The Decline of Structured Surveys. ebook

Transcription

1 The Decline of Structured Surveys ebook

2 Structured Surveys: A Dying Breed In their heyday, structured customer surveys changed the way companies did business. Even in their relatively unevolved forms, customer surveys influenced the business ecosystem. Only the most advanced and forward-thinking brands asked for and listened to feedback from their customers. These companies changed the way customers interacted with businesses. They completely altered customer expectations and shaped how customers defined a great brand experience. Fast forward a few decades, and you arrive in the present: The Age of the Customer. Customer surveys are now the norm. In fact, brands that haven t adopted some sort of program for collecting customer feedback hardly exist. The Voice of the Customer (VoC) industry is making another shift. As technology advances, so are the ways brands collect customer feedback. Unfortunately for VoC laggards, this shift will likely mean the end of traditional customer surveys. Brands that fail to adapt and evolve to the new customer-centric business ecosystem will drop lower and lower on the corporate food chain.

3 A Social Generation The emergence of the Internet prompted a gargantuan advancement in the VoC industry. The world had never been so connected, and individuals jumped at the opportunity to broadcast their experiences and personal opinions over the Web. In a virtual blink of an eye, people from all regions of the world were connecting with each other through forums and social media platforms. By this time, people were already used to and generally annoyed by traditional, structured customer surveys. They were simply too long and didn t allow customers the flexibility to fully express their opinions in their own words. Humanity s resistance to bad surveys gave rise to a new application of text analytics.

4 Stories Trump Reviews Oodles and oodles (zettabytes, to be more precise) of unstructured data are generated every day. And, as social media channels and other consumer-created content sources continue to grow in use, even more unstructured data will continue to inundate our world. Text analytics enables companies to sift through this exhausting amount of data and mine real-time, actionable insights. With text analytics, companies aren t constrained by traditional structured survey conventions. Surveys can be shorter, open-ended, and more accommodating to the preferences of the customer. What s more, these types of surveys minimize customer survey fatigue and produce more quality customer insights by providing greater survey response flexibility. A driving force behind the rapid adoption of text analytics is its ability to discern customer sentiment. But, while many text analytics solutions recognize sentiment (i.e. good, bad, neutral experiences), they fail to uncover the why behind the customer experience. Your brand s text analytics solution should do more than just measure sentiment; it should reveal the customer story in its pure, unadulterated form.

5 Smarten Up Your Surveys. Evolve Your VoC Program. The future of the VoC industry is being shaped by text analytics, but structured surveys aren t extinct yet. In fact, they probably never will be not entirely. By analyzing both structured and unstructured customer data, companies are able to see how customer comments impact their overall satisfaction as well as other loyalty measures. This process allows organizations to obtain a more complete and accurate view of the customer experience. With the right text analytics service, even a short survey helps you understand the drivers of the drivers, that is, the nuanced elements of your brand experience that allow you to stand out from the competition. An effective text analytics solution empowers brands to categorize and tag customer comments more accurately using industry-tuned text analytics models. For example, a restaurant chain using industry-specific tags can view high-level issues (e.g. low food quality scores) and drill down to the root cause (e.g. location #736 has consistently been out of green beans) with the touch of a smartphone button.

6 Insights in an Instant Mobile devices have been a key impetus for text analytics. Recent technology advancements have made extracting real-time, actionable insights from unstructured customer data not only possible but more convenient than ever. By enabling management across all levels of an organization to receive real-time customer insights pushed directly to their mobile devices, brands have the power to predict and even prevent issues before they happen. With industry-tuned text analytics models, the system automatically knows the types of comments likely to arise and can categorize incoming comments with greater speed and accuracy.

7 About InMoment InMoment is a cloud-based customer experience (CX) optimization platform that gives companies the ability to listen to and engage with their customers to improve business results through better experiences. Through its Experience Hub, InMoment provides Voice of Customer (VoC), Social Reviews & Advocacy, and Employee Engagement technology, as well as strategic guidance and tactical instruction, support, and services, to 350 brands across 25 industries in 128 countries. The company is the leading VoC vendor for the food services, retail, and contact center industries, with deep domain expertise in B2B, healthcare, hospitality, and numerous others. Contact Us sales@inmoment.com Copyright 2014, InMoment, Inc