Should verbatim analysis drive customer survey processes?

Traditionally, verbatim analysis techniques and tools are applied in post survey analyses of customer feedback.  But, with the increasing prevalence of very brief transactional surveys and social media channels generally, I'm wondering if the process should be reversed.  i.e. Analyze verbatim comments to understand where deeper dive kinds of surveys should be deployed.

I'm seeing an increasing number of companies these days that use a very simple transactional Net Promoter or CSAT survey process. Typically, these firms are asking a single question: "How likely are you to recommend [company] to your family and friends?", accompanied by a comment box. Or, "Rate your satisfaction with [company]", accompanied by a comment box. It seems to me that there are advantages to this kind of process including:

• Higher response rates
• Really simple and fast implementation of the survey process itself
• Low cost 

It would also seem that there are some disadvantages to this type of process, including, among others:

• Figuring out who should do follow up on received feedback.  
• Figuring out how to appropriately follow up on received feedback.
• The challenge of analyzing feedback from surveys where no questions exist about key aspects of the company's offerings (examples being product / service quality or value vs. competition).

For companies early in their existence, simple easy and low cost are important characteristics for a customer feedback program. But, as they grow, understanding the drivers of loyalty or satisfaction become more important in successfully operating the business. This leads to growing companies using more and more manual resources for feedback analysis, which of course costs money. The way it works: At first, one person is assigned to read, categorize and action issues identified in comments in surveys. When comment volume gets more significant they expand to a team of people. And, so on.  

Once multiple people begin analyzing verbatims individually, interpretation issues begin to creep into the analyses.  The more people categorizing text the more interpretation issues there will be. Automated text analysis tools are a good next step for customer feedback evaluation when teams of people begin getting involved. They reduce labor costs while improving the quality of the analyses. 

Even automated and consistent text analytics isn't sufficient to fully understand the voice of the customer (VOC). Additional quantitative data is also necessary. So, some level of follow-up survey process needs to be implemented. In fact, potentially several separate follow surveys might be used depending on what the verbatim feedback is indicating. For instance, if product or service issues are highlighted by people responding to the survey, a follow up survey asking a few more questions (less than 10 ideally) should be sent in order to better understand what those issues might be.

A number of companies I talk with these days have this scenario where they're receiving lots of multi-channel verbatim feedback, beyond that contained in their transactional surveys. Twitter feeds, customer service chats, feedback forms on the websites, etc., all offer text analysis opportunities and will provide indicators for follow up, deeper dive surveys. Companies should look to Text Analysis tools to standardize their verbatim feedback analyses. But, they also should look for ways to use the verbatim analysis results to drive follow up surveys that lead to a higher level of VOC insight.

Transactional feedback is a key element to any company's customer experience strategy.  But, understanding the customer experience is more involved and requires more information about customers than simple transactional surveys can provide. Combining them with text analytics and targeted follow up surveys can provide that richer set of insights.

- Stewart Nash
QuestBack USA
Etuma USA
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stewartnash

"Ask and Engage" with Customer Surveys

Feedback Action Loop

Early on in its history (2001?), QuestBack coined the term "Ask and Act" to describe how its web survey solutions provide companies with an easy mechanism to follow up on customer feedback. But, with only a rudimentary e-mail capability, QuestBack's utility was largely limited to specific feedback projects, typically, research or customer service oriented.  That has all recently changed.......

Feedback Based Engagement Loop

Fast forward to today.  QuestBack should be renamed to "Ask and Engage". Its html based e-mail tools and media libraries allow marketers to build powerful messaging programs that present brands or introduce products / services, all while collecting data, qualifying or generating leads and prospects, or engaging with customers about various aspects of the company's relationship with them. "Rules" embedded in QuestBack surveys that accompany marketing messages let companies design engagement to maximize the business value from each contact they touch with QuestBack.

So why would a QuestBack based customer engagement program be better than say lead nurturing using e-mail tools? A couple of reasons, rules based follow up means that a "rule" determines what kind of engagement should occur. Should a contact's response profile indicate a certain type of engagement, that can be embedded as a QuestBack follow up "rule" which generates a follow action automatically.  Rules can also be constructed, using company data, so that the person who "owns" a particular kind of engagement with a particular class of lead, prospect or customer can be automated into an engagement process.

Since QuestBack operates in social media platforms like Facebook or on company websites, engagement doesn't have to be just outbound e-mail driven. Done well, and using closed-loop follow up, surveys themselves are engagement tools. In fact, they are typically very good engagement tools.  Even when going out in pure marketing blasts, 1-2% response rates are achievable. When going to customer bases, qualified leads or other folks with a connection, response rates can be north of 30%, a rate e-mail marketers would kill for.

"Ask and Engage" should be an approach marketers start to adopt more and more.  

Mobile Support Increases Survey Response Rate

There's been lots of discussion about how survey response rates are declining for market research and Voice of the customer surveys. I've always argued that survey design and delivery considerations make a difference in response rates. Though I am not a market research professional by trade, I do a lot of web surveys on my own and for clients.  So, I thought I'd share an anecdote about a situation where survey response rate actually increased, and my opinion about why.

If you've read this blog over the last 4-5 years, you'll have noted that I do work with a number of club soccer organizations.  In particular, I work with a large regional soccer club, helping them with their annual membership surveys. Notably, this year's membership survey is receiving substantially higher levels of response than identical surveys done in the recent past. The "delta" in response rate appears to be related to changes QuestBack has made in their "Essentials" product that make the club's membership surveys much friendlier for mobile device users like soccer moms, who for sure are heavy users of mobile devices.

By way of background, the soccer club uses a modified Net Promoter survey to determine member loyalty, assess opinion about player development and understand overall experience of members in their programs. They also implement a closed-loop follow up process driven by QuestBack notifications. The membership survey has generally been very effective, helping them to understand their loyalty drivers and areas where improvements are needed across the club.  

For survey process, the club does four e-mail "sends" of the survey.  An initial invitation followed by two reminders and a "last chance" note to the membership. Past surveys have received response rates of 40% or higher. This year, they have achieved 33% after one invitation and one reminder. If past trends hold true, this year's survey will achieve better than 50% response when complete. Needless to say, if 50%+ response is achieved it will be a milestone for the club and will give them a very useful data set to work with. The loop closing they do should help them greatly with club development next year.

I believe that QuestBack's support for mobile-adaptive surveys is the main reason for the increase in response rates the club is seeing. Earlier this year QuestBack invested heavily in re-developing their survey forms architecture to allow virtually any survey question to be delivered effectively on multiple mobile devices, from i phones to tablets. QuestBack surveys today automatically identify the device being used to take the survey, and then optimize questions for that device. For an organization like a soccer club, where parents may be taking the survey in their car while watching practice, mobile optimization may make the difference between taking the survey or not taking the survey.  

Verbatim Comparisons add value to Feedback Analyses

According to most of the research I've seen about Customer Experience, the single biggest challenge organizations face is taking timely action on their customer feedback.  For many businesses today customer feedback collection is an ongoing process where surveys are constantly being offered to customers. Yet, businesses still largely struggle to act quickly on the feedback they get. Often, this is because their analysis and reporting processes are manual, taking days or weeks to produce the analyses needed to understand problems.

Etuma Ltd. has created a new tool for evaluating verbatim feedback with comparisons based on key attributes that allow businesses to visualize differences in topics and sentiments expressed.  The new comparison tool enables quick and easy benchmarking of operational dimensions (like geographic areas, stores, products, etc.) against each other or against company-wide averages.

Pinpoint operational issues with Verbatim Comparison in Etuma360

Retailers, as in the above example, can use Etuma360 to compare feedback and sentiment at the store level versus the average of all stores and can thus quickly identify problems needing corrective actions at any of their stores. For instance, in the example above, the "Elm Street" store shows lower customer sentiment scores for Topics "Check Out" and "Queues", than the average for the company. This may indicate store staff is slow staffing registers, registers are malfunctioning or check out staff are not operating registers properly. Or, possibly some other problem. Since short lines and efficient check out processes are key attributes of good retail customer experience, negative scores on these topics indicate action needs to be taken.

Verbatim comparisons are equally valuable in other scenarios.  In my own experience I have found that in Net Promoter surveys customers often comment on same topics regardless of their NPS category.  So, understanding sentiment differences amongst detractors, passives and promoters is  particularly useful for me.  With Etuma's new verbatim comparison tool, this is now easy to do.  It's my experience that topics with negative sentiment ratings amongst detractors are likely candidates for loyalty drivers that the business needs to improve upon for customer retention.

The thing about Etuma that has always impressed me is how easy it is to get started and benefit from verbatim customer feedback analysis.  It also is surprising how affordable their solutions are. 

Going "Next Gen" at QuestBack

Those of you who read this blog will know that I resell QuestBack solutions. 

Normally, I don't talk a lot about QuestBack products here, as I want the blog to be focused on customer feedback management topics. Occasionally though a note on QuestBack isn't out of order. And, may even add to the dialogue about customer feedback management and dealing with the challenges thereof. I think today is one of those occasions.

QuestBack has embarked on a new strategy and development push that, in my opinion, will see it become a real player in the North American markets. The company has put a tremendous amount of effort into a modernized UI, device independence, multi-mode delivery, and data access via reporting. QuestBack's analytics were always great and their actioning capabilities top notch as well. So a really good feedback management solution has become exceptional.

QuestBack's new releases, v14 and v15, represent the beginning of QuestBack's "Next Generation" product strategy. v15 is currently available to existing and new customers. And, has been re-branded as QuestBack "Essentials".  

QuestBack Essentials is really just a beginning for the company. QuestBack has also brought to market its first Survey & Dashboard Application solution, SalesPulse. QuestBack SalesPulse is a survey based application, built on QuestBack Essentials and our DataVoyager reporting platform. SalesPulse uses pre-built QuestBack survey templates that plug into CRM platforms (Salesforce, Dynamics CRM, etc.) and automatically starts generating operationally useful data about sales processes and people. SalesPulse is mainly targeted at organizations that do sales meetings or have scenarios where meetings occur (physical or on-line) in their sales process.  An example of a SalesPulse Dashboard follows:

Over time, QuestBack Essentials is going to integrate with many additional applications, will have more action management capabilities, more analytics / visualization capabilities, more panel support and more social media integration.
 All in all a great start for QuestBack's Next Gen initiative.

Learn More About QuestBack Essentials Here