Survey feedback: Benefits and challenges

Catherine Constantinides

14 years ago

The importance of survey feedback

One of the best ways to tap into customer ideas and gain insight from online customer communities is to simply collect feedback through surveys. Companies that want to know what their customers want, use survey feedback to collect and analyze data that can be used to improve their business processes, product offers and service levels.

Survey feedback: The benefits

The best way to deliver exceptional value in the marketplace is to use knowledge about customers’ wants, needs, and thoughts about your products and concerns to drive product and service innovation. Today, businesses have many options to communicate with their customers and create strong relationships. Increased communication leads to better understanding of customers, improved business decisions and increased customer satisfaction levels. Well designed and executed survey feedback can be instrumental in achieving customer retention, brand loyalty and profitability goals.

Survey feedback challenges

Some of the most difficult aspects of managing survey feedback is selecting the best collection method and then using the data to achieve desired business goals. In the management of survey feedback companies need to ask several key questions: How will survey feedback support our marketing strategies? How can insights be converted into actionable data? What tools do we have to incorporate data into the product development process? How are we going to communicate to our customers that their feedback is critical and taken seriously?

Traditional survey methods are effective in identifying customer profiles and issues, but do not provide actionable insights, such as, the motives or the ‘whys’ of customer behaviours and issues. They are effective in asking the customer for information but do not engage customers in meaningful conversations that indicate you care about them and the information they are giving you. With only half of the picture, building customer loyalty and creating customer satisfaction becomes a hit or miss process.

Survey feedback: Using ‘s social collaboration tools

Online feedback tools are more effective at helping you develop high levels of customer service and achieve your business goals. With ’s social collaboration tools you can open up the channels of communication online and discover the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of your customer behaviors and issues. Instead of relying on incomplete or static survey data, you can directly communicate with your customer base in real-time. Through the customer portal you can discover their needs and interact so that their suggestions and ideas can be elaborated. You can let your customers know their feedback is important, and this builds loyalty. Listening to your customers increases your understanding of their behaviors and provides insights of actionable data.

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