Eliciting
strong feedback is necessary for a business to understand its
competition, its industry, and the development of its own products and
services. Not the least of the Internet’s many gifts to business
relations is the provision of a universally accessible forum for dialog
to occur in.
Knowledge of the customer is the cornerstone
of customer centricity: strong customer data can illuminate the path
for future internal and external developments. The first and most
direct way of communicating with a customer is to provide surveys to
collect key data that covers specific aspects of a company’s assets.
“The best way to determine if customers are satisfied
with your products and services is to ask them. This may seem obvious,
but it is often overlooked amid the many demands of day-to-day
operations. Systematically collecting and taking action on customer
opinions should be a priority for all enterprises, as it’s an important
indicator of whether customers will remain loyal and whether they will
recommend a company’s products or services. – Contact Center Surveying Is Essential
Surveys are useful, providing clear and often unexpected reviews
of products and services – but execution is everything. If a survey
rubs people the wrong way, more than the data will suffer: the
relationship could be over.
Enterprise irregular Vinnie
Mirchandani was rubbed the wrong way by an Oracle survey that managed
to enlarge the gulf between him and that company, rather than shrink it.
“And it is titled ‘Questionnaire for attending
journalists.’ Oracle does not seem to want to recognize the new
category of bloggers. Or that our blogs already have feedback on our
experiences before, during and after the event – here’s mine, Brian’s
and several EIs have them on their own blogs.” – Surveys are so 90s
So what went wrong with this survey? Justin
Kestelyn, Oracle Technology Network’s editor-in-chief wrote a comment
asking for mercy:
“Vinnie, this is a little unfair – because you
received a canned survey (as the vestige of some business process),
that means Oracle doesn’t want to ‘recognize’ the blogger category?” – comment
Vinnie’s rejoinder contains a huge lesson about learning to listen when an abundance of feedback is already coming in.
“I did try to fill your survey then it occurred to me
did your PR folks bother to read the description of issues well
documented on Jakes’ and my blog. Why repeat that?” – comment
These are the front-line stories of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0. As was held up to sharp contrast, SAP managed to reach out to individuals using long-tail discrimination; Oracle did not. An influential commentator blogged it.
Surveys
are important, but they only exist for the relationship, which is
everything. Careful with those broadcast approaches to your customers.
