Quality vs. Volume and The Best Way to Improve Response Rates

Having been a CX practitioner or consultant for the past 15 years, one of my biggest frustrations with CX programs is that they're not really CX programs; they’re really Voice of the Customer (VOC) programs that call themselves CX programs. What’s the distinction? VOC programs are focused on collecting feedback from customers and analyzing it. True CX programs focus on taking the knowledge and insights from the VOC program, getting organized cross-functionally to take action, managing improvement projects, driving transformation in the customer experience, and measuring the ROI delivered from those actions. A lot of energy is spent on collecting more and more information. As consumers, we are inundated with requests for surveys or reviews. But how many of your daily experiences as consumers or B2B buyers are actually improving?

Another major issue is that too many VOC programs are largely focused or dependent on surveys to capture customer feedback. For now, let’s ignore the fact that surveys are not the only, or often best, way to capture customer feedback and that you should be using multiple sources like social media feedback, reviews, website feedback, call center transcripts, CRM notes, etc. When surveys are the focus, the next question is nearly always, “How can I improve the response rate to my surveys?”

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You should be using multiple sources like social media feedback, reviews, website feedback, call center transcripts, CRM notes, etc.

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Many experts have written prolifically on this topic, covering things like list hygiene, sample vs. census sampling, visual appeal of the invitation, subject line, formatting, including time estimates, use of incentives and so forth. While learning how to better build and sustain better response rates is important, I believe the obsession with them is misguided and stuck in traditional market research methodology.

The problem with fixating on response rates is that it focuses on the volume of surveys you get back and not on the quality or representativeness. It’s more important to ensure you are inviting the right people (or the right mix of people) that truly represent your business. The quality of the feedback you are getting is much more important than how many people answered a given question or the statistical significance of that sample size.

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The quality of the feedback you are getting is much more important than how many people answered a given question or the statistical significance of that sample size.

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Building Better Response Rates Through Your Actions

The answer to building and sustaining higher response rates from customers lies more in the actions taken by your customer experience (CX) program. There are two critical things any company can do to improve its response rates that have nothing to do with research tactics/mechanics or the look and feel of your invitations and surveys. They tie back to the inner and outer loop concepts described in the Net Promoter SystemSM . The first is having an effective inner closed-loop system that responds to customers and addresses their issues if they give you negative feedback. When customers feel heard and that their issues are being addressed, they are much more likely to provide feedback again in the future. Additionally, there is plenty of documented research showing that customers who have an issue that is resolved to their satisfaction give higher satisfaction scores than customers who didn’t even have a problem in the first place, a nice additional incentive to providing this closed-loop response.

The second activity has to do with the outer-loop actions your company takes on the collective feedback you are receiving to drive improvements in the customer experience and communicate those back to customers. When customers see that their feedback is listened to and that it drives changes they benefit from, they’re more likely to provide feedback again in the future. One of the things I did in a previous role was to send a quarterly note to all customers who responded to a survey with a synopsis of what we heard collectively, the actions we were taking, and when the customer should expect to see changes. In hindsight, we should have sent it to all customers that we had contact information for, not just those who had responded to a survey.

Feedback is the lifeblood of a CX program’s ability to learn about changing customer needs, wants, and expectations to enable faster growth and profitability for your company. Giving customers a true incentive to provide feedback—by using that information to enhance the experience they have with your products and services—will do more to increase your response rates than any other tactic.

More importantly, practicing good inner and outer closed-loop behaviors will drive customer loyalty, create more promoters for your business, and extend the lifetime value of existing customers. This drives revenue and profitability growth for your company, while lowering marketing costs and thus, the cost of acquiring new customers.

To discuss how I can help your company or to arrange speaking engagements, please contact me at eric.smuda@outlook.com.

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A previous version of these thoughts was published here.