The importance of the “Voice of the Customer” isn’t an entirely new concept. Although the value of customer experience has increased in recent years, and businesses have begun adopting new strategies to understand and adhere to their audience’s needs, listening to customers has always been a priority.
For years, companies have used feedback in the form of surveys and reviews to keep their finger on the pulse of customer sentiment and engagement.
Surveys provide companies with an opportunity to build on the quantitative metrics collected in the contact center, with detailed insights from real people. They’ve helped brands to pinpoint core trends in the customer journey, and detect pain points they need to resolve. Thanks to the evolution of AI and automation technologies, collecting information from surveys has even become much easier.
Brands can now use conversational bots and automation tools to instantly request feedback from customers at the end of any call or conversation. However, many CCaaS providers have started to discover problems with the survey process. Some leaders have even stopped investing in survey tools completely, believing they no longer deliver the benefits businesses need.
The Problems with Customer Survey Tools
According to prominent CCaaS vendors, survey tools are inherently flawed. Many companies now believe that surveys fail to provide an accurate insight into the voice of the customer for a number of reasons. For instance, most survey solutions only allow companies to collect information from a small sample of customers. The majority of clients a brand interacts with on a daily basis won’t have the time, or the desire to complete a survey at the end of their call.
This means companies make entire decisions on how to improve their customer service strategy, based on feedback from a niche fraction of their audience. Some studies show that as few as 10% of all customers respond fully to an IVR survey.
Not only is the sample size for the data collected from survey solutions limited, but the insights surveys can provide are often relatively basic too. Companies don’t want to overwhelm their customers with too many questions, so they tend to focus on simple questions, like asking clients to rate a call experience on a scale of 1 to 5.
These basic questions deliver equally limited insights into what customers actually think about the service they’re receiving. They lack any meaningful metrics or in-depth insights companies can use to make impactful changes.
Additionally, customer survey tools only look at one side of the customer/company interaction – the experience of the customer. They don’t measure how agent performance throughout the conversation influenced the changing sentiment of the customer, or which actions from an agent increased or reduced the quality of a call. This means companies often struggle to use their survey data to effectively implement coaching and training strategies for employees.
The Alternative Options to Survey Tools
The limitations of most survey solutions for contact center platforms make it easy to see why these technologies are falling out of favor. Companies just aren’t getting the data they need from the handful of surveys customers fill out to initiate meaningful change.
However, listening to the voice of the customer, collecting meaningful insights into business efficiency, and tracking agent performance is still crucial. The key to success for many brands will be transitioning away from the basic capabilities of survey tools, into a more comprehensive solution.
Quality Management and Assurance platforms, for instance, provide an end-to-end view of all the factors that influence customer experience. They provide opportunities for companies to track meaningful metrics and KPIs in real-time from every conversation. Comprehensive tools can automatically collect data from every discussion in the business, providing companies with a more holistic view of the customer journey.
At the same time, these tools also offer opportunities to derive insights from the voice of the customer directly, through transcription capabilities with built-in analytics. This ensures businesses can learn from what clients actually say during interactions, rather than relying on the basic feedback they may be willing to share at the end of a call.
“It can be tempting to go with a basic built-in solution, but evaluating and improving the quality of customer conversations is mission critical. A dedicated QA brings more coverage and insight, which fuels people improvement workflows to truly move the dial on agent performance.” – Chris Mounce, Quality Assurance and Coaching Specialist at EvaluAgent
Increasing Insights with Quality Management Tools
Even fully completed surveys can only provide broad, basic feedback at best. However, a quality management solution, capable of automating the collection of valuable metrics and data, drives opportunities for real growth. Not only can companies more effectively collect information from every stage of the customer journey, but they can use that data to their advantage.
The right quality management platforms empower businesses to build smarter teams, with automated workflows developed based on what business leaders learn about the customer experience. A fully integrated reporting suite can also provide companies with the behind-the-scenes insights they need to develop coaching and training strategies that drive measurable business results.
The right tools can even come with solutions designed to actively improve and enhance the agent experience. After all, good customer service starts with good employee experiences. With a comprehensive platform, companies can pinpoint the key frictions that prevent their teams from delivering amazing service, boost engagement, and provide more effective guidance.
What’s more, quality management tools scale and evolve with the business, continuing to provide insightful guidance even as companies expand their contact center, take on new clients, and move into different geographies. By focusing not just on the customers willing to give feedback, but the entire customer journey, and the agent experience too, quality management platforms deliver benefits beyond anything a survey solution can provide.
Is It Time to Leave Surveys Behind?
While survey tools and technology have long been a valuable part of the contact center environment, they’re quickly losing their impact in today’s evolving customer journey. Even the best tools can only provide a basic overview of what’s happening within the customer experience.
Switching from survey tools to a quality management platform capable of monitoring the full customer experience across every channel gives teams the power to compete and thrive in this new landscape. Surveys are quickly disappearing into the annals of CX past, but quality management is the future.
