Customer surveys used to be good for understanding the needs of customers. In spite of that most of the reasons I’ll be given below as to why you should stop using satisfaction surveys to obtain feedback from your customers are reasons which won’t be any new news or surprise to you. So why do companies still use surveys in light of all the below reasons? Well, because it’s easy. Yep. Implementing and dishing out surveys is really easy nowadays.There’s hundreds of platforms online like Survey Monkey which make writing up and sending customer surveys dead easy to do under 5 minutes. That’s why companies still use them. Is it worth it though? Here I'll be giving you 7 reasons why you should stop using customer surveys to obtain feedback from your customers. If you read to the bottom, you'll even see a better alternative. Let’s begin..

1. No immediate resolution

Asking customers to fill in a long survey, then pushing a button and outputting a report you can circulate is not going to fix any problems that your customers are actually experiencing right now. It’s putting in place a system of immediate action that generates the true ROI from customer service. As HR Magazine says “74% of respondents say gathering and acting on customer feedback is what will produce real business ROI.” I.e the real value comes from acting on the feedback, not just collecting it and so there needs to be a better way of obtaining customer Feedback. I will address this later on.

2. Customer surveys are too long and people dislike filling in long forms.

Most people really hate filling in forms. It's a chore at the best of times. Add to that the fact that, because they are easy for companies and departments to set up and fire out, online customer satisfaction survey tools are everywhere. Most consumers, especially online, get asked to complete several a day which is why response rates are dropping so fast. Why should they have to do all the work when YOU’VE let them down?

3. Response rates for online surveys are already low anyway

As mentioned above, response rates have decreased. A typical response rate for an online survey is much lower than 10%. That means the vast majority of your customers (90%+ ) are not telling you what they think. Are you happy that so many of your customers don’t have a voice? To take this further, imagine if 90% are fine with a particular feature but the other 10% who actually fill out the form aren't? You’d then change the feature due to the responses obtained from the survey and then you’d have 90% of customers dissatisfied as opposed to ‘just’ the 10. The end result? Even more customers thinking your product sucks and you then losing money from losing your customers.

4. We want customers who love your product not just customers who are satisfied.

Let’s say by some fluke that your customer satisfaction survey hits a home running of 50% response rate (which is great mind you) and you’re able to obtain customer feedback to effectively solve problems. If those problems are solved (and congrats if they are) then your customers will be satisfied with your product. Will they be delighted or love it though? Maybe not. Aim to build a product your customers love and not just something that they’re just satisfied with. How? I’ll speak more about that below.

5. Online surveys are only a snapshot in time

People’s views change continuously and the performance of companies in delivering customer satisfaction is also changing. Measuring satisfaction must be a continuous process.” This isn’t possible using customer surveys or online polls. One of Steve Jobs' famous quotes is that “people don’t know what they want till they have it” and even then it’ll change once they see something else they want. Point is, your customer's wants and needs will change. By the time you’ve digested your customer survey and online poll. your customers may have another more pressing issue. Perhaps, it’s better to think of another way to obtain feedback from your customers?

6. Questions aren’t customer focused

This is a hard one to grasp at first. Remember, you’re the one writing the survey, not the customers. You can make all the guesses you like, you’ll never know a customer’s needs unless you let the customer talk freely to you without the restraints of the questions you’ve asked them. That’s right, the customer just wants to feed back to you as easily as possible: they don’t want to answer your questions! You may be asking all the wrong questions. How long can you business last if you keep doing so? Not that long I bet.

7. Because of all the above

It actually makes the situation worse. Due to all the above, what actually happens is that the wrong customers influence the decisions meaning that customer satisfaction rates don’t improve, the good customers get fed up as they’re not being listened to and so they don’t bother, customer satisfaction and now customer retention rates drops, your company loses more money and your employees get fed up. In short a disaster. Let’s look at the one new way of obtaining customer feedback.

Resolution and Conclusion

We’ve seen from above the various reasons why you need to stop using customer surveys. We’ve seen that customer surveys are too long and take up too much time, they’re also a snapshot in time and don’t reflect a customer’s true feelings. We've also seen that even when a survey is complete, there isn't an immediate solution to the problem at hand anyway. With all this in mind I now present you the breakthrough way that you should be obtaining feedback. There’s technology now which monitors social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube for customer’s views on products and companies, in real time too. Customers are taking to these platforms more and more instead of surveys to vent their views on products. So here there isn't an issue of response rates or of you asking all the wrong questions, all you have to do is learn. Why not capture this ripe source of feedback and win back your customers? One service that comes to mind is Sentview. If you’re struggling to gain more customers or if you're struggling to retarget your lost audience then Sentview may be of use to you. Sentview helps you gain more customers by including videos of your current happy customers on platforms like Instagram and YouTube into your social media marketing campaigns.

Head off to www.sentview.com to start your first campaign now.