Survey Design - Don’t foget your audience

Christen Uber September 25, 2007

Recently, I had the pleasurable experience of moving (I am totally being facetious). As we all have experienced, before moving residences, it is necessary to transfer, disconnect and/or reconnect services from one residency to another. All of which are time consuming hassles. Well, after completing my move and acquiring the necessary services at the new residence, I begin to be bombarded with the utility and Telephone Companies calling surveying me about my experience and my customer service satisfaction. One company’s survey process particularly aggravated me both personally as well as professionally. Personally there were many times I wanted to discontinue the call however, because of my professional vocation I was intrigued on the company’s survey design and to what extent they would go to acquire the perspective of their new client - me.

The survey began with acquiring some of the basic demographic information regarding my “purchase”. In my particular situation, I was just transferring over my DSL service from one residence to another utilizing my existing modem, which my provider provided me 3 years ago - so not really a purchase. The customer service representative asked me several questions requiring me to rate my satisfaction from 1 to 10: 1 being very unsatisfied to 10 equaling extremely satisfied. We reached a section where the representative specifically wanted to obtain my opinion regarding the DSL set-up process. I informed the representative the “set-up” process was not applicable to my situation. I had set-up my own modem with the existing software and hardware they provided 3 years ago. The representative proceeded to tell me that “N/A” was not an option and continued to read through the multiple questions which had no relevance in my situation. I continued to reply N/A and the representative continued to tell me that was not an option. Thus, I chose to rate all of the necessary steps a 2. By this point I became very aggravated and voiced my distain and patience to continue. The representative assured me that we were almost done. However, the following questions were again multiple parts with very little relevance to my particular situation. Detailing my specific situation to the representative, the only response I received in return was a response I would expect from an IVR system with no autonomy to accommodate or rectify the situation in a customer service friendly manner. I am sorry but I have to ask the questions just as they are.

My point in explaining and detailing my experience is to remind companies acquiring information from their customers - surveying is not all about just obtaining information and measurable data. Surveying and polling your customers is also an opportunity to acquire the voice of your client. Therefore provide the audience, from whom you want to hear from, the opportunity to voice it. Train the customer service staff, who is obtaining the information, to rate a clients response based on the information provided not just the information you are looking to obtain. Design the survey so the client feels it is applicable to the services and/or products that they actually acquired and utilized from your company. If I had that type of experience, I would have been left with a favorable impression of the company and its follow-up and would not have found it necessary to write this blog.

Posted in Human Resources Analytics