Editor’s note: Terry Vavra and Doug Pruden are partners at research firm Customer Experience Partners. Vavra is based in Terry Richmond, Va. He can be reached at vavra@customerexperiencepartners.com. Pruden is based in Darien, Conn. He can be reached at pruden@customerexperiencepartners.com. 
We opened our e-mail one day last week to find:
- an invitation from Verizon to take a customer insights survey;
- two invitations from Open Table to critique two restaurants (booked through Open Table) which we’d eaten at;
- a survey from a hotel we’d stayed at during the previous week; and
- an invitation to tell a financial services company how we felt about their general conduct of business.
All of this in one day!
Perhaps this was just a busy day but we think it’s becoming not all that unusual between robo-calls asking for “just a few minutes” of our time and online invitations like those listed above to make Americans feel deluged with requests for participation and information.
We’ve always been strong proponents of gathering feedback from customers. We also readily add that before so many companies jumped on the satisfaction survey bandwagon they should have been exercising greater restraint in issuing invitations. Of course, the five organizations who cluttered our e-mail inbox couldn’t possibly have known how much competition their request for our response would be up against. But it’s also quite probable that some automatic triggers were in place that possibly should be rethought. For example, should Open Table automatically send out a satisfaction survey for every reservation it makes? If we had not recently conducted a transaction with the financial services company, why elicit a pulse read from us now? Why was Verizon asking for our feedback given no unusual changes in our account activity?
All of these questions suggest that maybe, just maybe, these organizations were acting in a knee-jerk fashion when issuing their invitations. It seems we’ve become CSM crazy. No doubt this zeal to survey is being partially driven by the C-suite’s newfound familiarity with the tool. In the early days of the CSM movement, while customer-centricity was being acknowledged, CEOs weren’t familiar with satisfaction and NPS scores. When corporate dashboards began to include one or more of these measures, CEOs had a number to track and discuss with their managers, stockholders and the media. The proliferation of satisfaction surveys has also been stimulated by the ease and inexpensiveness of automated survey tools. The result? An epidemic for our CSM community.
Four rules to follow
We believe that it’s time to establish some better rules for when – and to whom – to administer a CSM survey. As a start we think management should address four key issues:
1. Determine the rationale behind your information need.
We’ve always advocated there are at least two distinct types of satisfaction surveys:
- Transaction driven – a follow-up to a specific action or process in which the customer has participated.
- An annual assessment – a periodic pulse read on the general customer base seeking their overall satisfaction with the relationship they’ve established with the organization.
Each of these survey types deserves its own guidelines dictating when and to whom questionnaires should be distributed. In other words, thought should be invested in the process before the questionnaires are unleashed.
2. Drive your CSM efforts with a database.
One of the root causes for the plethora of CSM invitations we all receive is the relatively mindless way invitations are distributed. All CSM efforts should be coordinated with a database of customers. This means that annual or periodic assessments will not be conducted as a census activity but rather with a specifically identified sample of customers.
A number of years ago, before customer experience/satisfaction surveys became so ubiquitous, we encouraged clients to reach out to all their customers at least once per year to give those individuals the opportunity to ask questions and raise concerns before they became bigger problems (causing defections and the generation of negative word of mouth). But, with the deluge of surveying today we now recommend that not all customers need be bothered with each annual assessment. Assuming the number of identified customers is relatively large we suggest cycling through the customer base so that customers are only contacted once every two, three or four years. Most corporations have a large enough base of customers to allow split-sampling, tri-sampling or an even greater division of the customer base so as not to sample the same customers year-in and year-out.
Customers can be segmented so that specific groups of customers (high-value customers, newly acquired customers or declining-activity customers) be targeted in a specific year’s invitations. A controlling database needs to be maintained from year-to-year with previous years’ invitees and respondents flagged. This system can serve to protect customers from being over surveyed.
3. Don’t treat all interactions equally.
Another action we’d encourage is to urge companies to reserve CSM follow-ups for significant interactions. For example, a customer’s simple request – one that should be easy to fulfill in under two minutes – probably shouldn’t trigger a survey invitation. Unless the experience was a complete disaster, nothing useful will be learned. Sending an invitation for such a minor interaction might suggest to the customer a lack of concern for their time and as a result be detrimental to the relationship with the customer.
4. Respect your customers' time – don't ask for known information!
Far too many CSM surveys these days are retrieval missions for information that corporations already know and could easily link to customers’ records. But, rather than enhancing databases and appending the known information, they often take the lazy solution and rely on their customers to volunteer the information. This is often the result of siloed information and activities.
Time and attention
Why does any of this matter? Are we creating a tempest in a teapot? We’ve always prided ourselves in thinking long-term. While all of the automated processes that are undoubtedly driving these numerous surveys to be indiscriminately e-mailed will churn away unabated, we worry about the end result. The customers who are besieged with these numerous surveys will ultimately tire of cooperating. This deluge of requests will drive them away; making them eventually lost to the satisfaction audit movement. We shouldn't allow this to happen. CSM should be conducted in a more strategic and thoughtful manner.