Annie Tsai

We’re moving at a lightening fast pace, and this technology stuff makes it ever easier to do more with less time. So while we’re all scrambling to just get by, here’s a friendly reminder:

Slow … down … just … a … sec and consider asking your customers how they think you’re doing. Getting your customers engaged will help set the trend for a more constructive, customer-centric relationship.

Why survey your customers? Here are 6 great reasons:

1. Revenue growth is not an indicator of satisfaction. You may see immediate upfront revenue attainment, but if you don’t have a way to identify customer satisfaction while you’ve got them, you better bet that the first chance they get, users will be making recommendations for products they like better and they will be looking for a replacement as soon as your contract’s up. Where this hurts you the most is in three places – lifetime value of a customer, cost of customer acquisition, and contract renewal rates.
2. Customer satisfaction (or dis-satisfaction) is an effective early indicator of potential attrition. Users are only going to use something they don’t like for so long before an up-rising. To mitigate the repercussions from this, you will have to be doubly responsive and reactionary to their specific needs by compromising the development pipeline to save one account, as opposed to proactively identifying issues early on and creating a long-term development strategy that benefits all customers.
3. You are missing out on the best source of ideas for future product and service development. Finding out from your existing customer-base the features your product lacks is one of the easiest ways to do ad-hoc competitive analysis. It’s not rocket science – more likely than not your customers have shopped around. They went with you for a reason. You now have the opportunity to find out what else would make your product or service that much more competitive.
4. You can identify who within your community is willing to engage with you. The more engaged your customer is with you, the more likely they will stay.
5. You can use the survey as a method for collecting additional information on your customer base. Build your database of information slowly by asking one or two profile or demographic related questions after four or five survey specific questions. Make sure to keep it short enough so as not to lose their attention and move on.
6. Whether or not you receive positive or constructive feedback, your customers will appreciate the fact that you asked in the first place.

If you think I’ve left anything off, please feel free to post them here.