Customer Satisfaction Survey Timing

Answers

• Clifford Jay Posted at 10:31AM on Sep 10, 2012

  While I agree that rating the quality of the interaction itself is best when the interaction is fresh in mind, I think that there are situations in which wholly relying on such results as a gage for customer satisfaction can result in a blind spot. In particular, this relates to situations where there will be future actions on the part of the agent (e.g, a promised callback), or future results of the actions taken by the agent. An example of the latter would be the travel industry. The customer for whom travel is being booked can have a very pleasant experience with the agent on the phone--even in cases where the agent's actions aren't best serving the customer. In other words, there are a slew of potential dissatisfiers that will only be revealed subsequently to the call and perhaps even after the travel experience (e.g., something booked incorrectly, a choice of a hotel that is a poor fit with the traveler's needs, hidden costs that aren't discovered by the traveler until the travel). Consider the situation where the agent provided a very pleasant experience over the phone, but recommended a hotel that ends up being roach infested and in a very seedy part of town. The traveler's ratings of that agent are going to be much, much higher directly after the interaction with the agent than they will be directly following the travel experience itself. Arguably, in this case, the ratings that are provided later (following travel), will be a much more accurate reflection of the customer's longer term loyalty and satisfaction than those provided directly after the interaction. For this reason, I'd say that the nature of the product/service must be considered carefully. In an industry such as travel--where many potential dissatsifiers resulting from an agent's actions are impossible to capture with a surve immediately following the interaction--an immediate, post-interaction survey will likely lead to mean satisfaction ratings that are quite inflated relative to actual long-term customer satisfaction.

• Greg Levin Posted at 12:00AM on Apr 6, 2009

  In my years as a call center journalist and researcher, I have interviewed numerous customer satisfaction measurement experts as well as managers of top call centers, and I have learned from them that -- in order for customer ratings/feedback to be accurate and actionable -- surveys need to be administered no more than a few hours (say, 10 or fewer) after the customer/agent interaction has taken place. The best surveying methods -- those that make timely surveying easier -- are automated post-contact surveys (IVR- or email-based) or surveys conducted by a live person over the phone. Timely surveys not only ensure that the interaction in question is still fresh in the customer's mind; it also enables the call center to gather feedback quickly, which makes it easy to quickly recover a customer (via a callback from a supervisor/manager) in the event that he or she was highly dissatisfied with the interaction. Post-contact (a.k.a., "transactional") surveys should be brief (5-7 questions) and focus on the customer's satisfaction with the call center (wait times, call routing, etc.), the agent's performance/professionalism, and whether or not the issue was resolved on the first contact. For more information and resources on customer satisfaction surveys/measurement, go to www.icmi.com and type "customer satisfaction measurement" into the "Search" box -- this will provide you with access to our top feature articles and case studies addressing the topic. Best, Greg Levin Creative Projects Coordinator ICMI