Three Questions to Ask Before You Start Surveying Customers

BNET UK blogger Julian Goldsmith offers valuable insight into the service data published in the Which? Holidays survey.

But there's another issue at the source of many a service lapse -- a problem that starts with customer service surveys.

Tour operators Thomas Cook and Cosmos have hit back at the Which? survey with data showing the exact opposite. Both have holiday satisfaction surveys that refute the Which? findings and suggest an overwhelming majority of their customers are happy with the service they've received.

So how did that happen? Ask any statistician and they'll reel off a list of reasons why two surveys can give completely opposite results.

But whether it's differences in the sample, the questionnaire or the interpretation, the fact is that many businesses, especially large ones, put significant store by their customer measures.

But are we just kidding ourselves? Can we really measure customer experience objectively? In short, that depends on the questions -- the most important being those that you ask before you even put pen to paper.

Here are the three important questions to ask before you start planning that next customer survey:

1. What is the survey for?

a. To give a consistent year-on-year picture for performance management

b. To compare relative performance in specific areas across a competitive set

c. To understand what customers want; what they value; and how they decide "who to use" and "who to recommend" (not always the same).

2. Who are you asking?

a. A representative sample of current customers

b. Anyone that's in the market for your product / service

c. The "best" customer groups (e.g. most profitable / most enthusiastic etc.)

3. What are you asking them?

a. How their experience compares to their expectations

b. How your delivery compares to that of your competitors

c. What they like, and how they are likely to behave (e.g. would you return, would you recommend to a friend?)

You may find you don't need a survey after all -- just to spend some quality time with real customers in a real environment, or perhaps you'd benefit from a number of different views to give a more rounded picture.

Either way, surveys and statistics do have a role to play in understanding your customers, and how well you're delivering. But they are only a part of the picture. In isolation, they can be confusing, contradictory and quite simply misleading.

(Image: manysmallguesses, CC2.0)