How customer satisfaction surveys went from helpful to ‘intrusive’

Oh, before you go, would you mind doing a quick customer survey

You do go on the draw to win a free keyboard. We've all been there

You just finished buying something or got to the bottom of an issue on the phone

But before you go, you're asked for three to five minutes to rate your experience

More and more people are getting frustrated by the experience of rating their experience

How did customer satisfaction surveys go from a useful tool in business to a burden

Customer feedback's been around for as long as customers have been around

Since the dawn of commerce, businesses have looked for ways to gauge customer satisfaction

Well, let's fast forward a little bit. I can go back to being 12 years old in my first business, which was a birthday party magic show business

And one of the things my dad told me to do, my mom, you know, it's a ride of thinking

My dad says, follow up with a phone call. Make sure they were happy. Shep Hyken, customer service and experience expert

I am the CAO, the chief amazement officer at Shepard Presentation. At a young age, Shep's dad taught him the magic of customer feedback

My dad said, listen to the tricks that they like the best, and you know you're doing a good show

but also look at the tricks or listen for tricks that they don't talk about

That means they weren't worthy of being recognized as being something great

and start to replace those tricks with tricks that are talked about

A custom take on the customer satisfaction survey. Measuring customer happiness marked a turning point at the turn of the 21st century

In a 2003 issue of the Harvard Business Review, Fred Reicheld promoted his net promoter score The one question survey was simple On a scale from zero to 10 how likely are you to recommend this business At the core is your business enriching the lives of customers and

starting this chain reaction of them coming back for more, referring their friends

and the thing your investors really want? I'm Fred Reicheld, a Bain Fellow

and the inventor of the net promoter system. Up until that point, we used physical realities

like customers coming back for more, retention rates. But that was limiting because it was too late in the process

The concept's easy. The promoters are people who give a nine or 10

Detractors are those who rate the business from zero to six. Subtract the percentage of detractors from your promoters

and boom, that's your net promoter score. that net promoter score turned out to be very predictive of who would grow faster and more

profitably. We use a one question survey because I basically hate surveys. But even Reichelt is

guilty of adding on. In this case, two more questions asking why they gave the rating and

for those who already love the business, are there areas they can improve? He says businesses should

should use the data to figure out what delights customers. But instead, they often find themselves

focusing on the negative. The net promoter system has ironically been focused

on fixing detractors. I didn't call it net promoter so that people would focus on detractors

It's creating promoters. 90% of the value in the net promoter process

is treating people so they come back for more and bring their friends. Two decades after Reicheld created the score

More than two thirds of Fortune 1000 companies use it but not everyone is sold on its value We don really know what that number actually measures Does it really measure your satisfaction or your likelihood of recommending

Or is it just a generalized kind of happiness with what you've just experienced

My name is Nick Lee. I'm professor of marketing at Warwick Business School in the UK

There are lots of better ways to measure customer satisfaction that are more scientifically validated

But they're also usually a little bit more complicated. Oh, I just wanted to ask you a few questions

Is that OK? About one in four customers says they've stopped doing business with a company because it either sent too many surveys or the survey demanded too much time

Nearly two thirds of customers say they bail on surveys if the survey ends up being too long

If you've ever designed questionnaires, which I've done for a long time

it's very tempting to just add in another question, right? If you get enough people in the room with enough seniority

it's like, well, you know, I really want to know this. If you're asking someone this question, you've got to ask them this question

If you've got to ask them this question, then someone else pipes up. So, you know what? I really need to know this as well

I think market researchers are desperate for more information. If they find a customer who's gullible enough to answer the one or two questions on the, you know, how likely you'd recommend, and then they see if they've got you, if they can ask 50 other questions

It's sad. I'm intrusive. I'm taking valuable time away from you. I'm asking you for a favor

And what did I really do to deserve that? Enter the art of solicitation

37 of customers say they will only complete surveys that offer a discount bonus or chance to win a prize But how honest is that feedback 42 say the incentive prompts them to give a higher than deserved rating Customers are already more

willing to complete a survey after having a good experience than a bad one. But asking for a good

review is another way to bring in bias. And this happens to me all the time. Every customer service

call I do, you know, say 50 percent of the people are saying, please give me a high score

Right. That's it's obviously a huge bias. Right. So either I'm going to give them a high score or

I'm just going to not bother filling in because I don't want to give them a high score and I don't

I don't want to be I don't want to feel like a bad person. More than half of customers surveyed

say a customer service representative has asked them to leave a positive review or high rating

before giving them the survey. It's a vanity metric. And wait a minute, I thought this survey was to help you serve me better

but I guess the survey is to help you. And so it's just wasting more of my time. It's very selfish

Studies show survey fatigue is more than setting in, and the practice could be hurting companies' reputations

What bothers me isn't whether they're a good or bad company, it's how often they're surveying me

Even the godfather of customer surveys is sick of it too. I think we have to stop focusing on scores and start fixating on realities, behaviors

And the behavior I think is the most productive is when a new customer comes in the door

and says a referral was the primary reason they came in. That's the magic moment when learning should take place

For Straight Air News, I'm Simone Del Rosario. For a closer look at the data mentioned in this video, search customer survey to find this story at san.com or by downloading the SAN app