Although customer surveys were not specifically referenced in the research by Cooper and Dreher, I believe customer surveys offer a very easy method to get feedback, from as little as 30 customers to as many as 100,000.
Customer surveys can be used to collect customer feedback about a new product or product concept, but can also be used to get feedback shortly before product launch regarding product features and functionality, as well as marketing launch plans and campaigns, before the final product is released to the market. Customer surveys are very versatile tools, and in addition to these typical survey uses, surveys have been used for getting feedback on adjusting new features, for mid-production research, manufacturing quality research, usability testing, new market analysis, and pricing.
There are a number of ways customer surveys can be administered. Certainly, a survey is part and parcel of the customer visit as it will provide the interview structure, but there are other ways we can also gather customer feedback using surveys. We can deploy mail surveys, in-person surveys, phone surveys, online surveys, and mobile surveys.
A mail survey involves mailing out a printed questionnaire to a group of preselected respondents. These respondents could be from your customer list, your dealers, or a magazine list. Respondents are asked to fill out the survey and return it to the researchers. The advantages of the mail survey are:
- Cost: Only requires printing and postage, and no training is required for company personnel
- Privacy: Respondents can choose to leave any personal information blank, thereby ensuring their privacy is maintained
- Convenience: The respondents can take their time to fill out the survey when it best suits them
The disadvantages of the mail survey are:
- Low response rate: Typically, response rates are poor, with many surveys only getting a low, single-digit number of returns.
- Speed: The response time from survey creation to final respondent tally can take weeks or months.
- Self-selection: The survey researcher only receives the surveys of those who choose to return the questionnaires. Quite often, this sample does not accurately represent the sample of the respondents the researcher intended.
Some researchers choose to use in-person interviews with an interviewer talking directly to respondents to get the information they require. While the team visit interview would also fall into this loose definition, the survey I am referring to here is a much shorter survey that does not require a preplanned visit or a lengthy customer meeting, but is rather a very short survey that you may find conducted door-to-door or at a mall.
While the sample size of a survey can be considerably larger than what you may be able to achieve with a team visit interview, you may find the feedback you get is not as detailed or valuable. As most surveys are intentionally designed to be short and simple to generate the highest response rates, it is often not possible to probe in real-time as to what the respondent was thinking, or to ask clarifying questions; the result of a survey may just be the realization that you require additional VoC programs to get the detailed information you need.
The advantages of the in-person survey are:
- Response rate: Typically, the response rate of an in-person survey is significantly higher than you would find from a mail or email survey
- Depth: You are often able to probe much deeper in an in-person interview, and much more complex questions can be asked and answered
- Speed: Most in-person surveys are very quick, and it takes the respondents much less time to answer questions versus a mail or email survey
- Reach: Using in-person interviews, you are able to target specific geographical locations very precisely, and you can reach people you may not have been able to reach using a mail or telephone survey.
As you can see, there are a number of advantages to the in-person interview, but of course there are a couple of disadvantages as well:
- Cost: An in-person interview can be very costly because of the necessity of training the interviewer, the expenses for the actual interviews, and costs associated with the salaries or contracting for the interviewers
- Accuracy: While the in-person interview is not necessarily inaccurate, there exists the potential for the interviewer to inject his or her own bias into the questions or responses, which could affect the impartiality of the survey
While many might believe that phone surveys were a thing of the past with the advent of "do not call" lists, there is still a very large place for telephone surveys for those instances where you have a preexisting relationship with a customer. In this case, telephone surveys have a number of key advantages:
- Speed: Telephone interviews are typically the fastest method to query a customer base, and get results much quicker than in-person or mail-in surveys
- Cost: Telephone surveys are usually more economical than an in-person interview, and are not considerably different than a mail survey in terms of cost
As expected, there are some downsides to telephone surveys too:
- Control: The interviewer is not able to gauge visual clues from the respondents so as to guide the interview appropriately. Also, it is very easy for the respondent to disengage by hanging up the phone, and many respondents feel their personal or work lives are disrupted or violated when receiving a survey over the phone
- Visual: As the entire survey is given orally over the phone, it is impossible to share visual aids such as mock-ups or pictures to explain the survey questions
In the last 10 years or so, the internet has changed the way many surveys are conducted. It has become very easy and inexpensive to use internet technology to reach a large number of users, as well as a particular segment of your target audience. With an email or mobile survey, respondents are typically given an embedded hyperlink to a web-based survey. This methodology of customer surveys has many considerable advantages over the other survey methods, which helps to explain its explosive growth and popularity:
- Speed: A survey can be written and distributed in less than a day. Respondents can be given a time frame to reply that can be very short. Survey analysis is near instantaneous as the respondents are feeding the answers directly into the survey database, allowing real-time reporting and analysis.
- Cost: The administration of the survey is very economical. The user can choose to use free survey tools if their target group is small (such as surveymonkey.com, zoomerang.com, surveygizmo.com, and many others) or can pay for a premium package if their needs are greater. Even the premium packages are very economical compared with the other survey methods. It is very easy to send out surveys to thousands of people for very little cost.
- Customization: As the surveys are online and are being hosted, it is very easy to customize the surveys based on factors related to the respondent, such as geographical location, gender, family income, or other demographic information. Using branching technology, it is also possible to instantly change the question being asked depending on how earlier questions were answered by the respondents.
Of course, no survey method is perfect, and there are still a few negatives when using an online survey:
- Response rate: Typically, the response rate is very low with online surveys because of the sheer volume of emails many of us get each day
- Self-selection: Much like a mail-in survey, the survey researcher only receives the surveys of those who choose to fill out the online survey, and quite often this sample does not accurately represent the sample of the respondents the researcher intended or needed to reach
You must decide which method is best for you and your research, but given the high degree of customization and the relatively low cost, most people will opt for an online survey when given the choice.