Happy-ish is where the gold is

Most customer service surveys are a complete waste of time and money.

They are usually too long, try to cover too many issues, and responses tend to come from people who are already very happy or very unhappy.

At best you could:

Take the happy people and try to turn them into proactive evangelists for your brand – but most won’t do that.

Take the unhappy people and try to placate them. But that will probably be difficult, expensive and won’t get them to buy again. Why? Because most people who voice extreme displeasure complain about everything, all the time. They’re a lost cause.

Of course, it’s fine to use survey results to refocus on doing more of what people love and less of what people hate.

But to get real value from surveys, it’s essential to:

1) Keep them short

2) Focus them on one specific issue

3) Support them with focus groups and in-depth interviews

Even more crucial is to find and focus on the people who rate what you do as OK, or good. They like it enough to know it’s worthwhile, but they can also see what’s wrong with it, or how it could be improved.

The insight you get from these happy-ish people is priceless for identifying the customer value that will drive future growth.

Enjoy the rest of your week.

Hamish

Next Steps

· Contact me at hm@hamishmackenzie.com for a free 30-minute consultation on how to get more value FROM your customers.

· Get one of my FREE ebooks on creating new customer value.

· Check out my Blog and the Growth Position Podcast.