked cost of web-survey tools.
At the end of the day...
You shouldn't monkey around with your customer's feedback. It could be dangerous to your company's health. Web-survey tools have much higher costs than their license fees. And, they don't actually resolve your needs for timely and action-able customer feedback.
If you would like to learn more about me or QuestBack my LinkedIn profile is:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stewartnash
Click Here to Try QuestBack
