In today's competitive market, understanding your customers' needs and expectations is critical. Yet, many organizations struggle to gather actionable insights that drive real improvements. The secret lies in collecting the right customer feedback at the right moments. But how do you go about determining these moments?
There are three steps that I recommend taking to help you collect the feedback you need at the right moments to drive your organization forward.
1. Operationalize Your Customer Journey
Begin by operationalizing your customer journey. This means documenting every interaction your customers have with your organization, from the initial stages of awareness and consideration through to purchase, onboarding, retention, and advocacy.
Within each stage, take time to review key activities, customer touch points, and communications. Consider different customer segments or product lines individually as you perform this analysis, and collaborate with your team and other departments that interact with customers to gain a comprehensive view. This detailed examination will help you understand your current state and identify where you want to go in the future. Also, it’s crucial to define the measurable business outcomes you aim to achieve at each stage.
By thoroughly understanding your current state, you’ll be better equipped to create a successful framework for collecting and leveraging customer survey data.
2. Identify Survey Touchpoints within the Customer Journey
Next, determine the key insights you want to capture with your surveys. Start by aligning your survey objectives with your overall business goals and the specific objectives at each stage of the customer journey. To help you pinpoint the best moments to collect feedback, identify the information that could help you measure these objectives. For example, if you have a specific business metric around meeting a certain CSAT or MPS score, or you're looking to gain feedback about a certain product set after onboarding, you want to make sure that you're considering these high-level objectives or KPIs. Then, when you map out survey touch points, the timing and the questions should align with these metrics.
3. Craft A Survey Roadmap
Once you have determined your survey touchpoints, then you need a detailed survey roadmap that answers some very specific questions. This could be as simple as a Word or an Excel document. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, but this document will help you understand why you are collecting this information and how you will use it to make improvements.
The key questions are:
What is the name of the survey?
What is the purpose of the survey, or what data are you hoping to collect?
Who is the audience for the survey?
Who is the internal survey owner?
Who are the internal collaborators?
An example could be a “Product Satisfaction Survey” with a purpose of identifying areas for product improvement. It will be sent to all customers who purchased a specific product six months ago just after completing the onboarding stage. The product manager is the owner, and the internal collaborators are individuals in support, design, and customer success.
Final Thoughts
The key to success lies in the details: understanding your customers, asking the right questions at the right times, and using the insights gained to make informed decisions. By operationalizing your customer journey and strategically mapping out your surveys, you can transform customer interactions into valuable data that fuels retention, enhances experiences, and expands relationships.
The author, Grace Tester, is a Senior Manager of Strategic Client Development at nCloud Integrators, an industry leader in helping customers drive impactful business outcomes using customer success, professional services and people analytic solutions and strategies.
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